Kid A by Radiohead

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

Public Enemy

The heralding of hip-hop’s arrival as a radical, political art form.

By 1988, hip-hop was already a decade and a half old. Still, even as certain artists or groups made great strides in breaking through industry barriers and into the mainstream consciousness, the genre remained largely misunderstood. Thankfully, Public Enemy was ready, willing, and able to take on that fight. Dogmatic MC Chuck D and rapping hype man Flavor Flav had already delivered a devastating opening salvo with 1987’s unambiguously confrontational debut Yo! Bum Rush the Show, putting Black nationalist politics and imagery at the forefront.

By comparison, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back felt like a veritable firebombing—a rap blitzkrieg led by a boisterous lyricist with a defiantly militant mindset. That revolutionary energy was palpable on “Bring the Noise” and “Don’t Believe the Hype,” seminal songs with hooks that sounded more like marching orders. Even further down the tracklist, cuts like “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” and “Rebel Without a Pause” hit as hard as what came before, the messaging as provocative and righteous as any on the album.

“It’s still relevant to the climate today. It meant that no matter whatever happens in life, can’t nothing hold us back.”

Flavor Flav

Public Enemy

Kid A

Radiohead

How do you follow up a revolutionary album? With an even more revolutionary one.

In the wake of 1997’s OK Computer, Thom Yorke had begun to resist the idea that he was in a rock band at all. Radiohead was, with some stress and shouting and madness, going to throw away the rules altogether; in turn, Kid A became their second revolutionary act in as many records.

“Every artist or musician will go through a period where you have to think again about what you’re doing.”

Thom Yorke

Radiohead

With its seasick sequences and Yorke’s multiplied vocal lines folding in and over and around one another like an Escher sketch, “Everything in Its Right Place” is both taunt and gambit—a little wink from the band that had gone from “Creep” to these so-called creepy sounds. That was simply the start. The demented bass and howling horns of “The National Anthem,” the operatic tremors of “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” the refracted guitars and babbling circuity of “In Limbo”: Radiohead found new space to explore on every track. Each was anchored to a hook—however obscured—before setting off into unfamiliar terrain.

Apple Music 100 Best Albums

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

Kid A