It Takes Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back Analysis

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Music has been a tool for artists to communicate with the world of their values and views about their personal life and social problems. Hip hop in particular started out as a medium to convey the messages of the MC’s hardship in their personal lives. In the late 1980s, “protest music” started to boom with the emergence of Public Enemy, N.W.A., Rakim, KRS-one, Eric-B, and many more. Out of the many albums and music pieces dropped, Christopher R. Weingarten stated that Public Enemy’s It Takes Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is “the greatest anti-government record made.”(1) This statement isn’t surprising since it is one of the most prominent protest music and conscious hip hop that may be impossible to replicate ever again. While It Takes Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back wasn’t the only style of protest music, through its explicit lyrics spoken on behalf the African Americans about the societal discrimination and government oppression and its immensely creative beats through new musical techniques, the album informed the society of …show more content…

While there were other artists that performed protest music and tried to group the community into one, Public Enemy had the greatest impact by explicitly protesting but also educating the problems in society related to the African American community. This shouldn’t stop artists, such as Kendrick Lamar, Logic, Jay-Z, and more, to overcome It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by creating their own protest and conscious hip-hop music. After all, Chuck D wrote in “Rebel Without a Pause” that “no matter what the name – we’re all the same. Pieces – in one big chess

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