There was a sweet piece of merch for Spike Lee’s 1992 Malcolm X biopic: a black baseball cap with a bold serif letter X. Despite being white, living in one of St. Paul’s whiter neighborhoods (and that’s saying something), and knowing almost nothing about Malcolm X, I wanted one. I asked my mom if she thought it was a good idea. She suggested I do a little reading on Malcolm X first. Homework? Screw that. I just skipped it.

I also skipped Public Enemy—and, as I mentioned in my post on The Chronic, almost all 90s hip-hop. In the 21st century I’ve listened to a lot more rap, but never got around to really listening to P.E. until now. (It’s gone so well that we’re already on a nickname/abbreviation basis. Like Becky Lang, Chuck D now calls me “Gablechan.”)

Definitions of hip-hop’s “Golden Age” vary, but one school has it starting in the mid-80s and ending with The Chronic (1992)—after which hip-hop became increasingly split between a mainstream branch and an independent branch. Any definition of the Golden Age, though, counts Fear of a Black Planet (1990) as one of its crown jewels. Chuck D self-consciously set out to make not just a lot of great music, but a musically and thematically coherent album: a hip-hop Smile.

Unlike the Beach Boys, Public Enemy actually finished their masterpiece, with production team the Bomb Squad engineering a disc that, like Pet Sounds, is rich with detail and flourish but still jumps out of your speakers. “911 is a Joke,” “Welcome to the Terrordome,” and especially “Fight the Power” became such widely-played anthems that they even punctured my bougie little bubble.

I was also aware of the group’s off-stage drama, especially Professor Griff’s unseemly remarks. (“Jews are responsible for the majority of the wickedness in the world,” a comment that Griff was still ineffectively trying to explain in 2009, when he wrote that the statement was baseless since he couldn’t possibly know about all the wickedness in the world, thus he couldn’t know what proportion of it had been perpetrated by Jews.) Then there was the colorful Flavor Flav, whose giant clock was a brilliantly goofy conceit and who would go on to give the world endless delight with his second career as music’s least likely silver fox.

21 years later, I’ll bet Chuck D has something to say about the fact that the words “90s music” cause most people to immediately think “grunge.” Because really, how many great grunge records were there in the 90s? Nevermind, In Utero, and after that it’s a matter of taste. But look at all the great hip-hop albums in the 90s: Fear of a Black Planet, The Chronic, Doggystyle, Illmatic, Reasonable Doubt, All Eyez On Me, Ready to Die…and that’s not even touching the entire indie hip-hop eruption that included OutKast, A Tribe Called Quest, and others. Was the transformation and explosion of hip-hop not the most important thing to happen in popular music in the 90s?

Meanwhile, Fear of a Black Planet has been properly enshrined: it’s now on the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry, placing “Anti-Nigger Machine” in company with Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.” In the immortal words of John Cougar Mellencamp, ain’t that America?

– Jay Gabler

The 1990s Project is my attempt to give the decade’s music a fair shot at disproving my offhand assessment that the 90s were the armpit of modern musical history. The project started on my Tumblr, and has now moved to The Tangential. My goal is to visit, or revisit, 100 of the decade’s most acclaimed, popular, and/or interesting albums. Here are the albums I’ve written about so far.

1. Radiohead, OK Computer (1997)
2. My Bloody Valentine, Loveless (1991)
3. The Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin (1999)
4. Moonshake, Eva Luna (1992)
5. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991)
6. Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville (1993)
7. Erykah Badu, Baduizm (1997)
8. Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998)
9. Fugazi, Red Machine (1995)
10. Matthew Sweet, 100% Fun (1995)
11. Pavement, Slanted and Enchanted (1992)
12. The Bodyguard soundtrack (1992)
13. Marcy Playground, Marcy Playground (1997)
14. 10,000 Maniacs, Our Time in Eden (1992)
15. Shania Twain, Come On Over (1997)
16. Dr. Dre, The Chronic (1992)
17. #1 singles of 1990
18. DJ Shadow, Endtroducing….. (1996)
19. Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill (1995)
20. U2, Achtung Baby (1991)
21. #1 singles of 1991
22. Bonnie “Prince” Billy, I See a Darkness (1999)
23. The Lion King soundtrack (1994)