Page 90 - Hi-Fi_News_-_December_2020 video

Meet the
MEET THE PRODUCERS Producers

BEHIND THE MUSIC WITH HI-FI NEWS & RECORD REVIEW

The Bomb Squad

In the last of our series celebrating the work of those masters behind the mixing desk,
Steve Sutherland tells the story of not one producer but a hip-hop production team
whose looping and layering of samples revolutionised the way records were made

n this particular point,
Chuck D is unequivocal. Public
‘Our sole intention was è Enemy
Oto destroy music’. The co-founder
record he’s talking about, released in and Grammy-
June 1988, is hip-hop giants Public nominated
Enemy’s second LP, It Takes A Nation producer Mr
Of Millions To Hold Us Back. Hank Shocklee
The ‘we’, as in ‘our’, is The Bomb in 2016
Squad, Public Enemy’s production
team: headed up by Mr Hank Promo
Shocklee and aided and abetted by ê shot of
his brother Keith, Chuck D himself Chuck D from
(sometimes credited as Carl Ryder), 2000 and
Eric ‘Vietnam’ Sadler and Gary G-Wiz. (inset) Public
With It Takes A Nation… The Bomb Enemy’s
Squad revolutionised hip-hop and It Takes A
the art of record production itself. Nation Of
Millions...
ON MESSAGE
Hank’s background was in Dj-ing and
radio around New York and, once
Chuck D and his college pal
Flavor Flav formed Spectrum
City, which morphed
into Public Enemy upon
their signing to Def Jam
records, Hank fell into
working with them
natural as breathing.
‘I’ve always been an
avid listener of music that
had a message’, he says. ‘When you’re listening to talk to Flav, he’s got a soundtrack
groups like Sly And The Family in his head. But for me, it was a
Stone and Bob Marley And The combination of things because,
Wailers and... Gil Scott Heron, you’re when I’m looking at music, I’m
listening to Marvin Gaye, you’re looking at it not in terms of what
listening to Stevie Wonder. Those one particular song gives me but
are records that were more than just what many songs have in common.’
records – they were soundtracks of
our lives. They were also statements PIECE WORK
of social issues and concerns. ‘So I would have to say that It Takes
‘That’s why I fell in love with A Nation… is Rastaman Vibration.
hip-hop, because I was always That it’s Gil-Scott Heron’s Winter
interested in cutting-edge music. In America. It’s Sly And The Family
I saw the emergence of this street Stone’s There’s A Riot Going On. It’s
music and it was teen-oriented.’ also Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
What Mr Shocklee did with his ‘It’s so many records and pieces
passion was in a different state from woven into each other in order to
ordinary once he hooked up with make that statement. And keep in
Chuck D and co. ‘Everybody has a mind, that statement was made
soundtrack in their head. When you without real instruments. It was one

talk to Chuck, he’s going to have of the first records that was made
a soundtrack in his head. If you strictly from other records.’

90 | www.hifi news.co.uk | DECEMBER 2020