Fear Of A Black Planet: Deluxe Edition

PUBLIC ENEMY 『FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET』のデラックス・エディションが発売!!

■オリジナルは1990年発売で、3枚目のオリジナル・アルバム。
■ディスク2にはリミックス、ダブ等ヴァージョン違いを収録。

Rolling Stone (5/13/99, p.70) - Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's." Rolling Stone (5/17/90) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...Public Enemy has never aimed for anything less than a comprehensive view of contemporary black America...FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET complements this ambition with stunning maturity and sophistication..." Spin (9/99, p.116) - Ranked #2 in Spin Magazine's "90 Greatest Albums of the '90s." Entertainment Weekly - "...most powerful rap group..." - Rating: A Q (12/99, p.68) - Included in Q Magazine's "90 Best Albums Of The 1990s." Q (2/91) - 4 Stars - Excellent - Recommended by Q as one of the five best rap albums of 1990 and ranked as one of the Fifty Best Albums of 1990. - "...scalding attack on white supremacy..." Q (9/95, p.132) - 5 Stars - "...achieved the near impossible by being every bit as good as its predecessor. The music was Public Enemy's now-familiar scream but was augmented with a percussive tinge that reflected the ever greater Afrocentricity..." Melody Maker (7/22/95, p.35) - Bloody Essential - "...slower, denser...funky. And it was a masterpiece....It's beyond perfect, built like a platinum beehive and stuffed with cordite--The Bomb Squad's last hands-on job for PE before they took on the task of...Ice Cube..." NME (Magazine) (10/2/93, p.29) - Ranked #37 in NME's list of the `Greatest Albums Of All Time.' NME (Magazine) (7/15/95, p.47) - 10 (out of 10) - "...where do you go once you've made the greatest hip-hop album ever? Unbelievably, you consolidate that with an equally splendid follow-up....This time the sounds were softened slightly with flashes of `real' instrumentation but the content remained as astonishingly tough and intelligent as before..."

At the time of its release in March 1990 -- just a mere two years after It Takes a Nation of Millions -- nearly all of the attention spent on Public Enemy's third album, Fear of a Black Planet, was concentrated on the dying controversy over Professor Griff's anti-Semitic statements of 1989, and how leader Chuck D bungled the public relations regarding his dismissal. References to the controversy are scattered throughout the album -- and it fueled the incendiary lead single, "Welcome to the Terrordome" -- but years later, after the furor has died down, what remains is a remarkable piece of modern art, a record that ushered in the '90s in a hail of multiculturalism and kaleidoscopic confusion. It also easily stands as the Bomb Squad's finest musical moment. Where Millions was all about aggression -- layered aggression, but aggression nonetheless -- Fear of a Black Planet encompasses everything, touching on seductive grooves, relentless beats, hard funk, and dub reggae without blinking an eye. All the more impressive is that this is one of the records made during the golden age of sampling, before legal limits were set on sampling, so this is a wild, endlessly layered record filled with familiar sounds you can't place; it's nearly as heady as the Beastie Boys' magnum opus, Paul's Boutique, in how it pulls from anonymous and familiar sources to create something totally original and modern. While the Bomb Squad were casting a wider net, Chuck D's writing was tighter than ever, with each track tackling a specific topic (apart from the aforementioned "Welcome to the Terrordome," whose careening rhymes and paranoid confusion are all the more effective when surrounded by such detailed arguments), a sentiment that spills over to Flavor Flav, who delivers the pungent black humor of "911 Is a Joke," perhaps the best-known song here. Chuck gets himself into trouble here and there -- most notoriously on "Meet the G That Killed Me," where he skirts with homophobia -- but by and large, he's never been so eloquent, angry, or persuasive as he is here. This isn't as revolutionary or as potent as Millions, but it holds together better, and as a piece of music, this is the best hip-hop has ever had to offer. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine