It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

Oh, shit, I just invoked Zach De La Rocha!

And you hip-hop fans accuse us Britpop/trad rock/pop fans of being "derivative"? :-)

I don't know if I'd say Chuck's lyrics are abstract (at least not compared, to Fugazi's allegedly profound lyrics), but the CNN allusion indeed isn't very evocative. Hell, he's closer to a bizarro-world Fox News.

Btw Alex yr supposed to write that ""getting it"".

*whimpers* MUST you invoke Satan like that.

And yes, Ned, as long as Satan shrilly screams "YOU CALL THIS JUSTICE???" and then hops up and down angrily, I shalt invoke he! Blargh!

I think PE's sonic attack is pretty much unreplicated and probably unreplicatable. On the other hand, I've read testimonials to PE from all sorts of people, from gangstas to Def Jux types -- just because they don't sound like "Black Steel" doesn't mean they didn't get juiced by PE at some point in their life. But PE was never mainstream hip-hop -- most significantly, they weren't particularly funky. They were the noisiest, rockiest great hip-hop band ever. They just happened to be amazing, which made them stand out way out of proportion to their place in the hip-hop spectrum. They were an anomaly, a branch off the main trunk, and they defined that branch so completely that it's no surprise not many other people have climbed out on it.

That said, my favorite PE story is from when I was in college. I was home at Christmas break, and my conservative (in all respects) grandma was visiting. I had "Nation of Millions" on in the background while I was doing dishes or something, and my grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table doing a crossword table. I noticed she was tapping her feet, and at a certain point she looked up and said, "They sure do have rhythm, don't they?" Taking into account the obvious racism of the comment (and the irony of the racism in that context), I still had to give a big nod to the Bomb Squad -- they reached my grandma.

I don't think their sonics were unreplicatable as much as you got the definite impression that basically no African-American hip hoppers (over or underground) seemed interested in following PE's lead. And the question which no one seems to be able to answer here (and no one really seems to want to try) is WHY?!?! What was it about a) their particular strand of Black Nationalism that fell out of favor and b) the idea of making in your face uncompromising radical music (whether they did or not isn't the question) that virtually no subsequent black hip hop act has even tried to follow in those footsteps?

There is an amazing interview with Chuck D and Hank Shocklee in the latest issue of Stay Free about their sampling method and why they gave it up. It's the first interview I've ever seen where they bring any of this shit up, and I can't believe this interview hasn't made more waves...

But to the other questions, I think those things were never exactly in favor or fashion, before or after PE. It's just that there was one great radical Black Nationalist sonically visionary hip-hop band, and they were it.

It's true that many producers have made a point of recording/engineering their own sounds and then sampling/arranging them. this is basically what timbaland's doing, first level sound design. but it's a different thing.

I dunno, those records sounded like doom when they came out and I couldn't believe they were popular, alex your basic point does ring true in that people could still be making ragingly dense wall-of-noise hip hop with other means, but they aren't, mainly because... people like their pop music easy going and pretty. we won't be seeing records quite like those early pe records anytime soon.

More like they were the one great radical Black Nationalist sonically visionary hip-hop band to find a large audience.

-- jess

i'm assuming you're talking about the studio primier works in?

Okay so yeah the beats are totally four down as opposed to yr. standard hip-hop swing, and even when they keep the emphasis in the right place there's a sort of quantization going on, with the pauses trimmed, and reinforced by the other samples overlayed on the drums and the emphasis with snare on hitting the the third beat rather than the first. But more than that you have to confront Chuck D's flow which is equally chunky. I never read SFJ's magnum opus on shifts in flow in hip-hop (& I'm dying to if someone knows where I can get it) but there's a definite transition in rythmic and rhyme patterns of MCs which I'm going to take a stab at.

Chuck D took the classic Run-DMC flow about as far as it could go, but he kept the opening syllables of his lines -- four at least -- hard and solid to the beat, as well as the couple of closing ones so if you concieve of the line as four parts (each half a bar -- the doubling of the spoken line to the beat was pretty unique to PE), there's only room for play in the third (better yet the time between the first and second snare hit on the downbeat in each two bar set). And Chuck pretty much kept his discursive unit complete in each line. All of which was formed a complex which didn't have anywhere else to go except more intensity, faster beats, harder sounds, etc. since disruption of any element would throw off the whole complex. And Nation of Millions is maybe about as far as it could go without losing the audience.

