20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Public Enemy

Performer: Public Enemy
Artist: Anthrax; Sister Souljah
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: Public Enemy: Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Keith Shocklee, Hank Shocklee, Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, Terminator X, Professor Griff. Additional personnel includes: Anthrax, Sister Souljah. Producers include: Hank Shocklee, Carl Ryder, Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, Anthrax, Gary G-Wiz. Compilation producer: Dana Smart. All tracks have been digitally remastered. Photographers: Lisa Haun; David Corio. This is a thankless task. You cannot adequately summarize Public Enemy's career within the space of one disc. You can string together well over a dozen hard-hitting rap classics, but you are going to leave out at least a dozen other deserving tracks. This disc, part of the Universal Masters Collection series, does a negligible job at best. Eight tracks come from It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, leaving room for three to taken from both Fear of a Black Planet and Apocalypse '91. This leads you to believe that It Takes a Nation towers over Fear of a Black Planet, which isn't the case at all. Just as problematic: Yo! Bum Rush the Show goes unrepresented, when no less than three cuts off that album are no-brainer inclusions. In other words, avoid. ~ Andy Kellman In a way, Public Enemy is a band that defies compilations because each of their records is so perfectly crafted, such an ideal statement, that they can't seem to exist in any other way. But, like any great band, the individual songs stand on their own merits, and if they're put together in the right order, the end result would be nothing less than phenomenal. 20th Century Masters is not phenomenal. It's not even executed particularly well, missing some absolutely essential songs (how the hell do you put out a PE comp without "Rebel Without a Pause" and "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos"?) and sequenced in a halting fashion. So, it's not perfect, but some Public Enemy is better than none, especially if "Welcome to the Terrordome," "Bring the Noise," "Don't Believe the Hype," "Fight the Power," and "Night of the Living Baseheads" constitute half the album. The rest of the record is pretty damn good, too -- only the Anthrax-assisted re-recording of "Bring tha Noize" is execrable, yet "By the Time I Get to Arizona," "Shut Em Down," and "Nighttrain" make up for its presence -- but there's so much missing that it's hard to give this a ringing endorsement. Some haphazard compilations wind up quenching your thirst, others leave you wanting more; this is one that leaves you thirsty, especially if you get positively weak from hearing Chuck D's voice -- the way that some quake at the sound of Coltrane's saxophone, Miles' trumpet, Clapton's guitar. There's no other instrument quite as overwhelming as this, and it's damn irresistible. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine When Public Enemy appeared in the mid-1980s they shredded the map of urban music and redesigned one so expansive, complex, forward thinking, and full of political ire that its routes will probably be valid forever. The 20th CENTURY MASTERS compilation gives an overview of P.E.'s significance via a small sampling (11 tracks) from the band's oeuvre. While such a collection can't compete with the integrity of albums like IT TAKES A NATION OF MILLIONS TO HOLD US BACK and FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET (both of which are required listening), THE BEST OF brings together some of P.E.'s best studio moments. And superb moments they are. In addition to their militant political stances (P.E. advocated the philosophies of separatist leaders like Louis Farrakhan), the group was musically revolutionary. Assisted by the Bomb Squad, the production team that gave P.E. their trademark avant-rap sound, Flava Flav's absurdist raps, Terminator X's cutting and scratching, and Chuck D.'s intense, utterly original poetic commentary resemble nothing heard before or since in popular music.

In the late 1980s, Public Enemy connected the dots between politics, soul music, hard rock, marketing, turntablism, and rhyme, and turned hip-hop into an urban global youth movement. PE's pioneering albums are heralded as avant-garde artworks whose disparate sample sources combine into a gloriously chaotic mosaic of polyphony and African-American unrest. Powered by Chuck D.'s political fury, enlivened by Flavor Flav's antics, and made controversial by Professor Griff's ethnocentrism, Public Enemy influenced virtually every rapper who followed in their wake.

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