Fear of a Black Planet is the third studio album by American hip hop group Public Enemy. It was released on April 10, 1990, by Def Jam Recordings and Columbia Records, and produced by the group's production team The Bomb Squad, who expanded on the sample-layered sound of Public Enemy's previous album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988). Having fulfilled their initial creative ambitions with that album, the group aspired to create what lead rapper Chuck D called "a deep, complex album". Their songwriting was partly inspired by the controversy surrounding member Professor Griff's anti-Semitic public comments and his consequent dismissal from the group, amidst the mainstream success of their radically political single "Fight the Power" (1989).
Reflecting its confrontational tone, Fear of a Black Planet features elaborate sound collages that incorporate varying rhythms, numerous samples, media sound bites, and eccentric loops. Recorded during the golden age of hip hop, its assemblage of reconfigured and recontextualized aural sources took advantage of creative freedom that existed before the emergence of a sample clearance system in the music industry. Thematically, Fear of a Black Planet explores organization and empowerment within the black community, social issues affecting African Americans, and race relations at the time. Its critiques of institutional racism, white supremacy, and the power elite were partly inspired by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing's views on color.
A commercial and critical hit, Fear of a Black Planet sold two million copies in the United States and received rave reviews from critics, many of whom named it one of the year's best albums. Its success contributed significantly to the popularity of Afrocentric and political subject matter in hip hop and the genre's mainstream emergence at the time. Since then, it has been viewed as one of hip hop's greatest and most important records, as well as being musically and culturally significant. In 2004, the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry. In 2020, Fear of a Black Planet was ranked number 176 on Rolling Stones list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
Background
In 1988, Public Enemy released their second album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back to critical and commercial success. The controversial, politically charged lyrics by the group's lead rapper Chuck D, whose braggadocio raps contained references to political figures such as Assata Shakur and Nelson Mandela, as well as endorsements of Nation of Islam-leader Louis Farrakhan, intensified the group's affiliation with black nationalism and Farrakhan. It helped give hip hop a critical credibility and standing in the popular music community after it had been largely dismissed as a fad since its introduction at the turn of the 1980s.
left|thumb|Public Enemy wanted to create an album more conducive to dynamic live performance (group leader [[Chuck D shown in concert in 1991).]]
In May 1989, Chuck D, Bomb Squad producer Hank Shocklee, and Def Jam executive Bill Stephney were negotiating with several labels for a production deal from a major record company, their goal since starting Public Enemy in the early 1980s.
Amid the controversy, Chuck D was given an ultimatum by Shocklee and Stephney to dismiss Griff from the group or the production deal would fall through.
Recording and production
Fear of a Black Planet was recorded at three studios—Greene St. Recording in New York City, The Music Palace in West Hempstead, and Spectrum City Studios in Hempstead—from June to October 1989. It was produced by The Bomb Squad—Chuck D, Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, Keith Shocklee, and his brother Hank Shocklee—while Chuck D called Hank, their director, "the Phil Spector of hip-hop". received here his first official credit as a team member. For the album, they sought to expand on the dense, sample-layered "wall of noise" of Public Enemy's prior album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.
Employing an elaborate method, the Bomb Squad reconfigured and recontextualized disparate sound fragments, while expanding their repertoire of samples to radio and other sources. Chuck D remarked that "95 percent of the time it sounded like mess. But there was 5 percent of magic that would happen."
thumb|left|An [[E-mu SP-1200 drum machine and sampler, one of the devices used by The Bomb Squad for the album]]
To synchronize the samples, the Bomb Squad used SMPTE timecodes and arranged and overdubbed parts of backing tracks, which had been inspected by the members for snare, bass, and hi-hat sounds. An analysis by law professors Peter DiCola and Kembrew McLeod estimated that under the sample clearance system that developed after the album's release, Public Enemy were to lose at least five dollars per copy if they were to clear the album's samples at 2010 rates, a loss of five million dollars on a platinum record.
For the track "Burn Hollywood Burn", Chuck D dealt with clearance issues from different record labels to collaborate with rappers Big Daddy Kane and Ice Cube, who had been pursuing the Bomb Squad to produce his debut album.
