Fear of a Black Planet [Explicit Lyrics]

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential recording
PE's third album is dense, heavy, and urgent as a bullet. Fear of a Black Planet single-handedly added half a dozen phrases to the language, and not just from Chuck D.'s troop-rallying bellow--Flavor Flav's "911 Is a Joke" is as catchy an indictment of urban policy as anyone has ever come up with. The Bomb Squad's music is complicated, challenging, terse, and totally funky, and Chuck matches it with one impassioned pronouncement after another: on Hollywood's racism, on miscegenation, on "real history / Not his story." The album ends with "Fight the Power," the group's ultimate statement of purpose, from its pounding, atonal sound collage to its furious politics. Put Black Planet on, and it's always a long, hot summer. --Douglas Wolk

Fear of a Black Planet,Public Enemy,Def Jam,Pop,Rap,Rap & Hip-Hop

Fear of a Black Planet [Explicit Lyrics]

Tracks:

Contract On The World Love Jam (Instrumental
Brothers Gonna Work It Out
911 Is A Joke
Incident At 66.6 FM (instrumental)
Welcome To The Terrordome
Meet The G That Killed Me
Pollywanacraka
Anti-Nigger Machine
Burn Hollywood Burn
Power To The People
Who Stole The Soul
Fear Of A Black Planet
Revolutionary Generation
Can't Do Nuttin' For Ya Man
Reggie Jax
Leave This Off Your Fu*kin Charts (Instrumental)
B Side Wins Again
War At 33 1/3
Final Count Of The Collision Between Us And The Damned (Instrumental)
Fight The Power

Amazon.com essential recording

PE's third album is dense, heavy, and urgent as a bullet. Fear of a Black Planet single-handedly added half a dozen phrases to the language, and not just from Chuck D.'s troop-rallying bellow--Flavor Flav's "911 Is a Joke" is as catchy an indictment of urban policy as anyone has ever come up with. The Bomb Squad's music is complicated, challenging, terse, and totally funky, and Chuck matches it with one impassioned pronouncement after another: on Hollywood's racism, on miscegenation, on "real history / Not his story." The album ends with "Fight the Power," the group's ultimate statement of purpose, from its pounding, atonal sound collage to its furious politics. Put Black Planet on, and it's always a long, hot summer. --Douglas Wolk

Customer Reviews:

Rap heaven.......2007-05-04

Fear of a Black Planet transcends what we know as rap and goes down as just a great piece of work in any genre. This is an album that combines all the elements: vision, cohesion, originality, scope, ambition, confidence, substance, and relevance. From the sound bites of the opening track right on down to the call to arms of "Fight the Power", this masterpiece is breathtakingly on the mark. These songs deal with a wide range of subjects such as hope ("Brothers Gonna Work It Out"), interracial dating ("Pollywannacraka"), the bigotry of showbiz ("Burn Hollywood Burn"), and everything in between to create an album of sheer power. Even the throwaways like "B-Side Wins Again" and "Reggie Jax" keep the listener interested. Fear of a Black Planet is just a massive onslaught of song-tumbling-into-song that grabs your ears and refuses to let go. Chuck D has always been a master of the 5-minute rap song and on here, he delivers maybe his best ever on "Welcome to the Terrordome", Chuck D spilling his guts about everything that pisses him off at a schizophrenic pace about the dangers of propaganda. It is truly a magnificent and moving piece of personal songwriting. All in all, Fear of a Black Planet is right up there with Blur's The Great Escape, Radiohead's OK Computer, and Massive Attack's Mezzanine for best album of the 90's. A+

A Great Album, but..........2007-04-05

...Not PEs best. Without a doubt a classic, but not better than Nation of Millions, BRtS, or Apocalypse 91. 'Fear' lacked the cohesion of these others with a few missteps like: Can't Do Nuttin' For Ya Man, Reggie Jax, and 4(!) instrumentals.

And, not the fault of PE, or the song, which was good when it came out, but Fight the Power was so over played I can no longer listen to it.

Another hip hop masterpiece!!!!!.......2006-03-12

PE is another hip hop music icon that'll be talked about in 100 years as pioneering the heart and soul of America's truest art form of self-expression, joy, pain, heartache and real world problems and solutions.

You don't know hip hop and you definitely know hip hop music at its highest, purest form if you don't own, know of or even heard this album.

It's overwhelming Afrocentric (par for the course circa popular hip hop 1989-mid 1990).

For all listeners, you'll definitely get a strong sense that PE has something to say about Black Empowerment and challenging the status quo.

For white listeners, please don't be scared off by this album's Pro Black sentiments.

PE's Pro-Black messages are NOT anti-white ... PE's very much about self-help.

I can remember seeing tape of a documentary back in 1993 of a PE concert they performed waaayyy out in the boonies, somewhere in Middle America where minorities are an entity the local yocals probably only saw on TV.

Point is, they talked to several members of the overwhelmingly white, big hair, mullet-sporting crowd and to my surprise and delight, the crowd "got it."

They spoke with respect and admiration of PE and explained themselves how they thought it wasn't offensive and that PE was just promoting Black empowerment and for more people to get education, question society's way and know their history.

Powerful stuff (both this album and that documentary).

Still revolutionary!.......2006-02-16

"Fear Of A Black Planet" - The title alone is worth the money.Such a great undertaking in making this album and you here it from the first cut.So much texture from the interludes to songs, practically seemless.Mostly remembered for "Fight The Power" but at so many points of this album Chuck D drops an entire history course ear whooping without the listener realizing it.He had the fury of a poet, the urgency of a street reporter and the wisdom of a teacher.Its like listening to a rebel harnessing all of his frustration and anger into some sense and direction.Flavor Flav keeping pace with his yeaah boyeees gave the songs an audience almost without getting in the way.Hank Shocklee and Co. did a masterful job with the production and arangment of the loops,samples and instrumentation.Future producers for any music can listen and learn.My track highlights are as follows:
1)Welcome to The Terrordome
2)Brothers Gonna Work It Out
3)911 Is A Joke
4)Who Stole The Soul?
5)Fight The Power

- Not in that order, just my favorites.

Fight the Power!.......2006-01-29

Most of the younger generation (those born in the 1990's) are probely familer with Flavor Flav with all the TV spotlight he gets on VH-1. Yet back in the Day when Flavor was cracked out, he was with the likes of Chuck D and Terminator X in a very important rap group Public Enemy. This is my favorite PE album of the bunch. They say three times is a charm, and since this was thier third effort, not only did they manage to pull off their best album, but one of the top ten best albums in hip-hop EVER! Almost every song here is a Gem, and for all those that listen to garbage hip-hop (50 Cent, Juvinelle, Little Jon, D-12) then maybe you should use those CD's as coasters or frisbees, and pick up Fear of a Black Planet to hear what REAL Hip-Hop soundsl like. Unfortanltly, the band started to go downhill from here, with two less then steller efforts after this one, and then completely vanishing into thin air. With the return of Flavor outta nowhere being on VH-1's "The Surreal Life" and 2 other shows on VH-1, it seems like Public Enemy also came back. I have heard some of the newer material, but it just doesn't live up to this. This is a real important piece of hip-hop history, as a matter of fact, MUSIC history. Please Put this one in your collection if you dont have it. ENJOY