10. Public EnemyFear Of A Black Planet

Sometimes people are surprised that I have a passion for this kind of rap music, made at a time before a lot of samples had to be cleared. There’s this huge sound on Fear Of A Black Planet and also It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, and there’s so much stuff going on on those albums that kind of pushes up the anger, in a certain sense, in me. I really think of those albums in a rock kind of way, because they’re really aggressive, sonically. So much of hip hop now is kind of like grooves an’ all, but this was really over the top as far as the production goes. And I really love The Bomb Squad’s production. Obviously Chuck D is an amazing vocalist and Flavor Flav, he has a thing that I really love, but the production on the album is really incredible. 

And anyway, Spike Lee came to them and wanted a theme song for Do The Right Thing and so they came up with ‘Fight The Power’, and it’s a part of this album and it’s another one of those opening statements. Rosie Perez is shadow boxing on the streets of Brooklyn, but it’s this really stylised visual presentation of Brooklyn, all the while with ‘Fight The Power’ going on. It’s one of the best musical moments in any film, as far as I’m concerned.