Taking a detour from the typical source of lyrical inspiration, love, and human experience, OMD lifted their songs from engineering handbooks, historical stories, and wartime politics. Synthesizing intellectual lyrics with popular sensibilities, “Enola Gay” reflects bandmates Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys’ efforts to bring the cerebral and often, commonplace, into the mainstream. While the last 40 years have seen OMD produce multiple charting records, break into America with Pretty in Pink‘s “If You Leave”, and more recently, record the critically acclaimed The Punishment of Luxury, it’s “Enola Gay” that most honestly captures the band’s triumphant legacy. (I find Drake particularly loathsome and unlistenable.“Enola Gay”, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s (OMD’s) wonderfully indulgent synthpop classic named after the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, has just turned 40. PE production: thin and cartoonish? Chuck D.'s flow a caricature? Alarmingly dated rap-rock fusion? Drake over Chuck? This youth is hopeless - forget about him. I'll gladly say thank-you, but given the choice, I'm going to blast Drake's infectiously triumphant mp3s every time Ultimately, I have no regrets leaving It Takes A Nation on what is now an entirely metaphorical shelf. 10 years ago, very few would have pointed to Toronto as a hub of hip-hop creativity. Two years ago, I wouldn't have even thought to give It Takes A Nation a listen, much less spend weeks processing and writing about my reaction to it. But what Public Enemy does offer me is the context to understand how much hip-hop - and I - have changed since our childhoods. I find myself more inclined to laugh than dance.Īs a whole, It Takes A Nation leaves me similarly perplexed. "Show 'Em" is, in its own way, a pleasant surprise: its ambient, referential construction reminds me more of eerie, nocturnal electronic music perfect for post-club comedowns – like that of UK dubstep producer Burial – than mainstream contemporary hip-hop.īut Public Enemy and I are on the same page only briefly: immediately following "Show 'Em" is the alarmingly dated rap-rock fusion of "She Watch Channel Zero?!" I simply cannot get past the bizarre, jolting juxtaposition of bludgeoning, Metallica-style guitar riffs and Flavor Flav's ebullient rhymes. and Flavor Flav's chopped chants to remind us that "freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitudes." Absent is any narrative development instead, faceless vocals crawl from beneath cobwebs of radio static and vinyl crackle to join Chuck D. I think it's telling that my favorite track on It Takes a Nation is "Show 'Em Whatcha Got," a short interlude with few lyrics.
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It's rough, rugged, built like a tank - and I'm coming at it expecting a Bentley. His syncopation strikes me as strange, foreign - and when he does reach for melody, like in the opening verses of "Night of the Living Baseheads," it ascends harshly like the bark of a drill sergeant. To me, Chuck D.'s legendary flow also comes across like a caricature. Chuck D.'s unvarnished vocals sit front and center in the mix, accompanied only by percussion that, to me, sounds thin and funk guitar samples that, frankly, I find cartoonish.
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".But when "Don't Believe the Hype" comes on, I'm disoriented - I know I'm listening to one of the most acclaimed rap records of all time, but nothing grabs me and sucks me in.