hipster CD collection
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Check out the CDs on Mr. Hipster's shelves.


Palace
[palace website]

Viva Last Blues

Paloalto
[paloalto website]

Heroes & Villains

Paloalto

The Paper Chase
[paper chase website]

now you are one of us Now You Are One of Us

Stuck somewhere between that Halloween record you had as a kid with the spooky sounds on it and a musical representation of the movie The Others, The Paper Chase uses off-kilter strings and piano along with the bombast of slap bass and kick drums to drive home a theatrical house of horrors. The lyrics weave their way through illness and death and ghosts and general ugliness (as if you couldn't guess by the guy hanging from a noose on the album cover). The screech-sung lyrics are coated in reverb, but are front and center in the bashing tidal wave of chopped guitar bursts, backing screaming and the occasional snippet of dialogue from somewhere. The overall effect is a swirling crazy mess of catchy rock that will drive most insane, but will totally make 'em listen all the way there.

Paper Lions
[paper lions website]

The Symptom and the Sick

Paris

The Devil Made Me Do It

Paris, Texas
[paris, texas website]

Brazilliant

Paris, Texas

So You Think It's Hot Here?

Parliament
[parliament website]

Chocolate City

The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein

Gloryhallastoopid

Mothership Connection

Motor Booty Affair

Rhenium

Trombipulation

Up for the Down Stroke

Pavement
[pavement website]

Brighten the Corners

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Slanted & Enchanted

You can't even call yourself a fan of indie rock if you don't own and love this album. "Summer Babe," the opening track, is as perfect piece of slacker rock as has ever existed. From there Stephen Malkmus and the gang take you on a tour of what a crappy, old electric guitar and a drum kit can bring to the life of every white guy who's ever wanted to start his own band. I rarely deem something a classic, but this one with all of its hisses and crackles and shambling choruses filled with bedraggled greasy-headed wonderfulness really is a gateway album (in the way weed is a gateway drug). One dose--at least in the context of the time and place in which I first experienced it--will change your musical world for the better. Every listen makes me love it just a little bit more.

Slanted & Enchanted Luxe & Reduxe

Spit on a Stranger ep

Terror Twilight

Watery, Domestic

Westing (by Musket and Sextant)

Wowee Zowee

I think this album got a bad wrap. I mean it's certainly hi-fi compared to some of their past efforts, but adding production quality to album releases is a sign of maturity, isn't it? It's not like they're all of a sudden sounding like some awful "modern rock" band or something. I think most of the flak that was originally thrown at this thing was all based on the fact some called it "all over the place" and kind of "unfocused." On the contrary, I like to think there is a loose cohesion to the album that showcases a nice, little hint of the boys' home state of California. There's a bit of inland Cali country and jangle that takes some of the edge off the early fuzz of some of the prior albums. It's not to say that any of their brazen disregard for being typical has been worn away, but some of the more mid-tempo stuff showcases a little bit more of the songwriting that you knew was lurking in there somewhere. Granted, at 18 tracks you're bound to have some inconsistency, but I believe time has shown that this is in fact one of their better albums (my third favorite, in fact), and worthy of the heaps of praise that it somehow missed out on when first released. When I just want to chill with an album that's like a warm blanket, and somehow reminds me of my home, I throw this one on and float on a cloud of happiness.

Peach

Siesta

Pearl Jam
[pearl jam website]

Binaural

Lost Dogs
 

No Code

Riot Act

Ten

Vitalogy

Vs.

Yield

Pedro the Lion
[pedro the lion website]

achilles heel Achilles Heel

Control

It's Hard to Find a Friend

Slower tempo folk-ish songs by a guy who loves Jesus isn't exactly what I'd call my speed, but Pedro the Lion is just so damn cute that it's hard to resist. In fact, I'm hardly bothered by the Christ thing (not being a believer myself), and it in fact adds an edge to his music that might not necessarily be there if he was just some secular indie crooner. I'm always searching for the subtext in his lyrics and applying my limited knowledge of the church to his questioning lilting. I guess this could be considered acoustic Christian emo? I mean the guy is emotional about girls and God, so why not? While not quite as cathartic as, say, The Mountain Goats, or as convoluted and intricate as John Vanderslice, this album is up there in that category. This is, in my opinion, David Bazan's best album, and certainly up there on my list of best albums to mope to (especially when I'm totally mad at The Lord).