For the album's artwork, Public Enemy enlisted B.E. Johnson, a NASA illustrator.|width=25em|align=right|style=padding:8px;
Fear of a Black Planets music features assemblage compositions that draw on numerous sources. Recordings sampled for Fear of a Black Planet include those from funk, soul, rock, and hip hop genres.
According to The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore (2006), Fear of a Black Planet introduced a production style that "borrowed elements from jazz, especially that of John Coltrane, to craft a soundscape that was more challenging than that of their previous two albums, but still complemented the complex social commentary".
Some tracks used elements from Public Enemy's previous material, which Pete Watrous of The New York Times interpreted as a dual reference to hip hop tradition and the history of the group. and of confrontation. Chuck D's critical lyrics on the album, interspersed with the surrealism of Flavor Flav, Kot wrote of Chuck D's perspective and the theme of fear, "It's fear that divides us, he says; understand me better and you won't run. Fear of a Black Planet is about achieving that understanding, but on Public Enemy's terms. In presenting their view of life from an Afro-centric, as opposed to Euro-centric, perspective, P.E. challenges listeners to step into their world."
The opening track, "Contract on the World Love Jam", is a sound collage made up of samples, scratch cuts, and snippets recorded by Chuck D from radio stations and sound bites of interviews and commercials. Chuck D addresses the controversy from the perspective of someone in the center of political turmoil, with criticisms of the media and references to the Crucifixion of Jesus: "Crucifixion ain't no fiction / So called chosen frozen / Apology made to who ever pleases / Still they got me like Jesus".
"Burn Hollywood Burn" assails the use of black stereotypes in movies, while "Who Stole the Soul?" condemns the music industry's exploitation of black recording artists and calls for reparations. Addressing their plight at the turn of the 1990s, "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" features cacophonic sound textures and a theme of unity among African Americans, Richard Harrington of The Washington Post writes that songs such as "War at 33⅓" and "Fight the Power" "may sound like a call to ohms and arms, but they are really a call to action ('turn us loose and we shall overcome'), a message to conscience and a plea for unity ('move as team, never move alone,' both cautionary advice and game plan)". cited by Chuck D as "the fastest thing I've ever rapped to, rapping right on top of the beat". Chuck D wrote most of the song attempting to adapt The Isley Brothers' "Fight the Power" to a modernist perspective. The song's third verse contains disparaging lyrics about popular American icons Elvis Presley and John Wayne, as Chuck D rhymes "Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me' / Straight up, racist the sucker was / Simple and plain", with Flavor Flav following, "Muthafuck him and John Wayne!". The lyrics, which shocked and offended many listeners at the time, The line regarding John Wayne refers to his controversial personal views, including racist remarks made in his 1971 interview for Playboy. — and the lack of police response to emergency calls in predominantly African-American neighborhoods. The humorous and satirical subject matter is reflected in the song's accompanying music video, which features a severely injured Flav being mistreated by a remiss, overdue ambulance staff. He said of his inspiration for the song, "I was in my Corvette riding from Long Island going to The Bronx. I was slipping. I was roasting. I mean I was smoked-out crazy. And everybody kept asking me for stuff and yet nobody wanted to give me stuff. So then if anybody ever asked me for something I would be like, 'Yo, I can't do nothing for ya man.' Next thing you know I started to vibe on it: 'I can't do nothing for ya man,' um ahh um um ahh. So I went and told that to Chuck. Chuck was like, 'Record that shit man'". Fear of a Black Planet was released on April 10, 1990, by Def Jam Recordings and Columbia Records. Although It Takes a Nation garnered Public Enemy more exposure with black audiences and music journalists, urban radio outlets had mostly rejected Def Jam's requests to include the group's singles in their regular rotation. This incited Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons to attempt grassroots promotional tactics from his earlier years of promoting hip hop shows. In promoting Fear of a Black Planet, he recruited young street crews to put up posters, billboards, and stickers on public surfaces, while Simmons himself met with nightclub DJs and college radio program directors to persuade them to add albums tracks such as "Fight the Power", "Welcome to the Terrordome", and "911 Is a Joke" to their playlists. As singles, they were released on July 4, 1989, in January 1990, and in April, respectively. Two more singles were later released — "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" in June and "Can't Do Nuttin' for Ya Man" in October, with the latter also featured in the 1990 comedy film House Party. It also charted for 10 weeks and reached number four in the United Kingdom, while in Canada, it charted for 28 weeks and reached number 15. By July 1990, it had sold 1.5 million copies in the US, where it ultimately peaked at number 10 and charted for 27 weeks on the Top Pop Albums. After 1991, when the tracking system Nielsen SoundScan began tracking domestic sales data, Fear of a Black Planet sold 561,000 additional copies by 2010.
