Public Enemy

American hip-hop group from Long Island who created the most politically charged music of the hip-hop golden age — It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) being the defining political rap album — through Chuck D's rhetorical intensity and The Bomb Squad's dense sonic collage.

Expanded hip-hop's artistic ambition beyond party music and street narratives — creating a political and sonic complexity that made it an art form taken seriously by music critics and cultural theorists — and establishing that hip-hop could carry the weight of serious political commentary.