The Only Reason I Feel Secure

Winners Never Quit

Pela
[pela website]

anytown graffiti Anytown Graffiti

With Brooklyn bands as ubiquitous these days as rats in the subway, I was a little whatever about listening to another. I mean how much talent can be packed into one borough? Well, it turns out Pela can join some of their brethren in the star category--if their penchant for more anthematic rock doesn't get them in trouble. They have definitely listened to their share of U2 albums (listen to the song 'Tenement Teeth' if you want to hear almost a direct U2 rip), which gives them that more wide-open sound than some of the other artsy stuff coming out these days. Honestly, though, I don't know if I can take another band with a helium-sucking lead singer, so Pela's more soaring vocals and masculine (but still sensitive!) sound is like a breath of fresh air. At times they sound a but like Stellastarr* on their first album (which always reminds me of Big Country for some reason), which is a little weird, but they also recall a little bit of Modest Mouse's poppier stuff as well. There's something open and hopeful about this album, which I know is like totally lame in this era of gloom and doom, but sometimes I want to feel some glass half full in my music, dammit.

Pennywise
[pennywise website]

About Time

Unknown Road

Wildcard/A Word from the Wise

The Pernice Brothers
[the pernice brothers website]

The World Won't End

Yours, Mine & Ours

Phantom Planet
[phantom planet website]

Phantom Planet

The Pharcyde
[the pharcyde website]

Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde

Oh shit! And that's a quote from this stoner party hip-hop album--one of the greatest of all time. So great, in fact, that some asshole stole it from me in college. I was lucky enough to be reunited with the album when, in what I consider a supreme instance of karma, some idiot at a record label at which I worked threw it in the discard pile in the hallway. Thank god for tasteless fuckwads. And I've enjoyed the smooth beats ever since. I just don't get why there isn't more stuff like this out there. Crap rap--I just keep passin' it by.

Labcabincalifornia

Phish
[phish website]

A Picture of Nectar

Photon Band

Oh the Sweet Sweet Changes

Pig

Sinsation

Pimps, Players and Private Eyes

Various Artists

Pinback
[pinback website]

Blue Screen Life

Pinback

Some Voices ep

Pinehurst Kids

Bleed It Dry

Viewmaster

Pink Floyd
[pink floyd website]

Echoes

Pink Noise Test
[pink noise test website]

Plasticized

Pixies
[pixies website]

bossanova Bossanova

It's not a good sign that they open the album with an instrumental. I don't really like instrumentals. In fact, they always feel like filler to me. If you absolutely have to do an instrumental, stick it at track seven where it's not going to do any damage. As it stands, I usually skip right to the second track, "Rock Music," which is a bit of an atonal screecher from Black Francis. Oy, finally at track three they start to hit their stride with the oddball space odyssey, "Velouria." The echo and reverb does make me a little homesick for the crunching production of Surfer Rosa, but I have to move on. This thing starts to fee like an Ed Wood movie at some point. I'm not really sure why. They do certainly sound more mature on this album, which is usually a euphemism for sounding tired. It's more weary than anything else. I'm sure this is the one on which they were fighting on a daily basis, and Francis was slowly absorbing the whole band into his sizable girth. Don't get me wrong, there is still good stuff on this album, but it just doesn't have that urgency that their earlier stuff had. It's as if their batteries just wore down a little bit.

Come on Pilgrim

I'm not sure what's up with all the foreign language stuff, but this debut by a weird college art rock band is stunning in its pure energy and innovative take on punk. Black Francis has his anxious, high-pitched thing going on, with Kim Deal's echoey backing vocals and the funny Western ghost thing happening, with the mix of Spanish and English and general feeling of the American West permeating their songs (despite being from Mass). The thing is a little scattered, and a tiny bit one-noted, but it's a solid debut that certainly hints at awesome things to come. "Losing my penis to a whore with disease!" is a line that should at least make you want to listen to more.

