Editor Reviews:

Amazon.com:
Maybe it's a concept album, but every odd numbered track on Apocalypse is incredible, while the even tracks fall apart or never come together at all. If you listen to the odds, you get PE breaking down issues facing African Americans almost to minutiae, outing everything from corporate sneaker pimps ("Shut Em Down") and 40oz. killers ("One Million Bottlebags") to a racially corrupt government ("By the Time I Get to Arizona"). And, thankfully, most of that dogma is couched inside PE's trademark air-raid drill noisematics so you can shake your ass while PE sublimates the gospel into your brain. Unfortunately, drop the odd tracks and you're listening to a sonically and lyrically inferior album. Suffer through Flav's reprehensible plea for martyrdom in "A Letter to the New York Post," or the inane and superfluous "Bring Tha Noize"--a co-op with Anthrax which takes rap-rock crossover back to a sad place, alongside Lou Reed's "Original (W)rapper". --Todd Levin

Rating : - Mis-step? Not a chance!
This one has the reputation as being Public Enemy's first in a line of albums with decreasing relevance and power. Maybe it's nostalgia talking, but I could hardly disagree more. While it's true that the lyrical content of this album is a bit less confrontational than it's two immediate predecessors, the difference is very slight. The actual music itself, however, has taken a major step forward.

Now that's not to say that Chuck D (far and away the best MC rap has ever seen), has turned soft. His targets are various and unfortunate, from slave owners to the New York Post (in his own words the "worst piece of paper on the East coast") to African American booze hounds to the entire state of Arizona!

Like I said before, the instrumental aspect has been stepped up a notch. The Bomb Squad's production has never been more urgent - check the siren (or is it a vacuum cleaner?) on "Lost at Birth" or the heavier-than-plutonium beat on "Shut Em Down". Somehow they also managed to incorporate more melody at the same time, as you might find yourself humming tracks like "By The Time I Get to Arizona" and "Can't Truss It" before you realize it. It's still noisy and antagonistic, but this time just about every track has a memorable quality even before you consider the lyrical pearls Chuck is casting at your feet.

Even Flava Flav is on fire here! Many would argue that he was at his best with "911 is a Joke", but my personal fave of his has gotta be "I Don't Wanna Be Called Yo N!g@". The last verse is a riot. And did anyone else notice his successful, though brief, attempt at singing on "Nighttrain"? He actually sounds good doing it too. If only he had gone further in that artistic direction instead of ending up with "Flavour of Love"... but that's just wishful thinking.

I really can't identify with the editorial reviewer's thesis all the even-numbered tracks are throwaways. Not only does one of this album's biggest singles and dopest tracks ("Can't Truss It") fall in to this category, so too does the version of "Bring the Noise" as performed with Anthrax, which he thinks "takes rap-rock crossover back to a sad place". I hadn't heard this song in well over 10 years until I saw a video clip on TV, and I was BLOWN AWAY at how heavy it sounded all these years later. Whatever you think of clowns like Limp Bizkit, this version of the song just steamrolls over all in it's path, especially considering it's time and place. I submit that this track (and not "Walk this Way") is what truly paved the way for Rage Against the Machine a year later.

So anyone who has even a passing interest in Public Enemy that hasn't heard this album yet needs to pick it up right now. Forget what the crtics tell you, *this* is their best, although the albums building up to it are truly essential as well.