Say what you will album the rise of full album performances, but this year's Pitchfork Fest was an excellent place to highlight Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back. Despite its Sgt. Pepper, Kind of Blue level impact on hip hop, kids who were too young to remember the late 80s/early 90s still underestimate the impact of It Takes a Nation. But unlike those previous albums, It Takes A Nation was not just a sign that hip-hop was a genre that was here to stay; it was also a political grenade thrown into the pop music world. As Pitchfork.tv and ATP's three part video series conveys, imagine telling a bunch of suburban white kids to dance to music praising of Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan because it's got a good beat.

The best part of this video series, though, is the intelligence, candor, and sharp understanding of the music industry and recording process shown by Chuck D and the Bomb Squad. Everyone invovled with Public Enemy was set on making purpose-driven pop music meant to incite reaction. It Takes a Nation had a brain and an ethos to match the mouth. Even this decade, where hip-hop has dominated the charts, we have yet to see a rap act reach the level of vitality that PE did all those years ago. We may never see it again.