Chuck D. scared the hell out of America’s white parents with lyrics that praised Louis Farrakhan and a delivery that made retributive black violence seem inevitable, rational and—egad!—cool. His deeply felt and commercially calculated radicalism was best expressed in “Bring the Noise” and “Rebel Without a Pause”, whip-smart, reference-filled songs saved from pretension by Flavor Flav, rap’s greatest hype man, who even makes the prison break in “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” seem like daffy fun. Producers Bill Stephney, Hank Shocklee, and Terminator X—known as The Bomb Squad—laced every track with siren-wails and funk explosives that ratcheted the tension ever higher.