Welcome To The Terrordome (1990) – Public Enemy

The cornerstone of 1990’s Fear Of A Black Planet, “Welcome To The Terrordome” is a barrage of confrontation interspersed with an assortment of samples, creating a state of constant agitation. Chuck D’s voice is authoritative in its delivery, urgent in its protests, defiant in its denouncements. His vocal flow employs subtle shifts in meter to manipulate verses across measures in a stream-of-consciousness purge.

In the wake of his group’s controversial dismissal of, and ambiguous dissociation from, Professor Griff following his homophobic and anti-Semitic remarks, “Terrordome” is Chuck D’s forum to vent. He is brazen in his thinly veiled rebuke of Judaism, and chastises those who failed to back him during the Griff controversy, resorting to the hyperbole of race betrayal. To vindicate his aggression, he invokes the (then recent) 1989 racially-infused slaying in Bensonhurst and 1989 riot at Greekfest in Virginia Beach. To his credit, he promotes intellectual counterstrikes instead of physical retribution in the “intellectual Vietnam.”

Chuck D has a few bones to pick. Whether one agrees with his rhetoric or not, the listener is compelled to lend him an ear.

Listen to "Welcome To The Terrordome" and purchase from iTunes Music Store.