The controversy surrounding the group and their exposure through the singles "Fight the Power" and "Welcome to the Terrordome" helped Fear of a Black Planet exceed the sales of their previous two albums, Yo! Bum Rush the Show and It Takes a Nation of Million to Hold Us Back at the time, 500,000 and 1.1 million copies, respectively. Its success made Public Enemy the top-selling act, both domestically and internationally, for Def Jam Recordings at the time. In a December 1990 article, Chicago Sun-Times writer Michael Corcoran discussed Public Enemy's commercial success with the album and remarked that "more than half of the 2 million fans who bought [Fear of a Black Planet] are white".
| rev4 = Q
| rev4score =
| rev5 = Rolling Stone
| rev5score = After asserting prior to its release that it was "bound to be one of the most dissected pop collections in years", USA Todays Edna Gundersen called it "a masterpiece of innovation [and] challenging music" that makes the group's pro-black lyrics more interesting and plausible. Rolling Stone magazine's Alan Light praised Public Enemy's self-assured and realistic lyrics, and viewed the album as a deeper, more focused version of "the careening rage of Nation of Millions". Greg Sandow of Entertainment Weekly found it powerfully relevant to contemporary American culture and unparalleled by anything in popular music: "It sounds like a partly African, partly postmodern collage, stitched together on tumultuous urban streets." Tom Moon of The Philadelphia Inquirer observed "some of the genre's most sophisticated sound designs and unconventionally agile rapping" on the album and called it "a major piece of work, the first hard evidence of rap's maturity and a measure of its continuing relevance".
In The Washington Post, Richard Harrington said because Fear of a Black Planet is a challenging listen, "How it's met depends on how it's understood." Robert Christgau, writing for The Village Voice, felt that its "brutal pace" loses momentum and that the group's lyrics are ideologically flawed, but wrote that although their "rebel music" is gimmicky, "this is show business, and they're still smarter and more daring than anybody else working their beat." Peter Watrous of The New York Times called it "an essential pop album" and stated, "On their own, the lyrics seen functional. Taken with the music, they bloom with meaning." Simon Reynolds of Melody Maker remarked that the content epitomizes the group's significance at the time: "Public Enemy are important ... because of the angry questions that seethe in their music, in the very fabric of their sound; the bewilderment and rage that, in this case, have made for one hell of strong, scary album".
At the end of 1990, Fear of a Black Planet appeared in the top-10 of several critics' lists of the year's best albums. It was voted the third best record of 1990 in The Village Voices annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll, and the publication's Robert Christgau ranked it number 10 on his own "Dean's list". It was named the second best album of the year by The Boston Globe, the third best by USA Today, and fifth best by the Los Angeles Timess Robert Hilburn, who wrote that it "dissects aspects of the black experience with an energy and vision that illustrates why rap continues to be the most creative genre in pop". The State named it one of the year's best albums and hailed it as "possibly the boldest and most important rap record ever made. A sonic tour de force". Fear of a Black Planet was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group, presented at the 33rd Grammy Awards in 1991.
Legacy and influence
Since Fear of a Black Planet was first released, it has been viewed by critics as one of the greatest and most important hip hop albums of all time, as well as a culturally significant work. while Q said it "achieved the near impossible by being every bit as good as its predecessor". In the opinion of Kembrew McLeod, Public Enemy had worked with production equipment that would seem primitive decades later but still managed to invent new "techniques and workarounds that electronics manufacturers never imagined".
left|thumb|Fear of a Black Planet is archived at the [[Library of Congress (pictured) in Washington, D.C.]]
