It did take a nation of millions!

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

Released: 28 June 1988

Def Jam

Now yours truly wasn't stuck to his boombox in 1988, but 20 years ago Public Enemy came up and shook us up with It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. It might be kinda hard to imagine a mainstream rap group releasing anything remotely conscious or political AND got heard by the common man in The Bronx, Camden or even Menteng but these cats did with a bang.

Rap groups like this don't exist no more: Chuck D was the voice, Flava Flav the annoying hype man and Terminator X speaks with his hands with the unruly Bomb Squad handling the production. Bring The Noise, Don’t Believe the Hype, Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos, Louder Than a Bomb and Rebel Without a Pause were outrageously fresh as they were influential. With hip-hop starting to polarise with the rise of NWA influenced G-funk it was one of the final ‘Golden Age’ records to address social issues without advising everyone to shoot everyone else they thought was at fault.

‘It Takes A Nation’ was loud, street smart, a thorn in the establishment, and sounded like a riot of beats and melody all in one record. Sadly for us it took another nation of millions to stop caring about social and political issues in rap thus buying much less of these records to push conscious rap mainly underground.