Death to the Pixies

Doolittle

"Debaser" is my second favorite Pixies song. I f'n love it. I will play it on any jukebox I find just to piss people off. It's a great, great song. And it starts off what is actually my second favorite Pixies album (a close second to Surfer Rosa). I mean, they're such art fags writing a punk song about a Dali film. It's nerd heaven, and I am their disciple. They really do reign in the craziness on this album, smoothing out some of the angles and rough edges in favor of excellent song writing and more subdued production (anything is subdued after having Albini twiddle the knobs). Deal's bass is still the driving force behind these songs, and Black Francis is coming into his own as more than a yelper. It's actually funny to hear him sing. He's pretty good. Who can resist "Here Comes Your Man," really? This is the record that made them the muscular R.E.M. They were the college rock gods for the coastal carnivore set. It practically looked like Francis ate Michael Stipe in that first real video of theirs.

Surfer Rosa

From the opening downbeat of "Bone Machine," Surfer Rosa's first track, you know this album is gonna kick some ass. Driven by the radical production of Steve Albini (can this guy make even a shit sandwich sound good?), this album is all up in your face. And despite there being a lot to grab onto here, this thing is still all knees and elbows. Black Francis talk/sings/yelps his way through song after song filled with skulls and body parts and illusions to things near and far. There's terror and humor, and even a softer side of a band that would just as soon give you a hotfoot as spit something vile in your eye. Everything they do on this album just has an edge of smart to it. They aren't your daddy's punk band giving the middle finger and farting into the mic; they're the thinking man's college rock band. Oddly enough it's actually the Kim Deal sung song, "Gigantic" that kind of steals the show here. Like her song with The Breeders, "Cannonball," of a few years later, this thing just sticks in your head and begs for you to hit repeat. I know I wanted to marry her after hearing it. Even "Where Is My Mind" points to Frank Black's later career direction and shows us that these guys are not one-trick ponies. One of the best pure pop punk albums of all time, and certainly my favorite Pixies record.

Trompe le Monde

They've obviously turned the page here. Where as Bossanova sounded tired, Trompe le Monde sounded refreshed. Refreshedóbut different. It's Black Francis emerging from his cocoon as Frank Black, shedding Kim and Joey and Whathisface as he moved on. He's a guy who loves outer space, and this album has it in spades. What it doesn't have is a lot of Kim Deal vocals (shame, really) and her spare bass lines. But back arethe more driving beats, the energy and the feeling that somebody gives a shit. It's the album that Frank had obviously been itching to make for years. Again, I really don't love the production on this thing, as everything seems to be buried in reverb and whatnot, but it's a much better output than you'd generally see from a break-up album. Of course the year after this came out was also my sophomore year at Syracuse when we lost to UMASS in the NCAA tourney, and every Masshole from here to the end of time screamed "It's educationaaaaaaaaaaal!" up and down the halls. Or maybe that was just in my head. It makes me wonder what the hell the Violent Femmes would sound like if they had continued on. Probably like crap.

The Plastic Constellations
[the plastic constellations website]

crusades Crusades

The Pleased
[the pleased website]

dont make things Don't Make Things

Plug

Drum 'n' Bass for Papa

Poi Dog Pondering
[poi dog pondering website]

Volo Volo

Polara

C'est la Vie

The Police
[the police website]

Ghost in the Machine

This is The Police's Use Your Illusion (Outlandos being their Appetite for Destruction and Zenyatta their Lies) as they really expand their sound to include strings and synths, horns and all sorts of gobbledygook. This is their rock opera, their shining moment. This is the one that put a Police t-shirt on the back of every kid between the age of 12 and 25. Shit, these guys get away with singing in French! They spawned an awful Sylvester Stallone movie with one of their songs, and rang in the era of the nerds taking over the world. But again, I don't love this album. Maybe I'm just a contrarian or a stick in the mud, but the thing is too produced for my taste. Don't worry, I didn't like that Guns n' Roses stuff either.