The vocal innovation of G-Funk (and Golden Age -- > underground too) was in lines which didn't just punch the beginning and end but rolled into one another, lines which necessitated a different rhythmic basis, one significantly more flexible. Bomb Squad Productions on the other had you could pretty much lay any drum track under any other PE track, match the beats, and the song would still sound pretty much the same.

Compare with the "rock" imports carried out by Jay-Z, Em, and Freeway lately in rhythmic composition.

Also PE always seemed to me to fall in the afro-futurist tradition, re-imagining the present in dystopian sci-fi terms rather than projecting it outwards to space. I like Jesse's quip about "a band imitating a social movement" in that regards. And for various reasons, its worth noting, there's never been a continuity between afro-futurist artists -- its a tradition of outliers.

perhaps incorrectly assuming you were listening to the new one...

um kinda? it's something! nas is insane. it's super overblown and odd in a way i can't articulate.

but i guess he's been crazy for a long time.

i mean it's not as good as his best ones.

Is the argument, then, that its reinforcement through the years as canon material has been partly obligatory?

― timellison, Friday, July 20, 2012 12:50 PM (23 minutes ago)

i'd probably say both necessary and self-perpetuating. obligatory in the sense that, once granted, canon doesn't rescind its esteem quickly. again, i'm not trying to make any novel argument about the nature of canon, just saying the canon of pop significance constructed between the 60s and 90s still seems to be quite influential. the best anyone can do is to glue new bits onto its existing body, perhaps at the same rate that time and indifference pry others loose (the way punk and new wave seemed to replace elvis and the icons of the early rock & roll era). this canon, "the canon", is not easily replaced or subverted, and it doesn't seem to have been rendered irrelevant by digital democratization.

doh, i should say the 90s seemed to occasion/accompany a gradual diminishment in the importance attached to the early rock era. rap, boy bands, indie rock, grunge: wasn't much connection from the present back. punk & new wave folks were obviously very closely connected to early rockers, the 50s in general.

But you were talking specifically about Exile on Main Street and I didn't know if you were speculating about its continued canon presence as an example of obligatory deference as opposed to genuine current taste.

It's #11 on the Pitchfork '70s list.

I kind of see most early punk as more connected to non-hippie 60s rock (e.g. girl groups, garage bands) than to 50s rock and roll, actually.

xpost

oh, i don't know that there's a difference. or rather, i wasn't intending to make a distinction. the two are interlinked, in that taste shapes canon just as canon shapes taste.

the most visible and codified aspects of canon are often out of step with actual popular and/or critical taste (the rock and roll hall of fame is an example of this), while our understanding of canon typically lags behind its actual formation.

that was xp to tim. this to sund4r:

yeah, that's probably fair. still, i do think that the likes of chuck berry and elvis loomed large over the punk/new wave era, either as direct or as odious posterity. beyond musical influence, many aspects of late 70s and early-mid 80s culture seemed like a deliberate response to images and ideals of midcentury modernity.

"...either as direct influences or as odious posterity."

I think Bangs' '81 ballot, or thoughts about 1979, needs to be placed in the context of his life. Just about everyone who writes about pop music for a long time (Christgau being the obvious exception, and even he has his moments) hits a point where disengagement/frustration starts to creep in. Generally, re-engagement happens soon enough. The timeline is different for everybody. My guess is that Bangs' '81 ballot was just a stop along the way, and had he lived, he would have found lots to enthuse about soon enough.

Respectfully disagree on this point, Clemenza. Bangs's alienation from it all, in the last couple years of his life especially, seemed pretty deep-rooted and consistent. It was a theme he returned to often (comes out even more in some of the interviews he gave at the time), and a few pet artists aside, he really did seem disgusted with the direction the culture in general was headed in (his oft-repeated refrain was that everything had turned into People magazine). It's all (useless) conjecture, of course, but given the ferocity with which he made such claims, again and again, I kind of doubt his feelings on this would have been reversible. Though sure, there likely would always have been a band or two around that he was interested in (but enough to compel him to remain a "rock critic"? I doubt it). Worth remembering, maybe, that there were a lot of first-generation critics around this time, less vocal perhaps in their alienation than Bangs or Meltzer, who dropped off the scene somewhere around this time also, i.e., probably half the contributors in Stranded.

My main point: I don't think Bangs's '81 ballot (which at the time was the funniest thing I'd ever read in my life up to that point) was any kind of aberration, or a "stop along the way."

Ah I think Bangs wouldve probably cone back around to hardcore after SST started getting weird/ambitious; I'm sure he'd have been an avid Meat Puppets/Butthole Surfers fan...

