It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

33⅓ Main Series #71

by Christopher R. Weingarten

Christopher R. Weingarten provides a thrilling account of how the Bomb Squad produced such a singular-sounding record: engineering, sampling, scratching, constructing, deconstructing, reconstructing - even occasionally stomping on vinyl that sounded too clean. Using production techniques that have never been duplicated, the Bomb Squad plundered and reconfigured their own compositions to make frenetic splatter collages; they played samples by hand together in a room like a rock band to create a "not quite right" tension; they hand-picked their samples from only the ugliest squawks and sirens.

Weingarten treats the samples used on Nation Of Millions as molecules of a greater whole, slivers of music that retain their own secret histories and folk traditions. Can the essence of a hip-hop record be found in the motives, emotions and energies of the artists it samples? Is it likely that something an artist intended 20 years ago would re-emerge anew? This is a compelling and thoroughly researched investigation that tells the story of one of hip-hop's landmark albums.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Hip Hop, Pop Culture, Essays, American, Cultural

160 pages, Paperback

First published April 8, 2010

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

These 33-1/3 books absolutely serve one very, very useful purpose: no matter what, they make you want to listen to the source material. In this case, Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Which I listen to from time to time anyway.

It would be endlessly fascinating to hear how Chuck D and the Bomb Squad assembled this beautifully tuneless album and Weingarten gets us halfway there, pointing us at the techniques and clips that were used. But he gets caught up in his own cleverness, showing us how brilliant he is with twisted wordplay and knowledge of the Hip-Hop community he is writing of (although the ninety-nine footnotes tend to make one think that he just cribbed this knowledge from many pages written before. Hard to tell).

Oddly, a solid fifth of the book is about the history of James Brown's various bands. Ostensibly in pursuit of some explanation of how and why PE used so many samples from this source, it's completely unnecessary. I don't need to know how a seventeen year old Bootsy Collins joined Brown's band to know that the results would someday turn up on this record. I'd be more interested to know how the band found them. And, likely, that's not particularly interesting: they found it by going through record after record looking for these things. James Brown is a goldmine for sampling. I'm a middle-aged white guy and even I know that.

There is a snippet in the book (also copied on the back end) about how the band "occasionally stomped on vinyl that sounded too clean." Beside likely being apocryphal, it's not worth more than a millisecond of "huh" rather than the innovative thinking we're supposed to come away with. These guys were much, much more capable than sprinkling some dust on their records.

In the end, the overly "ambitious" (i.e., pretentious) writing sinks the book. For the most part it has the tone and appeal of an extended record review that might appear in Spin or Rolling Stone magazines. I'm starting to see this pattern emerge in all the books of this series: the authors struggle to find enough to say because, well, it's just a record album, no matter how "important" it is.

As I (think I) said about the Paul's Boutique entry in this series, if you're a fan of the album or the band, you'll enjoy this. It will refresh your interest and even set you on a treasure hunt for some of the records PE sampled so you can see what's going on. That's great stuff. But you'll not get much more.

[Ric · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite thing about this book was also somehow my least favorite thing. I loved the history of sampling and the outlines of how Public Enemy used it in their songs was awesome. But I somehow learned more during this book about James Brown and his rotating bands than Terminator X, which was a weird choice.

[a.h.s. boy · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first foray into the 33 1/3 series, and I can't imagine a better one. This is a phenomenal book about a phenomenal album, but more importantly, this is a book about the history of music sampling and the evolution of an entirely new genre of music.

With page after page of detailed foundational information, and fascinating parallels drawn between significant moments in Black history (civil rights, the deaths of Malcolm X and MLK, James Brown and the rise of funk) and the evolution of Public Enemy, Weingarten offers up an education, not fanboy admiration.

The details matter, and Weingarten highlights them all. A dozen pages on the "Funky Drummer" beat might seem like minutia, but I found myself hanging on every word, and realizing that the indescribable appreciation I have for the sound of It Takes a Nation of Millions is the result of precisely that level of attention to detail. The sonic tsunami that is this 2nd PE album has a history as well as a trajectory, and it's a captivating one.

Part of the fun for me was going back and listening to some of the precursor music mentioned in the book. For example, Eric B and Rakim's "I know you got soul," which is described as making Chuck D "pissed...because I knew we didn't have anything to go against that." Hearing that track now, in 2012, you can't imagine how it could have made PE nervous, with its bare bones simplicity and its schoolkiid rapping.

