An absolutely seminal album in hip hop culture and more broadly in protest music, Long Island rap group Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is totally incendiary.

Originally released in late June 1988, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back was the band’s second studio album and was a huge critical, commercial and cultural success. The album explodes to life with Countdown To Armageddon, featuring a live recording at a crowded Hammersmith Odeon where Dave Pearce - yeah, that very same Pearce - hypes the crowd… “Are you ready?” Broadly, they were not, no one was. It’s an album of paranoia, frustration, vitriol and fear that absolutely dominates every inch of the stereo.

Chuck D out at the front is razor sharp, rapping about inequality and social injustices with an unmatched fury. Supremely pointed lyrics that pull no punches, but also never overexpose either as they paint vivid pictures of their own experiences. The group famously set out to make what they considered to be the hip hop equivalent to Marvin Gaye's What's Going On. As vital - and far from easy going - as the lyrics are, the production is very much its equal and reactive force. Production team Bomb Squad’s groundbreaking Wall of Noise production is totally discombobulating but still so enthralling.

“It wasn’t that we took records and rapped over them, we actually had an intricate way of developing sound, arranging the sound. We had musicians like Eric Saddler, we had unbelievable records, the sonic tools, Hank Shocklee, the Phil Spector of hip-hop. You’ve got to give the credit as it’s due, if Phil Spector has the wall of sound Hank Shocklee has the Wall Of Noise. It was truly a group effort.”

- Chuck D interviewed by The Quietus.

The production was so innovative, a warped and degenerated soundscape of samples - to include; James Brown, The Commodores, Malcolm X, Funkadelic, David Bowie, Kurtis Blow, ESG, Aretha Franklin, Isaac Hayes, Edwin Starr, Beastie Boys, Richard Pryor, Earth, Wind & Fire, Sly Stone, Bobby Byrd and a little flare of the Flash Gordon soundtrack that always delights us! It is so vivid.

Arriving just a year after their debut Yo! Bum Rush the Show, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is perfectly formed. ‘Don’t Believe the Hype’ (in particular) hits the sensationalist press around their debut and the group’s apparent danger to society head on. The lyrics throughout are never without real purpose and what they achieved in unison with the production is nothing short of revolutionary.

It’s an album of biting intensity that hasn’t lost any of its edge over the last 35 years, it in fact it very much more than lives up to the hype.

Yeah Boyee!