Outlandos D'amour

Best debut ever. Figures I would like the first, and the rawest, of The Police's albums the best. This thing just has so much urgency and verve, it's sick. I could listen to "So Lonely" on repeat for days on end. I mean "Roxanne" was genre-busting, and the whole reggae flavor gave a little something for hipsters, stoners and rockers alike. These guys, despite some calling them punks or mods or whatever, were really nothing but jazz nerds, but this was the closest a bunch of music dorks could get to rock "n roll glory. "And you're brother's gonna kill me and he's 6'10" was heard again and again on my sweet, beige Fisher Price record player, and it never failed to elicit giggles of glee. Awesome.

Reggatta de Blanc

My "band" in high school played "Message in a Bottle" at a talent show. We sucked. We did worse than suck, we super-sucked. I was actually the singer and have a pretty hard time memorizing lyrics. I lost my lyric sheet and basically kept screaming blahblahblah-o through a tiny Gorilla amp. We were punk, dammit! You can tell by the cover of this thing that the guys have matured quite a bit in the one album since their debut, Outlandos D'amour. The sound on this one is much more dense (despite remaining a trio), but the songs much less memorable (aside from the aforementioned "Bottle"). They just don't seem to be having as much fun here. Don't get me wrong, the album doesn't suck or anything, but they certainly hit a mini sophomore slump in my opinion.

synchronicity Synchronicity

Listening to this, The Police's last album, in the context of their other albums, you'd almost think this was a different band. Where's the light? This layered, dark-ass album is obviously a break up album, a last in a storied career, but it's so much deeper and darker than their others, you'd think something horrible happened to these guys. Not that this stopped them from somehow getting even bigger than they were after Ghost in the Machine came out. They were omnipresent after the release of this album. You couldn't pick up a magazine, change a channel or walk into a store without seeing images of Sting (and the other two). I had this thing on constant repeat in my mom's car and the Sanyo tape deck at home. Everyone fast forwards through "Mother," but the rest of the agoraphobic, paranoid, semi-nuclear album is a really weird amalgam of death and pain and stalking and odd key signatures and a really forward-thinking album that was way ahead of its time.

Zenyatta Mondatta

There we go. Let's put Reggatta behind us and get down to business. We're no longer the punk kids having a ball on Outlandos D'amour; we're a genuine band with a serious streak. We've hit our stride and found our voice. We're a pop rock band with a world music lilt. We use a rock base and throw in the kitchen sink. We're a good time, but in a serious musician kind of way. We want people to enjoy music, not be challenged by it. We make memorable tunes that can be hummed and loved by men, women and children alike. We have broken into the main stream cool with this album, and we ain't looking back. This is the album that made you want that Police poster on your wall (despite "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da").

Robert Pollard
[robert pollard website]

Choreographed Man of War

Sigh. I can't believe I went and bought another one. I mean what is my tolerance level here? I think this makes number five in a solo career that runs in parallel with his fulltime job as front man for Guided by Voices. It seems right from the start that Pollard has actually done some editing on this album, trimming the track count to ten (about half the normal runtime). I gotta say, though, I don't love this album. I know it's supposed to be some of his most mature work, but I've proved time and time again that I don't go for mature. It's almost too dense for me. The vocals are too buried in the mix, and there sounds like there are too many people in the room. I guess I'm just getting tired of the shtick at this point, or the songs aren't the little nuggets they once were. He feels almost as thought he's trying too hard to not be that guy anymore.

from a compound eye From a Compound Eye

I really did give up trying to track Pollard's solo stuff after Choreographed Man of War. That album felt like a good spot on which to sever my loyalty and take a break from the Fading Captain Series and the Douchebag on a Cliff series and the whatever he felt like tooling around with that week series. It just felt like the man was dumping all his boxes of old tapes on us and charging us to help clean out his closet. I'm not sure what brought me back into the fold with this one, but I suppose it was the demise of GBV and my longing for just one last blast of Pollard. I think that rest did me well, as some of the stuff on this album (despite it being way too long at 26 tracks) sounds different from where I left off. Sure there's still the Beatles/Who obsession, and the lyrics that make about much sense as an old Cronenberg movie, but he does mix it up a bit since my last exposure, mixing in some time signatures and swings in tempo and production quality. Shit, the song "The Right Thing" could have been a Live song off of Throwing Copper or something. He even shows a softer side on a few songs, and delves into some darker stuff as well. It makes me happy to at least hear some variation here, some new sounds and a kind of growly thunder that he seemed to be missing on previous efforts. There is a song on here that reminds me of Steely Dan' "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," which kind of scares the crap out of me, but whatever.