Highly recommended for any music fan, and doubly so for rap aficionados!

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another strong entry in the 33 1/3 series. Weingarten peels the lid back on the dense production of one of hip-hops seminal records.

A lot of 33 1/3 books tend to get marred down with too much personal biography; either of the author or of the band itself. This book wisely focuses in, with laser-like intensity, on the biography of the noises and sounds on 'nation of millions...' itself, tracing back the lineage of the album's samples to their origins with James Brown's backing players, parliament-funkadelic, Isaac Hayes, etc.

Weingarten brilliantly shows how hip-hop, far from being some weird urban aberration, lovingly followed and literally borrowed, chopped, and re-arranged from the linage of soul and funk as it developed. This book doesn't just offer a wonderful examination of one of hip-hops crown jewels; it shows the sonic genealogy of hip-hop itself.

[FittenTrim · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a writing exercise, I will try to write my review as poorly as the author of this book because convoluted, as it may be, and history has a way of being confusing, which James Brown's drummer might know, but the Bomb Squad tried to use a different mix, but RFK was killed in the 60s, which history will affect... Ugh, I can't do it anymore. The writer doesn't interview any band members, provides barely any insight into the album. Rather, he focuses on the music which PE sampled. And even then, he screws it up.

Ignore this book, just buy the incredible album.

Grade: D

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This 33 1/3 is a perfect unifying metaphor for one of the greatest sampling records in hip hop history, as it takes a magnifying glass to much of the source material and deeply
explores the musicians and events that made those original records such an integral part of the highly political and conscious Nation of Millions. The J.B.'s, Funkadelic, the Wattstax soundtrack, many of the most influential early records in hip hop: these sonic ingredients are examined and fleshed out as fundamental elements of the same sociopolitical mission of black liberation and empowerment that is enmeshed through all of Nation.

The message of social justice and power is definitely at the core not only of this new masterpiece of recontectualization, but in the lives and work of those who inspired it (and in the case of Wattstax, the moment in time in which the festival pulled together everyone from Isaac Hayes to Rufus Thomas to Jesse Jackson as leaders for positive, nonviolent change in the LA black community in a time of great turmoil.)

There's a reason this record (and its sequel, Fear of a Black Planet) resonated with so many of us punks and metalheads in the 80s and 90s. It had the raw energy and density of so much of our favorite rock records, and all the political fury as well. It was angry, ferocious, and so layered that we knew it would never feel dated or tired. The lifeblood of African-American struggle, pain, and victory pulses through every breath and rhyme, mainly because it flowed through the work of so many of the artists who were sampled. This authenticity couldn't be denied, and we realized that instantly on hearing these tunes. It really is a powerful record.

This is one of the deepest dives I've read yet in this series, and the concept could certainly be extended into an even longer book. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to really dig down into this album and its place in black history.

[Phil Overeem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely one of the most solid and informative 33 1/3 series tomes I've read.

A close focus on the construction, contents, and influences of the recording. Stylistically, a bit too glib at times, and -- as is usual for these -- silly errors occasionally distract. But overall Weingarten delivers the kind of 33 1/3 most readers want and few get.

[Erik Carl son · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books in the 33 1/3 series!
Weingarten breaks down the cultural tapestry of Hip Hop’s boldest and greatest album.

[Are Kjeldsberg Skauby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heftig

[Patrik Hamberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Det finns få skivor som påverkat mitt musiklyssnande lika djupt som Public Enemys ”It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back”. Många dagar är den världens bästa skiva.

Det här är första gången jag läser en av böckerna i serien 33 1/3. Märkligt. Det borde så klart ha skett för längesen.

Boken är, precis som skivan den avhandlar, en ganska spretig resa genom musikhistorien med Nation som utgångspunkt och slutstation. Weingarten skriver lika mycket om byggstenarna bakom det här samplingarnas magnum opus som om låtarna på albumet. Det är nånstans nödvändigt och rimligt, men ibland trillar texten ner i historiska hål som grävs aningen djupt.

Texten hittar ändå alltid tillbaka till huvudnumret och det är ändå huvudsaken. Och jag ska erkänna att boken får mig att överväga att bygga en helt ny avdelning i skivsamlingen tillägnad Nation. Undrar med vilken skiva jag ska börja?

