public enemy black steel in the hour of chaos

Public enemy black steel in the hour of chaos plus#

Sleepin' on the job, my plan is on go-ahead I'm on a tier where no tears should ever fallĬell block and locked, I never clock it y'all I got gusto, but only some I can trust, yo The reasons are several, most of them federal You have to realize, what its a form of slavery The same motherfucker got us livin' is his hell Tellin' you what happened the same time they're throwin'Ĥ of us packed in a cell like slaves, oh well I got a raw deal, so I'm goin' for the steelĭon't you know, they got me rottin' in the time that I'm servin' They could not understand that I'm a Black man To criticize me some crime, never the less Public enemy servin' time, they drew the line y'all

I gotta get out, but that thought was thought beforeīut a brother like me begun, to be another one It occurred to me, the suckers had authority I wasn't wit' it, but just that very minute To paraphrase the singer, hip-hop is the CNN of the street.They wanted me for their army or whatever was often seen as a talking head on news commentary programs in the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. does his best on 'Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos' to explain the consequences of marginalizing people of the inner city and the spiraling chaos of poor social conditions, as if he were already aware that the largest segment of Public Enemy's audience would be middle-class white suburban kids and, hopefully, their parents: 'But I'll give 'em a chance, 'cause I'm civilized/As for the rest of the world, they can't realize/A cell is hell - I'm a rebel so I rebel/Between bars, got me thinkin' like an animal.' In its own way, the song fits in the long tradition of jailhouse laments - songs from the perspective of the prisoner who tries to explain himself - like Hank Williams' '(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle.' It is no coincidence that Chuck D. As such, a disenfranchised person with 'nothing to lose' will logically turn to violence for survival: 'Decency was deserved.' Public Enemy takes in a multitude of literate and political influences - from Nation of Islam teachings to Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets to Eldridge Cleaver - combining them with musical sources ranging from hip-hop back to soul, R&B, and classic rock, adding sound effects that enhance the tension and audibly illustrate the chaos, and eloquently digesting it all into a stirring anthem and statement of position. view is that, since the narrator is African-American, he is treated as a second-class citizen, or no citizen at all: a member of a different nation altogether or even a 'slave,' and thus alienated from mainstream society. Taking to task the draft, the correctional system, and the country's treatment of African-American people in general, his message is fairly clear: If one takes a stand against the law for political reasons, like Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), he should be considered a political prisoner.

Public enemy black steel in the hour of chaos plus#

His rhymes skip and turn on a dime, with alliteration, wordplay, internal rhyme schemes, and meters that carry over into other lines: 'Some do a bid from one to ten/And I never did, and plus I never been/I'm on a tier where no tears should ever fall/Cell block and locked - I never clock it y'all/'Cause time and time again time/They got me servin' to those and to them/I'm not a citizen.' directly likens such imprisonment to slavery. raps, in a bellowing voice, an angry recounting of the narrator's refusal on principle of the armed forces' draft and subsequent imprisonment and prison break: 'I got a letter from the government/The other day/I opened and read it/It said they were suckers/They wanted me for their army or whatever/Picture me givin' a damn - I said never/Here is a land that never gave a damn/About a brother like me and myself.' Chuck D. There is no better example of the record's accomplishments than 'Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos.' Riding an insistent sample of a snippet of Isaac Hayes' funk-soul opus 'Hyperbolicsyllabicsequedalymistic,' Public Enemy's frontman Chuck D. There is no overstating the impact of Public Enemy's 1988 recording, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back musically and lyrically, it took not only hip-hop, but rock & roll and pop music in general into brand new territory.