Kid Marine

This album starts off with "Submarine Teams," which features some sort of weird thing going on throughout the song that sounds like some crazy person shivering. Amazingly it works in the wacky world of Robert Pollard, and is a really decent song. In fact a lot of songs on this record have stuff going on in the background, and all of it isn't tape hiss. Three albums into his solo career (while still putting out GBV albums), Pollard has dialed back the homemade thing somewhat in favor of crafting fully fleshed out songs. The one issue that has plagued him throughout his career is the flame out syndrome of starting a song really strong and then it just kind of going up in smoke ninety seconds in. He's like the songwriting equivalent of a Saturday Night Live skit. It seems here he's trying to actually present songs, and not just quickly scribbled good ideas.

normal happiness Normal Happiness

Wow, it's the new "peppy" Robert Pollard. Sunshiny and ready to rock ën roll. Of course he's just as obtuse as ever, with tittles like "Supernatural Car Lover" and "Pegasus Glue Factory," but the album itself somehow feels more coherent. It could be the good mood that Bob has all of a sudden found himself in, or just the overall tone of the thing, but it's certainly a departure from his normal sequencing. I do dig the production better here too. The wall of sound crunchiness has faded away, and left the music and Pollard's voice to speak more for itself. Gone is all the gimmickry, too, letting the good stuff bleed through. This is his most listenable solo album so far (and it only took eight tries). There is one song, "Gasoline Ragtime" that sounds oddly Police-like to me, and kind of freaked me out a little bit the first time I heard it. Sure it ain't arty and deep, but this is actually a pretty good little sunny pop album.

Not In My Airforce

It's always difficult detangling Robert Pollard from GBV. I mean they are one and the same. So what happens when the man that is the band goes solo? And what happens when the other man from said band, Tobin Sprout, also releases a solo album at the same time? The temptation is to compare the two solo albums against the band output, and then against each other. Who was the real talent here? It turns out, of course, it's impossible to tell because Pollard was so tight-fisted about song writing on the GBV albums that Sprout's voice was all but drowned out on those records. Listening to Not in My Airforce, Pollard's debut solo record, we still hear a lot of Alien Lanes GBV going on. Little pop ditties buried in home recording quality hiss, and lots of subdued guitar plucking. This is a decent intro into the ever expanding mind of Robert Pollard, and is probably one of his better solo records for those fans of the older GBV stuff.

Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department

Whoa, did Pollard actually use a professional studio for this one? There has been a general trend towards cleaner production with each of his solo efforts, and this, his fourth, sounds, dare I say, almost professional. It's not like the guy has gone all Radiohead on us or anything, but it's nice to actually be able to hear the bass in his tracks for once. Of course with the fuller sound comes some loss of intimacy, but this is a guy who's always wanted to be Roger Daltrey (with the leg kicks and everything) so there was no way he'd shy away from the stadium sound forever. Again, I can't imagine any of these songs being played for a packed Wembley Stadium or anything, but even baby steps for this geezer is an amazing act of contrition to a lifelong fuzzmaster. One does wonder at this point how he chooses what goes on the GBV albums versus what gets the solo tag. Of course the parallel GBV album at this time was Do the Collapse, which was produced by Ric Ocasek (complete with his keyboards and shit), so it's not like this record sounds even close to as polished as that one. I think this, however, was where I started to wonder when the hell he was going to stop pumping out these albums. My patience for spending money was wearing thin.

Waved Out

Another album of Pollard doing his thing. This, his sophomore solo effort, is a little less hissy than his debut, having a more fleshed out sound, but still following the same Ohio by way of England lo-fi guitar rock vibe with nonsensical lyrics and a definite feeling that he's enjoying himself. He even tries to rock it out stadium style (albeit in a lo-fi kind of way) on "Subspace Biographies," which is not a bad bashing rock song if I do say so myself. Pollard also clearly has a "Norwegian Wood" era Beatles fascination that busts out on certain songs, but then quickly hides behind another straight-up rock song. He even experiments on this one with some oddball noises like on "Whiskey Ships" (a song that reminds me of Archers of Loaf for some reason) where there's some sort of bizarre stereo huffing going on. It's a solid output, but still feels like a bit of an extras thing.