In 1997, The Guardian ranked it number 50 on their 100 Best Albums Ever list, which was voted on by a panel of various artists, critics, and DJs. The following year, it was selected as one of The Sources 100 Best Rap Albums. In 2000, it was voted number 617 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums and named in Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s as among the decade's most essential works. Rolling Stone included Fear of a Black Planet on their "Essential Recording of the '90s" list, and in 2003, the magazine ranked it number 300 on their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and 302 in a 2012 revised list, and number 176 in a 2020 revised list. The record was ranked number 21 in Spins "100 Greatest Albums, 1985–2005" publication, and number 17 on Pitchforks "Top 100 Albums of the 1990s".
In 2004, the Library of Congress added Fear of a Black Planet to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2013, NME named it the 96th best record ever in their all-time list.
Track listing
2014 deluxe edition bonus tracks
- "Brothers Gonna Work It Out (Remix)" – 5:51
- "Brothers Gonna Work It Out (Dub)" – 5:10
- "Flavor Flav" – 0:16
- "Terrorbeat" – 3:07
- "Welcome to the Terrordome (Terrormental)" – 3:38
- "Can't Do Nuttin' for Ya Man (Full Rub Mix)" – 4:44
- "Can't Do Nuttin' for Ya Man (U.K. 12″ Powermix)" – 4:06
- "Can't Do Nuttin' for Ya Man (Dub Mixx)" – 4:03
- "Burn Hollywood Burn (Extended Censored Fried to the Radio Version)" – 3:42
- "Anti-Nigger Machine (Uncensored Extended)" – 1:59
- "911 Is a Joke (Instrumental)" – 3:21
- "Power to the People (Instrumental)" – 2:42
- "Revolutionary Generation (Instrumental)" – 5:46
- "War at 33⅓ (Instrumental)" – 2:07
- "Fight the Power ("Do the Right Thing" Soundtrack Version)" – 5:23
- "Fight the Power (Powersax)" – 3:53
- "Fight the Power (Flavor Flav Meets Spike Lee)" – 4:34
- "The Enemy Assault Vehicle Mixx (Medley)" – 9:25
Personnel
Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.
| 60
|-
! scope="row"| US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums (Billboard)
| 19
|}
Singles
{| class="wikitable"
|-
!align="left"|Year
!align="left"|Song
!align="left"|Chart
! style="text-align:center;"|Peak<br />position
|-
| style="text-align:left;" rowspan="4"|1989
| style="text-align:left;" rowspan="4"|"Fight the Power"
|align="left"|Netherlands (Nationale Hitparade)
| style="text-align:center;"|24
|-
|align="left"|UK Singles (Gallup)
| style="text-align:center;"|29
|-
|align="left"|US Hot Black Singles* (Billboard)
| style="text-align:center;"|20
|-
|align="left"|US Hot Rap Singles (Billboard)
| style="text-align:center;"|1
|-
| style="text-align:left;" rowspan="21"|1990
| style="text-align:left;" rowspan="6"|"Welcome to the Terrordome"
|align="left"|Netherlands (Nationale Hitparade)
| style="text-align:center;"|21
|-
|align="left"|New Zealand (RIANZ)
| style="text-align:center;"|49
|-
|align="left"|US Hot R&B Singles (Billboard)
| style="text-align:center;"|71
|-
|align="left"|New Zealand (RIANZ)
| style="text-align:center;"|34
|-
|align="left"|US Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales (Billboard)
| style="text-align:center;"|15
|-
|align="left"|US Hot Rap Singles (Billboard)
| style="text-align:center;"|30
|-
|align="left"|UK Singles (Gallup)
| style="text-align:center;"|31
|-
|align="left"|US Hot R&B Singles (Billboard)
| style="text-align:center;"|15
|-
|align="left"|UK Singles (Gallup)
|}