I posted a couple months ago about my recent ‘discovery’ of hiphop group Public Enemy. At this point I have 15 vinyl singles, 5 vinyl albums, a handful of CDs/cassettes and 3 sealed live VHS tapes. I try to only collect sealed or promo copies because those are much more rare than open/regular copies. My crown jewel so far is a good condition vinyl promo of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, which is widely regarded as one of the greatest hiphop albums ever.

I’ve picked up pretty much every album/song I’ve wanted so at this point I’m focusing purely on sealed and promo copies. Not sure when I’ll consider my collection complete, but that’s the fun of collecting. The ironic part about it? I don’t own anything that can play vinyl records, CDs, cassettes, or VHS.

Shown here is my growing collection of Public Enemy singles and promos.

I listen to many genres of music and while I’m generally knowledgeable about hiphop, I’m most familiar with rap released from the day I entered middle school to the time I stopped going to bars/clubs (so about 1998-2013). The only old-school hiphop I know well is NWA and its associated West Coast OG acts.

That changed a few months ago when I stumbled across the music video for Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” on YouTube. I’ve known about Public Enemy for years thanks to playing hundreds of hours of Tony Hawk 2, but I never sought out Public Enemy music so their catalogue never crossed my horizon. I was immediately amazed by the sampling, lyrics, and overall ingenuity of “Fight the Power”. It felt transcendent of time, as if simultaneously vintage and futuristic.

That started me down a Public Enemy rabbit hole. Although only a handful of songs speak to me, I regard the ones that do (“Fight the Power”, “Hazy Shade of Criminal”, “Welcome to the Terrordome”, “By the Time I Get to Arizona”, “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”) as musical masterpieces. I set out buying any singles and promos of these songs that I could find, keeping a special focus on buying sealed examples. I feel that singles celebrate a landmark achievement and deserve to stand on their own; plus, singles and promos are significantly more rare than albums.

Yeah boyeeee!