Jonny Polonsky
[jonny polonsky website]

Hi My Name is Jonny

There Is Something Wrong With You

Pond
[pond website]

Pond

The Practice of Joy Before Death

Rock Collection

The Ponys
[the ponys website]

celebration castle The Ponys

Poor Righteous Teachers

Holy Intellect

Pure Poverty

Pop Will Eat Itself
[pop will eat itself website]

This is the Day. . . this is the Hour. . . this is this!

Portastatic
[portastatic website]

I Hope Your Heart is not Brittle

The Nature of Sap

Slow Note from a Sinking Ship

The Posies
[the posies website]

failure Failure

Possum Dixon

Possum Dixon

The Postal Service

Give Up

Ben Gibbard can write lyrics that would make even the most ardent metalhead melt. There is a nostalgia he manages to invoke that is remarkably unique. His normal gig, penning/singing songs for Death Cab for Cutie, allows him his indie rock outlet, but this collaboration with Jimmy Tamborello of Dntel gives him that electronica cred that all indie dudes crave. Okay, maybe not crave, but... While this is certainly a collaboration, all the bleeps and bloops can't cover up the fact that this is very much a Gibbard-sounding album--if he was dropping new wave albums in 1986. They keep the album nice and poppy, without spinning off into that esoteric electronic noodling and repetitive looping crap I hate so much about elctronica music. Yup, it's good.

Poster Children
[poster children website]

Daisychain Reaction

Flowerplower

The Presidents of the United States of America

The Presidents of the United States of America

Preston School of Industry
[preston school of industry website]

All This Sounds Gas

Pretty Girls Make Graves
[pretty girls make graves website]

elan vital Élan Vital

Good Health

The New Romance

Primal Scream
[primal scream website]

Screamadelica

Primus
[primus website]

Brown Album

Frizzle Fry

Pork Soda

Suck on This

Tales from the Punchbowl

Prince Paul

politics of the business Politics of the Business

Prince Po

The Slickness

What was old is new, making all those old rap CDs and tapes I have collector's items. That's why I get props from the current rap aficionados for my Ed O.G. & the Bulldogs and KMD tapes. Amongst the old coming back to take the scepter of rap is Prince Po, formerly of Organized Konfusion. Yeah, it ain't bling-bling rim-rappin', but neither is it that "backpack rap" that I love but puritans dismiss as whiteboy, college music. I am a whiteboy college grad, so maybe that's why Prince Po appeals to me, but the whole package is class from start to finish--just look at the embossed album packaging. The production is top-notch, with the help of the producer of the moment, Danger Mouse. There is also enough variation from track to track that he manages to avoid the typical hip-hop second-half letdown. In the song "Social Distortion" guest MF Doom (the best guest one can get, ever) unleashes one of the best lines ever: "Bum, feel the sting linger / wrote this humdinger with a dislocated bling finger." Now that's some classic stuff.

Prodigy
[prodigy website]

The Fat of the Land

The Promise Ring

The Horse Latitudes

Nothing Feels Good

Thirty Degrees Everywhere

Very Emergency

This generation's emo is crap. They have like Red Jumpsuit this and Three Times Dope that. It's all garbage sung by pretty-boy whiners. Where are the lead singers with lisps and songs about the Jersey Shore and stuff? Here they are, you little punk-asses. Granted, TPR has already turned seriously towards the commercial spectrum with this album, but I can't help loving these hook-filled tunes of partying and loving and leaving and band members and whatnot. Honestly, the songs are kind of nonsensical, but belted out with such pop abandon, that I don't give two craps about it. There's just something life-affirming about these tunes that doesn't come with the Sorrow Parade or Wednesday's Baby, or whatever these latest bands are called. I mean The Promise Ring have lyrics like "You dropped a bomb on my bad day" for god's sake! That shit is brilliant. The brilliance is short, unfortunately, but leaves that nice, minty flavor in your mouth as it fades into the crapfest that TPR becomes with its very next output.

