The Bomb Squad was, as its name implied, explosive. Core members Hank
Shocklee, Keith Shocklee, Eric (Vietnam) Sadler, and Carl Ryder created unique, bombastic musical blasts often full of sirens, whistles, and other effects.
"We weren't looking for a sound, so to speak," says Hank Shocklee. "We were
looking for sonics, and through sonics we shaped an image. We wanted the music we were doing to be as visual as possible. Like when you hear thunder you have thunder in your mind and what it is - what it represents - its intrinsic meaning. Thunder has the feeling of disaster about to happen, destruction," says Shocklee.

"Also, we wanted [the music] to have color. the color of thunder is black and dark gray. We approached it that way, looking for music with emotion and color."

True rap-heads will be surprised to learn that, in creating Public Enemy's music, it was a rock'n'roll-edged sound the member of the Bomb Squad were seeking, not a rap or R&B edge.

"We wanted the same effects of rock'n'roll without using the instruments," explains Shocklee. "Groups like Metallica, Megadeth, and Guns N' Roses were using lots of glaring guitars, distortion and frequencies hovering around the same area. We looked for things that gave you that emotion and feel without actually using them."

Shocklee, the Bomb Squad's core, first got into production during the mid-'80s when he was asked to work on a song for an unknown rap group Chuck D was part of. A dance producer was recruited to produce the song.

"He said he knew hip-hop," Shocklee says of the dance producer. "We were like, 'We don't want no fuckin' 115 or 120 beats per minute.' We didn't want none of that. We wanted to do something that was 83 beats per minute and that was funky and hot and would get play on the streets. That's the vibe we were
looking for."

With that in mind, Shocklee figured he should take over the production, and he called in Sadler. "I wanted him to organize the samples, and then we kept working together."

Though the record was a failure, entrepreneurs Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin [see entry] of Def Jam took notice and commissioned the group to do a 12-inch record; and with that money, Shocklee and crew stretched it out into several songs. Those tracks, which cost a mere $12,000, would become 1987's Yo! Bum Rush the Show, the first Public Enemy album.

The production crew, however, did not become known as the Bomb Squad until It Takes a Nation of Millions. "Before, we were together to fulfill a specific mission," says Shocklee. "Then we perfected that level. The beauty of what we were doing . . . we pushed the envelope, using techniques like filtering, the way we truncated samples, and we didn't sequence anything. Everything was played freehand. We wanted the feel of the non-exactness, so to speak."