Greatest Misses

Sound DNA

• Hip-Hop
• Boom Bap

• gritty
• defiant
• political

About

Pressured by label execs to release a greatest hits package, the most acclaimed group in hip-hop history instead released what leader Chuck D calls “an anti-concept record”: a collection of unreleased tracks, remixes, and one live throwdown. A chapter-closing addendum to a legendary run of three platinum-selling albums, <i>Greatest Misses</i> gives life to a half-dozen underheralded songs that were never exactly hits to begin with. Most of the new music consists of sparse, deeply funky productions featuring the fingerprints of newest Bomb Squad member Gary “G-Wiz” Rinaldo, the rhythmic technician who helped evolve Public Enemy’s sound from sample-soaked pandemonium to a sturdy din of wails and hums. The lead single, “Hazy Shade of Criminal,” lopes along like a funk bomb equipped with air-raid sirens and square wheels, while the Flavor Flav solo song “Gett Off My Back” is a giddy anti-drug rap that’s part Parliament, part new jack swing. And “Air Hoodlum,” which predates Public Enemy’s work on Spike Lee’s basketball drama <i>He Got Game</i>, is a tale of how the sports industry chews up and spits out talented Black youth. The remixes on <i>Greatest Misses</i> connect the group’s 1980s-borne polemics to the sound of 1990s New York, most notably on “Louder Than a Bomb (JMJ Telephone Tap Groove),” in which the 1988 track is rebooted as a grimy, subterranean piece of 1990s hardcore by Run-D.M.C.’s Jam Master Jay and Chyskillz. Elsewhere, “Who Stole the Soul? (Sir Jinx Stolen Souled Out Reparation Mixx),” the Ice Cube producer turns the 1990 song into a moment of vintage Bomb Squad-style chaos, while newcomer Damon Dollars makes the 1987 anti-crack song “Megablast” appropriately hazy.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits