Muse Sick‐N‐Hour Mess Age

A long-misunderstood entry in Public Enemy’s decades-spanning catalogue, <i>Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age</i> captures the band’s brilliant hybridisation of organic instruments and hip-hop production. The result? A groove machine that rages like a raised fist, but funks like the Mothership. Chuck D and Flavor Flav are at their confrontational best on the back-to-back shot of “What Side You On?” and “Bedlam 13:13” (“Good enough to know no indo/Threw it out the window along with the Super Nintendo”). But the real stars are the gang vocals—equal parts Panther party and house party—and the propulsive, heavy-footed live drums of Nathaniel Townsley III. “Hitler Day”, a scathing takedown of the Columbus holiday, is a rap-rock rager that emerged right at the dawn of nu metal, while “Give It Up”—built off a shimmering piece of 1960s Stax soul—became the band’s first and only Top 40 pop hit. But the real pleasure of <i>Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age</i> is hearing Public Enemy getting loose and almost <i>jammy</i> at times—this is the album that finds the hardest working punk band in hip-hop getting closer to the funk breaks they once sampled. “What Kind of Power We Got?” is a long and strong hip-hop remake of James Brown’s “Soul Power”, with Chuck D playing Bobby Byrd to the always irrepressible Flavor Flav. And “Live and Undrugged, Pt. 1 & 2” takes the form of one of Brown’s own 45s: The first three-and-half minutes consist of hard rhyming before the track turns into a dizzying swarm of ad-libs, vamps and Terminator X scratch flurries. The sounds on <i>Mess Age</i> predicted the success of “alternative hip-hop” groups like the Fugees and the Black Eyed Peas. And its bold anti-gangsta-rap stance—as evidence by songs like “So Whatcha Gone Do Now?”—would later be picked up by true-school-minded underground rappers of the late 1990s. <i>Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age</i> was panned in its day by music critics expecting more scattergun samples and hard-nosed fury, but time has revealed what the P.E. faithful have known all along: The funkiest Public Enemy record is a slept-on classic.