Fear of A Black Planet - Content

Content

The opening track, "Contract on the World Love Jam", is a sound collage made up of samples, scratch cuts, and snippets recorded by Chuck D from radio stations and sound bites of interviews and commercials. The tension-building track introduces the album's dense, sample-based production. According to Chuck D, the song features "about forty-five to fifty voices" that interweave as part of an assertive sonic collage and underscore the album’s themes. "Incident at 66.6 FM", another collage that segues into "Welcome to the Terrordome", contains snippets from a radio call-in show interview of Chuck D and alludes to the media persecution perceived by Public Enemy. "Burn Hollywood Burn" assails the use of black stereotypes in movies, and "Who Stole the Soul?" condemns the record industry's exploitation of black recording artists and calls for reparations. "Revolutionary Generation" celebrates the strength and endurance of black women with lyrics related to black feminism, an unfamiliar topic in hip hop. It also addresses sexism within the black community and misogyny in hip hop culture.

The title track discusses racial classification and the root of White fear of African Americans, particularly racist concerns by some Whites over the effect of miscegenation. In the song, Chuck D argues that they should not worry as the original man was black and "white comes from black / No need to be confused". The song features a vocal sample of comedian and activist Dick Gregory: "Black man, black woman, black child / white man, black woman, black child?". "Pollywanacraka" also concerns interracial relations, including Blacks who leave their communities to marry wealthy Whites, and societal views of the matter: "This system had no wisdom / The devil split us in pairs / and taught us white is good, black is bad / and black and white is still too bad". Music writer Robert Christgau comments on Chuck D's performance and style on the track, "people keep bringing in Barry White or Isaac Hayes, but he's playing the pedagogue, not the love man, maybe some Reverend Ike figure". "Meet the G That Killed Me" features homophobic etiology and condemns homosexuality: "Man to man / I don't know if they can / From what I know / The parts don't fit". Written by hypeman Flavor Flav and Bomb Squad-producers Keith Shocklee and Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, "911 Is a Joke" features Flav as the main vocalist and criticizes the inadequacy of 9-1-1, the emergency telephone number used in the United States, and the lack of police response to emergency calls in predominantly African-American neighborhoods.

Songs such as "Fight the Power", "Power to the People", and "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" propose a response for African Americans to the issues criticized throughout the album. "Power to the People" has a tempo of approximately 125 beats per minute and elements of Miami bass, electro-boogie, and fast-paced Roland TR-808. Addressing their plight at the turn of the 1990s, "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" features cacophonic sound textures and a theme of unity among African Americans, with Chuck D preaching "Brothers that try to work it out / They get mad, revolt, revise, realize / They're superbad / Small chance a smart brother's gonna be a victim of his own circumstance". Richard Harrington of The Washington Post writes that songs such as "War at 33⅓" and "Fight the Power" "may sound like a call to ohms and arms, but they are really a call to action ('turn us loose and we shall overcome'), a message to conscience and a plea for unity ('move as team, never move alone,' both cautionary advice and game plan)". "War at 33⅓" has a theme of resistance and a 128 bpm-tempo, cited by Chuck D as "the fastest thing I've ever rapped to, rapping right on top of the beat".