7. Public EnemyIt Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back
When I got into this record I was just out of high school. I just got a four track when this record came out. I was just starting to get into that world of production. These noises that they’re using is totally new territory. They’re looping these horn bits that are almost abrasive and startling noises and making songs out of them and making really powerful, lyrically and musically, songs out of them. The thing that really got me about this record was that it was a whole new way of looking at race relations in America. I grew up in a small town in Texas. There was a big parking lot in our high school and a third of it was separated by a median and on the smaller third was where most of the black people parked that went to my school. It’s not that it was forbidden but a lot of black people parked in that third and it was referred to as Africa. I never thought twice about what that meant or what that was implying or any kind of feelings that might be involved with that. That was just what you said. I think because of this record I started reading the autobiography of Malcolm X and it was just mind expanding for sure. I never looked at that kind of stuff the same way.
