The title track of AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted may use more samples, and I may have a special place in my head and heart for the bridge breakdowns in “The Nigga Ya Love to Hate.” But this second single crystallizes how Public Enemy’s sonic touchstones of the day-filtered samples, storytelling soundcraft, even Chuck D with some guest bars-helped to tell an album’s worth of Ice Cube’s L.A. Cube instead bought one-way tickets to the Shocklees’ New York doorstep for himself and his producer Sir Jinx. Dre was ready, willing, and able to produce Ice Cube’s solo debut, but the atmosphere around Cube’s exit from NWA was so toxic that both parties thought better of it. Ice Cube – “Endangered Species (Tales from the Darkside)”ĭr. & Rakim, rapping over noodling bass lines and dialogue constructed from up to four different vocal sources. Their debut The Cactus Album was largely produced by Sam Sever (Big Audio Dynamite), but this song was The Bomb Squad’s best-known contribution on the album. 3rd Bass stepped into the void left at the Def Jam label when the Beasties headed west for Capitol Records, and both the Squad and Public Enemy gave Pete Nice and MC Serch visible and moral support. Between the wall of sound and the Boldins’ solid mic skills, this song is The 7A3’s career Billboard peak.Īs they refused to be limited to just an East Coast entity, The Bomb Squad also refuted the notion that rap was exclusively successful for black artists. The title track, however, found The Bomb Squad’s sampledelica opening the album with a frenzy that the rest of the set never quite matched. Brooklyn brothers Brett and Sean Boldin and Queens-born DJ Muggs (who would later join Cypress Hill) switched coasts to work on their debut LP Coolin’ in Cali, with most of the production duties handled by a pre-Ruffhouse Records Joe Nicolo. The Beastie Boys were not the only New York rap group to relocate to Los Angeles to record in 19. This love song to the Oldsmobile 98 (“the ultimate homeboy car”) is boastful scene-setting with hints of racial politics, told over an insistent soundtrack of Terminator X scratches, an endlessly looped sample of wobbly guitar, and bass from Bomb Squad associate and album producer Bill Stephney. In hindsight, the opening song and second single from PE’s debut album is a warning to all about what’s to come over the next few years. It would be easy to put “Bring the Noise” or “Welcome to the Terrordome” or another big hit from one of Public Enemy’s contributions to rap-album canon here in this list, but you have no game if you have no square one. Here are 10 essential productions that trace the path they forged. The major players continue in the industry to this day, but The Bomb Squad’s orchestrations-let alone their credit lines-are something we’re unlikely to encounter again. Passing years also made the kind of sample-based production they pioneered an increasingly expensive and litigious proposition. Gary “G-Wiz” Rinaldo joined them as Public Enemy’s career was already plateauing, so they took on work in genres from R&B to rock out of necessity. The Bomb Squad’s impact belies the fact that their own lifespan was achingly brief. Even early ‘90s rock, especially industrial music, started to mimic The Bomb Squad’s style of funk assemblage you can really hear it in work by the likes of Consolidated and MC 900 Ft. Then came Eric “Vietnam” Sadler, who joined them as their tech guru.īefore producers became not-so-secret weapons, before artists like Kanye West became as much of a “get” off the mic as on it, The Bomb Squad helped craft the PE sound and then remixed or guest-spotted other musicians to give them a lift with inherent talent and name recognition. They hooked up with aspiring MC Carl Ridenhour at Adelphi University, who would call himself Chuck D onstage with Public Enemy but used the alias Carl Ryder when in the studio helping to select and arrange their powerful noises. The Boxley brothers of New York took up the names Hank and Keith Shocklee as they got involved with the rap party scene of 1980s Long Island. The thing we sometimes forget about that album and its launch of PE into hip-hop’s stratosphere is that behind the performers on the album cover-Chuck D, Flavor Flav, DJ Terminator X, even quasi-hypeman Professor Griff-stood The Bomb Squad, arguably one of the first studio production crews to get marquee status. We’ve spent a significant amount of time this year looking back at the state of rap of 30 years ago, both from a 30,000-foot view of 1988’s greatest releases and by putting under the microscope an LP that brought together music and politics like none before that year and few since, Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.
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