The Optical Files #69: Public Enemy - Apocalypse 91...The Enemy Strikes Black (1991)

Following up the brilliant Fear of a Black Planet would have been difficult even under the best of circumstances. As I wrote in that piece, the album represented a moment that would never be duplicated. The group was coming off a relentless 1990 tour cycle. On top of that, the Bomb Squad had to deal with the loss of a hard drive filled with partially completed beats (producers everywhere know that pain), & had to rush to recreate them in order to meet an album deadline. The result was a record that, while there's nothing wrong with it, is the weakest of their first 4 & showcases a group that's running out of steam.

Although the Bomb Squad's signature thick textures are still in evidence, their data management misadventures resulted in a more streamlined overall sound for this album. Sometimes this works, like in 2 of the singles: the downtempo, loping bluesy stride of "By the Time I Get to Arizona" & the urgent stomp of "Shut Em Down." A lot of the time, though, the beats sound overly familiar & too similar to each other. Perhaps as a result of the more sparse production, Chuck uses more pocket flows here, particularly on the singles. He still plays games with the flow, but you'll find his rhyming words on 2 & 4 more often than in the previous albums.

True to form for a P.E. album, of course, the subject matter here is 100% on point. The singles I mentioned in the last paragraph both have powerful messages: "urinat[ing] on the state" of Arizona for refusing to acknowledge Martin Luther King Jr. Day, & rejecting large corporations like Nike for relying on Black dollars without giving back to those communities. Of course Flav had to come out of pocket in "A Letter to the New York Post," making a bizarre random reference to James Cagney just so he could rhyme it with a made-up homophobic slur ("fagney")--but the general point of the song is well-taken. Fuck the New York Post.

Chuck, Flav & the Bomb Squad are not exactly foundering here, but much of this album could accurately be described as treading water. With the West Coast sound beginning to overtake noisy NY production to dominate the popular ear, for the first time Public Enemy was sounding a bit behind the curve. Once that happens, it's a hard thing to come back from--at least not right away.