Hell, he probably wouldve been a fan of Public Enemy had he lived

Well played, Levitt, well played.

All conjecture, yes. Bangs had just turned 33 when he put together his '81 ballot. Let me throw this out to anyone who's, say, 38 or older (33 + five extra years): a) how many of you reached a point where you felt like you weren't as enthusiastic about music as you used to be, or that you were losing touch with newer stuff, or that you'd lapsed into a kind of get-off-my-lawn pessimism about music in general, and b) if that's true, how many of you found your way back to some degree?--some new band or album (or maybe even one you'd missed somewhere along the way) came out of nowhere and surprised you, you turned on the radio one day and was surprised to hear a bunch of stuff you liked, etc. My guess is that the first would be true of many (it happens to me every now and again), the second true of almost as many. I realize the '81 ballot caught Bangs at a moment of intense pessimism, but I still think that would have abated over time.

Is that true about the Stranded contributors? I know many stopped writing about music for a living, but didn't many just go on to other kinds of writing--e.g., Maslin, Tosches, Carson--or into teaching, like Winner? I bet music is still a pretty big part of all their lives, and wouldn't be surprised if they keep up reasonably well on their own time.

I get the usual exhaustion and cynicism around this time of year but the best way out of this slough, I've found, is more work. Reviewing 10 to 12 putative pop singles a week is great exercise.

about to turn 38 btw

I guess I believe there's a difference between the -- awkward trying to phrase this -- the objects, or artifacts, of music, and music as a totality (to employ a Meltzerism here, though I think I'm using it differently than he does). Or between "continuing to listen to and enjoy music" (which everyone to some degree does, including Meltzer) and living-breathing the stuff or viewing the world through that particular prism, etc. (which, granted, NO one does entirely; it just becomes less possible to do so as you reach a certain age, though Christgau probably comes closer than anyone). This division is hardly definitive (I'm not even sure where I would place myself, truth be told), but I think to some degree it does exist, and I still see Bangs as coming out on the side of person-who-can-never-entirely-let-go-of-it but nothing at all like person-who-still-organizes-his-life-around-it. He would've been caught up by various bands and records. I have a harder time believing he would've felt like he was really part of it in any significant way.

My point re: Stranded is that many of those contributors, for whatever reason(s), made a conscious decision in the late '70s or early '80s to no longer devote their lives to writing about music. I can't say why or what many of them have chosen to do instead. To me, that fact in and of itself still kind of ties in with what I'm saying about the "totality." Maybe?

Let me throw this out to anyone who's, say, 38 or older (33 + five extra years): a) how many of you reached a point where you felt like you weren't as enthusiastic about music as you used to be, or that you were losing touch with newer stuff, or that you'd lapsed into a kind of get-off-my-lawn pessimism about music in general, and b) if that's true, how many of you found your way back to some degree?--some new band or album (or maybe even one you'd missed somewhere along the way) came out of nowhere and surprised you, you turned on the radio one day and was surprised to hear a bunch of stuff you liked, etc.

I'm 40. I definitely reached a point quite a while ago where I felt completely alienated from chart pop (a category which, for me, encompasses R&B and the vast majority of hip-hop as well as Katy Perry, Carly Rae Jepsen, et al.). Not only did I not think it was "speaking to me," but I found what it was conveying to be actively offensive and pernicious. I felt like pop music was making people stupider, because I felt stupider when I listened to it. So I stopped paying attention to it; just cut it completely out of my life to the greatest extent possible. I don't listen to the radio, ever; I don't have cable so I don't watch MTV; I ignore reviews of hip-hop, R&B and pop albums; etc., etc. I started focusing on the stuff that still excited me - mostly metal, jazz, and old hard rock from the late '60s and early '70s. That stuff inspires me, so that's what I listen to, think about, and write about. That, and Japanese and Korean pop, which is musically fun and lyrically incomprehensible to me, so ignorable on that score.

Funny -- I'm the opposite. I've tried to like K-pop and apart from a few glorious moments it's come up short.

i still live and breathe music but not so much new music. i just don't seek it out as much. i don't have cable. i don't drive that much and that's usually where i'll hear new pop music. i'll check out stuff on youtube. but new cds and records are just too expensive to buy all the time and they don't really make singles anymore. so i end up buying old stuff. but i still live and breathe music.

but uh i don't write about music that much and i don't make a living doing it! so maybe i should shut up. i think about it all the time though.

In case anyone's wondering how Public Enemy gave way to Lester Bangs, you've got to scroll back about a hundred posts--there's an NPR intern in there somewhere, and it went from there.

