Public Enemy release 'It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back'
Def Jam issues PE's second LP — Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff, Terminator X, and the Bomb Squad's wall-of-noise production team (Hank and Keith Shocklee, Eric 'Vietnam' Sadler, Carl Ryder). The political program announced on the cover — 'It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back' — is fully embedded in the music: 'Bring the Noise,' 'Don't Believe the Hype,' 'Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,' 'Prophets of Rage.'
Why it matters
Nation is the album every later argument about politically engaged rap — from Tricia Rose's *Black Noise* forward — has to reckon with. The Bomb Squad's sample-density (some tracks layer 30+ samples) is partly responsible for the post-1991 sampling-rights regulatory regime: Grand Upright v. Warner (Dec 1991) makes Bomb Squad-style production economically prohibitive within three years of the LP's release.
Branches
People1
Citations 3
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- B Pitchfork — Public Enemy — It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (review) Retrieved 2026-05-24.
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