Talk:Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black

Los Angeles Times review
Transciption using Google News Advanced News Archive Search. Los Angeles Times (Hochman, Steve. 64. September 29, 1991) review of Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black (1991):

"Like Guns N' Roses' new "Use Your Illusion" albums, nothing is held back. Maturity has to fight against petulance, but it's a fight that's part of a growth process, and one that has always made for good art. "Apocalypse" may not be the breakthrough of 1987's "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back," but it is another big step by what was already the leader of the rap pack. Rating: * * * 1/2 Byline: STEVE HOCHMAN

"The future holds nothing but confrontation," intones a Darth Vader voice to kick off the Enemy's fourth album. Chuck D. better hope so. Without confrontation there's no PE, the always-controversial standard-bearers of political rap. Chuck and his colleagues are certainly doing their part: Every track here is filled with angry accusations, dares and challenges, no less sweeping for coming from a narrow point of view.

So what's new? Maturity, for one thing. Yes, the message of black pride, as always, is delivered as bombastic rhetoric. Every personal affront is turned into a racial issue (notably Flavor Flav's "Letter to the NY Post," a bilious, self-serving response to that tabloid's coverage of his arrest for allegedly hitting his girlfriend).

But it's also, more than ever, complex and provocative in a positive way. On "One Million Bottlebags" [Chuck D] chews out malt liquor companies for targeting their high-alcohol beverage to the ghetto, but he even more forcefully chews out the homeboys for drinking it. On "Shut 'em Down," he criticizes outside businesses for exploiting the black community, while challenging blacks to start businesses of their own.

Perhaps the most telling line of attack comes in a between-track bit in which someone portraying a drawling Klansman thanks the black community for killing itself through gang violence and drugs, thereby saving him and his pals the trouble. With a sharper focus and clearer perspective than the group has ever demonstrated, the album's actually more relevant and accessible to blacks and non-blacks alike.

The same goes for its sonic achievements. The sound collages put together by the peerless Terminator X, working with the production team here called the Imperial Grand Ministers of Funk, are hip-hop at its most primal-and most sophisticated. The jeep-beat-heavy style is cruder and rarely as dense as such past tours de force as "Fight the Power" and "Bring the Noise" (the latter reprised here in its new version done with hard-rockers Anthrax), but it's perhaps even more compelling and complex.

The crowing achievement: "By the Time I Get to Arizona" (Chuck D.'s indictment of the state for not having a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday), with its middle section in which they use angry/anguished crowd noises to create one of the scariest sounding passages ever put on record."

- Steve Hochman

Dan56 (talk) 08:21, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

The Washington Post review
Transciption using Google News Advanced News Archive Search. The Washington Post (Mills, David. g.01. September 29, 1991) review of Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black (1991):

"Today it seems clear that one rap group, above all others, has so influenced the African American youth culture that its music is bound to be collected and discussed for decades to come, long after N.W.A. and the 2 Live Crew have been forgotten like graffiti on a men's room wall.

That group, of course, is Public Enemy - sonic frontiersmen, political pathfinders and marketing masterminds. You wanna talk iconic? The pre-pubescent hero of "Terminator 2," destined to grow up to lead all of mankind, wears a PE T-shirt throughout the entire movie. And he's white!

Virtually single-handedly, Public Enemy has set the parameters of "cultural correctness" in black pop. And as several new hip-hop albums demonstrate, aggressive Afro-centrism remains the order of the day.

Public Enemy: `Apocalypse '91: The Enemy Strikes Black'

PE's "Bomb Squad" production team scales back its famous chaotic noise assault in favor of fatter, funkier grooves for "Apocalypse '91: The Enemy Strikes Black," the group's fourth album (Def Jam/Columbia). Still hard as a pile driver, the soundscape here is roomier than we've come to expect. Lyrically and thematically, however, Public Enemy keeps it densely packed as always: the slave trade, black-on-black crime, police racism, the editorial peculiarities of the New York Post, the corporate responsibilities of Nike, Arizona's rejection of the Martin Luther King holiday. In "One Million Bottle Bags," [Chuck D] rails against malt liquor consumption among black males - PE's most surprising but relevant target of indignation since "911 Is a Joke" ripped emergency health care services. "Apocalypse '91" demands to be heard and heeded.

While Chuck D has never been a very graceful poet, his larynx is a virtual air raid siren. "Kicked the lyric about the tricks of the trade and the money made. Who got the money? Betcha bottom dollar bill gonna find some rich old bloodline, but the blood is in the mud." That's Chuck going at it in "Move." It's a strange testimony to his gifts as a conceptualist and front man that Chuck has managed, for five years now, to deliver every rap in the same pitch - always that turbulent rush of words, with nary a punctuation mark - yet never grow tiresome. Alas, the same can't be said of his sidekick Flavor Flav, who owns perhaps the most distinctive (and most sampled) voice in hip-hop, but whose lyrical antics aren't as cute as they used to be. In "A Letter to the NY Post," Flav acknowledges his well-publicized arrest for striking his girlfriend, then veers inexplicably into a salute to James Cagney and a homophobic epithet. Flav is more compelling on the serious-minded "I Don't Wanna Be Called Yo Niga," a stark rebuke of gangsters and drug dealers ("Don't consider me your brother no more").

PE still has a knack for the catchy, rebellious anthem. In the tradition of "Don't Believe the Hype" and "Fight the Power," Chuck D has unleashed the extraordinary single "Can't Truss It," taking us into the hold of a slave ship in unflinching detail while the hypnotic funk shames us with the desire to move. Before it's over, he declares, "When it comes to Armageddon, I'm gettin' mine." As for the video, which depicts white slaveholders lynching a man and raping a woman, well, you can just imagine MTV executives choking on their coffee. This one may be too heavy even for cable. Trying to unite rap and heavy-metal fans under one fist-raising anthem, Public Enemy has remade "Bring the Noise" with the thrash band Anthrax. It's a noble idea, but the musical styles clash rather than mesh, making this the album's least exciting track. (PE and Anthrax, on tour together, will perform at the Citadel Center Tuesday night.) Public Enemy has survived internal and external crises over the past two years. But it's like the old saying: Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

- David Mills

Dan56 (talk) 08:21, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

10/1 date confirmed by group
Public Enemy confirmed on facebook that the release date is 10/1/91. 2600:1702:23B0:B3F0:E4B2:C9DB:6D31:98B1 (talk) 03:14, 2 October 2021 (UTC)