To quote a better man than myself ... and then someone turned on the sound.
Virtually all previous attempts to add to hip-hop's edge, its "lyrics of fury", with the aggression of rock, had seemed cheesily unfulfilling. Even Walk This Way '86, so significant at the time, now sounds contrived. Rebel Without A Pause didn't embrace the sonics of metal the way She Watch Channel Zero had, but it has the effect of all the best metal, just a parallel universe of metal which has been thought-out, planned, honed, not merely sonically but mentally. That, perhaps, is the best way into something as extraordinary as this. It makes you think that a piece of music - something which exists sonically, but by definition is not a physical presence in itself - can exist outside of vinyl or CD or MP3, can come alive and become the most important thing in your life as an entity, an object, an immovable force.
The key factor is Chuck D's tone of voice, and the way it plays with Flavor Flav's barely-suppressed pride as he claims that the audience is scared, afraid, terrified. There is not one ounce of sympathy or friendliness in Chuck's delivery, rather it's pure venom, vile, all the disgust he's just about managed to hide so far viciously spewing out. It's the utter hatred he puts into the pronounciation of "crime" and "time", the determination in "Smooth - not what I am / Rough - cause I'm a man", the revenge in "See the car keys - you'll never get these", the way he announces and introduces "Terminator X" with such force that you feel, no you know, that, relating to the lyrics of Prophets of Rage, had he met Margaret Thatcher in 1987, he'd have kicked her as viciously as was humanly possible (and as many of us directly affected by her policies desperately wanted to). And then, just when you think it's calmed down, completed, finished, fulfilled, the "Bring that beat back" sequence kicks in, and it's rushing and forcing and thrusting its way out, you're lost, beyond control, as though it would never end.
It's that kind of thing that matters. It's the sheer attention to detail and proud maximalism - everything honed to perfection, not one second wasted, and the closing jam curtailed before it goes on long enough to distort the concentrated fury of the track itself - that make it the greatest single of the 1980s.
As the peak of recorded sound in its decade, it naturally set impossible standards for its creators. Within the first two years of the 1990s, Public Enemy seemed to have exhausted themselves, had passed their peak, and been overhauled by an infinitely more nihilistic and less committed brand of hip-hop. The utter culture shock that Rebel Without A Pause held at the time has never been equalled, and perhaps the familiarisation brought on by globalising technology means it can never be again. These shouldn't be our priorities right now - let us simply look back in awe, and remember the moment when everything in the past seemed irrelevant, everything seemed as though it would have to start again, and Rebel Without A Pause seemed, however illusory, like a genuine instrument of revolution.
Robin Carmody, 14th August 2000
http://www.elidor.freeserve.co.uk/80s.htm