Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
I was hugely into hip-hop as a teenager, mainly because of the lyrics. I loved writing as a child, but I’d never thought of myself as someone who loved language, or could see where language could take me specifically in terms of only having a three-minute moment to write something in. Hip-hop was eye-opening to me in that respect: I loved the beats, but what I loved more was the playfulness of the lyricism. And although hip-hop nowadays is sometimes sullied by that crass commercialism, at that time, it inhabited the same sphere as punk because it was socio-political. It’s a call to arms: it’s about where black people from America were, how they got there, and how they’re going to get out of it. It’s about educating yourself: it’s not the black man’s legacy, it’s your legacy, and you should be interacting with this information and making life better and doing something about it. I do feel like those messages have been lost, and it would be amazing if someone could reclaim that, even if I don’t think it’s me. The sound of the record is so militant, too. The beats are so fierce, and there’s so many samples coming at you so fast, that it’s really invigorating. When I first heard it – aged 15 or 16 – I was in an angry place: stuff had happened to me as a child and I’d been uprooted from my family and put into care, basically. So I was trying to be good and not be put into a kid’s home, but on the other hand, I had this overlying sense of anger that I’ve only come to terms with in the last four years.