Wood/Water

Psychefunkapus
[psychefunkapus website]

Skin

Public Enemy
[public enemy website]

Apocalypse 91. . . The Enemy Strikes Back

I remember waiting for this album at our university's "Midnight Madness" sales. It went on sale the same day as Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion. Looking at the line snaking around the student center, it wasn't immediately evident who was there for what album. It seemed PE had been adopted by white kids galore, and in a lot of cases those same students who were there for GnR were there for the PE album also. It's ironic then that this is he most political album these guys had put out; the most whitey hating. So goes music. For me this album was a bit of a letdown. Gone was the sonic attack of "Terrordome" and in its place, a bit of a throwback to Yo! Bumrush the Show and It Takes a Nation of Millions and its bombast.

Fear of a Black Planet

What a way to usher in the 90s. These were the days of anger and genuine concern. Bloods and Crips were still in the news every day. We were only a couple years from the height of that violence, the LA Riots, and things seemed in flux. It's not only because I was myself in flux, graduating high school and packing for the East Coast and college that this album managed to capture a lot of the turmoil around me and the world at large. I believe I almost spit out my drink the first time I heard "Welcome to the Terrordome." It's just a swirl of craziness and aggression and to this day makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Even with its blatant anti-Semitism, I can't fault the thing, as it's just a stream of consciousness rant against everything. These are people who have the audacity to sample themselves, for Christ's sake. It's a bouillabaisse of hate spewed at everyone, even blacks themselves. Wow. Whereas It Takes a Nation of Millions still looked inward somewhat--often talking about themselves in context--this album is outward facing, looking at society at large. "Burn Hollywood Burn" is an indictment on the film business and its subjugation of blacks, "911 is a Joke" about the differential treatment of poor people when it came to public services and "Fight the Power" just sums up everything this album is about.

Greatest Misses

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

One of the best and most important albums of all time. This thing is just so fierce and relentless in its assault on the senses that you can't help but sit up and take notice. Anything that could unite groups of white teens behind a message of black power and make them memorize entire songs filled with complicated lyrics filled with attacks on the white establishment has to be something special. I speak not only about myself, of course, but friends and foes alike. Yeah, I was the douchebag white kid with a P.E. t-shirt my freshman year of college. I used to wear it to my private all-boys high school my senior year, so what could the harm be in wearing it to college? Man, that lasted about one week. I realized there are people that had more than the amazing music in mind when listening to this stuff. To me, the message was clear (but not applicable), but it was the sheer power of Chuck D's voice and Terminator X's driving rhythms and samples that just drew me in. I can still recite "Don't Believe the Hype" and "Night of the Living Baseheads" by heart and still love the hell out of those songs. The first time I heard this it blew my mind. Thinking of it today in the context of what existed back then I still can't believe it exists. And, in parting, I will leave you with the most oft written letter of my college career:

Dear Mr. D -

We're suckers. We want you for our Army--or whatever.

Regards,
The Government

Yo! Bum Rush the Show

Like the Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill, Yo! Bumrush the Show is a debut that is great in its own right, but doesn't necessarily represent what the artist is or would eventually become. That may have to do with Rick Rubin being at the controls, or it may just have to do with a group trying to find its bearings. Whatever the case, this is a much more stripped down Public Enemy, all boom and bass and bragging about how "bad" they are. The thing is here, that with Chuck D. pushed way up front, the album has some immediacy and strength that a lot of other rap albums at the time didn't. After all Chuck is the power behind the group, his voice the siren call. This is best shown on "Miuzi Weighs a Ton" and "Timebomb." He's the scary black man who just needs to mention his uzi and not necessarily brandish it to scare the crap out of white America. There's an intelligence (if such a thing can be said) behind the swagger. The production has a funny echo about it, and I don't recall hearing another album in my many years of listening that sounded quite like it. It's as if the group is in a large industrial space or something, but I'm sure is just a recording trick where there's a lag between left and right and whatever. Anyway, it sounds pretty awesome.

Puzzle Gut

Puzzle Gut

 

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