Public Enemy

Apocalypse 91
Def Jam / Columbia, 1991

The video was unequivocal. Rapper Chuck D sang in a room of men in red berets loading semi-automatic rifles and using human cut-outs for target practice. Black-and-white images of riots, giant attack dogs mauling black protestors and police removing likenesses of Martin Luther King, Jr and Rosa Parks from a public bus were contrasted with those shown in colour, of the red berets storming a government building, poisoning a senator and strapping a bomb to the Governor of Arizona's motorcade. It ended with a reenactment of King's assassination and a shot of Chuck D setting off a detonator.

In 1983, assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr became just the third person to be honoured with a US federal holiday – after George Washington and Christopher Columbus. Four years later, incoming Arizona Governor Evan Mecham overturned approval of the holiday in the state as his first act in office. 'By The Time I Get To Arizona' was Public Enemy's reply. It was a sonic juggernaut in three parts. The first had a pummelling beat like waves rising and crashing in a storm, overlaid with a gospel choir. The second used cut-ups of crowds screaming and a noise like an air-raid siren.

Public Enemy were already famous when they released Apocalypse 91 and the controversial single 'By The Time...'. Their earlier albums It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back and Fear Of A Black Planet had turned the group into unofficial media spokesmen for civil rights activism in the US. But Apocalypse 91 would be their last as a coherent group: one or two years later, the band went on hiatus due in part to Flavor Flav's drug use (the one who wore a clock) and they never hit the same highs again.

'By The Time...' was the band's swansong, at least for their "classic" period. A richer, heavier and more lyrically-pointed extension of their earlier work, it stands today as the best five minutes of political hip-hop on record. Arizona voted to celebrate MLK Day in 1992, after the song created a furore and the National Football League threatened to move the Super Bowl. Public Enemy continued to boycott the state until late last year.