The Breakdown (Part1) Public Enemy - Black Steel in The Hour of Chaos

The Breakdown Of A Classic (Public Enemy - Black Steel in The Hour of Chaos) From 1988's "It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back"(Download).

Public Enemy's -"Black Steel in The Hour Of Chaos"(Peep it) has long been my #1 hard body hip hop jam off all time. The lyrics to this gem are a prime example, not only of story-telling in rap, but of using a story to express political views, mainly about the prison system, war, and racism. This is the reason i personaly picked "Black Steel" as my #1 Hip Hop song of all time!!

THE BEAT

The song is built on a high-pitched piano sample from the Isaac Hayes song "Hyperbolicsyllabicseequedalymystic" (peep It) the jam also samples "Little Green Apples" (Peep it )by The Escorts and "Living for the City" (Peep it) by Stevie Wonder.



LYRICAL BREAKDOWN

The vocals are done mostly by Chuck D, with Flavor Flav appearing in between verses, speaking to Chuck over the phone. Flavor actually went to another room and did actually call the studio to achieve this effect.

The lyrics deal with a story bout the Vietnam war. Chuck D has been drafted ("I got a letter from the government, the other day / I opened and read it, it said they were suckers / they wanted me for their army or whatever") ; however, he refuses to become part of the army ("I said 'never!'"). The main idea behind this is that the war is wrong, and so is the treatment of Black people by American society ("here's a land that never gave a damn about a brother like me"). This serves to both criticize war, racism and the prison system ("4 of us packed in a cell like slaves").

Chuck is then taken to prison, which he attempts to escape from. "Black Steel" is a reference to a gun, which he needs to escape. By the end of the second verse, Chuck has taken a gun from a CO (corrections officer) who has "fallin' asleep".

With gat in hand, Chuck and the other prisoners escape "to the ghetto - no sell out". Chuck then comments on how there are 6 CO's who he "ought to put their head out". He does not, at first, but after a female tries to escape she is shot, ("Got a woman CO to call me a 'copter / She tried to get away, and I popped her"), presumably dead ("I had 6 COs, now it's 5 to go").

The final verse ends with Chuck and the rest of the prisoners on their final escape. They are confronted with shots and there is a state of chaos. Chuck makes a comment about prison and racism ("This is what I mean—an anti-nigger machine") , which later became the basis for another Public Enemy song, "Anti-Nigger Machine" (featured on the 1990 album, Fear of a Black Planet). Finally, the S1Ws come to the rescue. The song ends with the line "53 brothers on the run, and we are gone" indicating a successful prison escape. (However, in the video for the song, this line accompanies the image of Chuck D being hung by the warden of the prison.)Also peep Eric Sermon & Parrish Smith(EPMD) making a guest spot as a couple of prisoners in the vid.