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

While other books in the 33 /13 series strive to show how an album defined its artist, Public Enemies' It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back works, instead, to show how an album can define its time. In fact, much of the book reads more like a history book rather than a music book; by explaining the history of the Civil Rights movement, the author is able to define how radical (in the original sense) this record was when it dropped.

In particular, careful attention is given to the samples Chuck D and The Bomb Squad used in making the record. Each break, each sound loop, is given its turn in the history hot seat. We are told where the sample came from, the context surrounding its original recording, and possible reasons why it was chosen for use on the Public Enemy record.

This last reason is the sole moment of doubt, for me, in an otherwise fascinating look at an album that I had always understood was important, without really understanding why. Of all the dozens of samples described and laid out, at no time is the possibility that that sample was chosen just because it sounded good given much, if any, thought. Instead, each sample is linked to Isaac Hayes and James Brown and P-Funk and every other band or artist of significance from the best days of the Stax era and treated as though it was chosen as much for its relevance to history as it was for its funky break or perfect encapsulation of a theme.

And while there are certainly momentous and incredible samples all over the record, I remain unconvinced that they were all, each and every one, chosen because of their deep significance to funk and soul music. Some of them just sounded good.

Even that criticism, though, is slight. The book does a textbook's work of explaining the significance, both musically and socially of the work in question without ever devolving into abstraction or self-importance. As an examination of the recording process, and of the lifestyle around the group as they recorded, this is a light volume. As an examination of the art of the sample, and how it was brought into the mainstream by a group of young black men as interested in their roots as they were in their future, this book is a detailed syllabus that encourages the reader to seek further, to find the samples in their original recordings and to take another listen and put it all in context.

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in the 1980s I was trying to be all punk rock years after punk rock had passed on. My friends and I were wedded to a reactionary vision of music that had lost relevance and was in the process of spreading to the suburban malls where it belonged, though that was still a number of years in the future in the mid-to-late 1980s. But the blinders I wore let in some light, such as hearing Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five or “Planet Rock” after hours on the disco radio stations. I liked it. But nothing could have prepared me for Public Enemy’s sophomore effort, “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.” It was the punk rock I looked for in the past staring at me in the present. Christopher R. Weingarten pulls together the sampled bits of music and history that cumulated in this era-defining recording. And I loved every minute of the trip back to the future.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this 33 1/3 and it certainly did NOT let me down! This book did what I always hope these 33 1/3 books will do- it made one of my very favorite albums ever sound new and exciting again. I can't believe all of the samples I didn't recognize! And the little stories about the samples... my favorite image from the book is Flav recording P.E. on the radio and grabbing "I guarantee you- no more music by these suckers" from the DJ. Oh! And Chuck creating the logo from an E.Love pic. That's neat too. And one more fun fact- did you know Terminator X is an ostrich farmer? For real.
This whole book is chock full of awesome and, for that matter, so is this album (duh) so if you don't have both, now you know.

[Doug Merlino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weingarten does a great job tracing the samples PE used on this classic album to sources such as James Brown, P-Funk, Isaac Hayes, and the 1972 Wattstax concert. In the process he shows how the group built on and fed off the energy of those predecessors, updating their sound for the Reagan era and the age of samplers. Weingarten also contextualizes PE within the NY hip-hop scene and shows how contemporaries such as Run DMC influenced and played a role in the making of this album. I would have liked a little more of the same sort of research into Chuck D's lyrics, which also grew out of the Black Power era, but overall this gave me a newfound understanding of this album and its sonic roots.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only three stars because it's spends so much time on people who *aren't* Public Enemy. I understand why they want to get into James Brown, George Clinton, and all the other sources of samples used by P.E., but in the end I learned more about Jesse Jackson and Isaac Hayes than I did about Flavor Flav and Terminator X. It did help me re-discover the album with new ears, though.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

the bigger a music nerd you are, the more you will like this.

[Sheehan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long form investigation of the origins and legacy of the Public Enemy album, It Takes a Nation...

I really liked the use of sampling as a motif and narrative tool for the whole book, the album is discussed among it's antecedents and in the context of the era in which is broke loose on the hip-hop community. If you already have read/lived a fair amount of the era, the historical survey parts feel a bit slow, but the author does a fine job dropping in why those moments in time were relevant to the give and take dialogue this albums production was having with the past and the hip-hop community. Likewise, the book covers the legacy the album has had on other musicians and the whole tenor of rhetoric that pivoted from partying to political at least in part on the shoulders of this album and others of the period.

