It Takes a Nation of Millions (CD)

It Takes a Nation of Millions was the sign that hip-hop had exploded like a grenade. A rap record as abrasive, hardcore, and eloquent as a JFK speech, the 1988 disc is one classic track after another: tense, multilayered, harmonically wild music. Chuck D. declaims like a master preacher with foil Flavor Flav's voice darting around his. They've got the desperate energy of people fighting for their lives, and everything from their pumped-up rhetoric ("Prophets of Rage") to the group's quasi-paramilitary organization to the sirens and sax squeals in nearly every track declares how urgent their mission is. It's a hugely influential album, and it still sounds fresh and frightening after all these years.

Track List

1. Countdown to Armageddon
2. Bring the Noise
3. Don't Believe the Hype
4. Cold Lampin' with Flavor
5. Terminator X to the Edge of Panic
6. Mind Terrorist
7. Louder Than a Bomb
8. Caught Can We Get a Witness?
9. Show Em Whatcha Got
10. She Watch Channel Zero?!
11. Night of the Living Baseheads
12. Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos
13. Security of the First World
14. Rebel Without a Pause
15. Prophets of Rage
16. Party for Your Right to Fight