What we need to resolve the Bangs question is for the dead Lester to interview...the dead Lester, like he did with Hendrix. I know what Levitt means about the all-consuming dividing line, but I just have to believe that Bangs was inevitably going to find his way back to the other side, although I'm not sure in what form. (He was in the process of setting out to write his first novel, right?) He was an obsessive--he seemed like such a different creature than Maslin and most of the other Stranded contributors. One development that seemed made-to-order for Bangs was file-sharing. He wrote that one thing once about wanting to own every record ever made--"catacombs" of them, I think he said. Depending upon how attached to the physical object he was--he did say he wanted to be surrounded by all these records, so maybe the digital equivalent was a non-starter--file-sharing would have been about the best chance he'd ever get.

I'm 50. Still cling to the old records, still hear a decent enough amount of new stuff that excites me to keep me semi-engaged. I try really hard to avoid concluding that the stupid pop music of today is any stupider than the stupid pop music I loved in 1972 or 1987. Not hearing too too much of it probably helps in that regard.

yeah i should say that my love for pop and rap and r&b and stuff like that on the radio hasn't diminished at all. i love lots of new stuff i've heard i just don't listen to it a LOT. whereas i will listen to hundreds and hundreds of old records (that i've never heard)every year.

i think writing about music every week or month for years though...yeah, i couldn't do it i don't think. not full-time. i would get burnt. i'm sure of it.

unless you are a he-man like charles nelson eddy.

that really should be his middle name...

my new neighbors' Wifi network is called Fear of a Black Planet

it takes a WPA2 password to hold us back

I don't write for a living, for better or worse. But an undeniable, welcome consequence of aging is I don't want to own every record or single ever produced; that appetite wanes every year. I'll still get jags though: on Thursday night I wanted to d/l every old Siouxsie album.

scott and clem, if you want to hear and write about new music without buying it I'd love to see you both contribute to the Singles Jukebox.

With few exceptions I have been behind the times my whole life on music, although digging backwards all the time I sometimes end up with a surprising affinity for the present. Mostly I'm out of it, and would make a befuddled, easily ridiculed current-music-reviewer.

Thanks, Alfred--Kogan mentioned the same about a year back. But, echoing Vic's post above, my out-of-touchness would be a problem. Even in my year-end ballot last year, I wrote something about some Canadian band being ninth-generation Beastie Boys that could only have been written by someone not paying close enough attention to realize they were in fact day-old LMFAO. Still love the song I was writing about, but six months later the botched comparison makes me roll my eyes.

Whenever I start thinking about this subject (not PE but current pop) I always end up asking myself the same question: how important is originality anymore?

on Seattle's KEXP tomorrow, streaming on KEXP.org, 12 hours of deconstructing Nation Of Millions: every song sampled, interviews with Chuck and Hank, commentary from Ish of Shabazz Palaces & Digable Planets, further commentary from Professor Daudi Abe.

Dave Segal at the Stranger:

Millions is a mind-boggling agglomeration of funk, rock, soul, old-school hiphop, impassioned passages from speeches (by Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, Khalid Abdul Muhammad), mantric vocal loops, and motherfuckin' Slayer on "She Watch Channel Zero." People who dismiss sampling as "cheating" or not "real music"—these types still exist in 2018—need to understand that what the Bomb Squad did here is just as artful as any other approach to music-making.

The arranging and rhythmic skills that went into Millions are impressively intricate, and the Bomb Squad's action-packed tapestries involve much more than just looping beats and letting them run unaltered throughout entire tracks. Rather, they created mosaics of crate-diggers' secret (and not-so-secret) weapons that blossomed into catalytic jams that doubled as party-starters and sociopolitical manifestos. The Bomb Squad—along with Chuck D and Flavor Flav's penetrating lyrics, of course—optimized these disparate atoms of sound/noise into careening vehicles of excitement. We shan't hear its like again—mainly because of the punitive legal consequences of such prolific sampling, but also due to diminishing ambitions.

David Schmader cogently summarized Millions in these pages back in 2006: "It was terrifying. Over what would become the band's signature audio hurricane—compressing the wildest exertions of free jazz into harsh layered beats to create the densest, most intense racket ever made in the name of pop music—Chuck D laid out his explicitly political call to revolutionary action, with a righteous fury that, to this white American, felt inevitable and historic."

(from 6am, Pacific time: https://www.kexp.org/publicenemy30/ )

PE's outrage feels more relevant than ever

otm, sadly

five hours in, seven to go, up to Caught, Can I Get A Witness