Goes without saying, if you love P.E. you will enjoy this book, if your a teenager in high school listening to gucci gang or some such nonsense, you might be well served to read through this brief history of when hip hop was saying something, and find that it's all still relevant and refreshing.

"P.E. in full effect...BRUHTHAaaaa!!!!!!!"

[Spiros · Rating 4 out of 5]

YEAH BOYEE!!!

Somehow over the decades I have merged this amazing seminal album into the brilliance that was PE's first four albums, and had forgotten the sheer strength and power that was manifest on every track of this manifesto.

Unlike many of the commenters here, I very much enjoyed the impressionistic take employed by the author. This is the seventh or eighth title I've read in the 33 1/3 series, and I'm glad that there is no template for how each author approaches their subject.

I love this passage, describing the methodology of the Bomb Squad member Keith Shocklee:

"It was Keith's job to listen to those [wack "post-disco disco" records] and seperate the party-starting wheat from the floor-clearing chaff. They would catalog the albums using a Dewey Decimal-style system that Chuck invented, including labels by artist, title, label, beats per minute and crowd reaction." This so reminded me of the movie "Party Girl", where Parker Posey's character Mary refiles Leo's discs using her version of the Dewey Decimal System (Leo adds the beats per minute catgory, after he stops freaking out).

[A. Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book on Public Enemy’s 1988 breakout album It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back. Special attention is given to the samples used on the album, and more specifically, the original contexts the samples came from. So by reading about It Takes A Nation, we also read about the different bands of James Brown, Parliament-Funkadelic, and Stax. I end up wanting to listen to the sampled material just as much as I want to listen to Public Enemy.

[Jason Kohls · Rating 5 out of 5]

The “33 1/3” series has become one of my favorites. As with the others, “It Takes a Nation of Millions….” goes far beyond a biography or discography of the group’s work. It is a study into the history of sampling, the society and its issues and milestones not only of PE’s time but the times of the artists that influenced them, the historical impacts of music from a variety of genres, and so much more. I learn from these books and want to listen to the albums again to apply that learning.

[Ron Maskell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weingarten is always a good read especially when it comes to PE. He offers some great insight and great nuggets of information for the casual and hardcore fan. In terms of other 33 1/3 books that I have read it is somewhere near the top. The author certainly accomplishes what he set out to do and offers a great outlook on a great album.

[Karen Gee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read a couple from this series, and this might be my favourite - maybe because it's my favourite album. However, the A Tribe Called Quest one isn't very good, so the series is inconsistently written. This has great facts, lots of good context, and the size makes it a good read for commuting. Highly recommended!

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful "deep dive" into a stand out from the golden age of hip-hop. Most chapters played like a history textbook & less like narrow, angled nostalgia (of which i feel like some of the titles in this series are guilty). I also enjoyed the passages that spoke to the "why" behind so many studio decisions.

[Norb Aikin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A top-shelf look at one of the greatest sonic experiences ever committed to wax, cassette, and cd. The inside look at how sampling evolved in this time period is a must for any hip-hop head. The Bomb Squad will go down in history as one of the best production teams in all of history as far as the record industry is concerned.

[Neal Obermeyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I felt like this book was written for me. I love Public Enemy but the albums that weren’t produced by the Bomb Squad lack the same magic that Millions and Fear do. This book focuses specifically on the genesis of the Bomb Squad’s sound and the influences and ingredients behind it.

[Gary Fowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Hip Hop’s landmark LPs receives the thorough going over it so richly deserves. As well as giving the story behind the LP and Public Enemy, we get a brief history of James Brown, Funkadelic, Def Jam and a whole lot more.
No sample is left behind.
A great read.

[Brenton Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was everything I wanted.

I saw Chuck D interviewed a few months ago and that guy has an encyclopedic knowledge of hip hop and soul / r’n’b / funk records. And this book highlighted all the significance of the records that the Bomb Squad used to create It Takes A Nation. Amazing.

[Benedict Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great for getting into the samples.
Not so much for getting a view of Public Enemy. In fact it seems that reading a few interviews with Chuck and some previous Public Enemy books is the only work done on how the team put the album together.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting. Great voice. Clearly someone who lives hip hop culture.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Typical of the genre. Adequate and well edited with a minimum of the repetition which often plagues the genre.