It would not be too much of a stretch to call Public Enemy's third effort, Fear of A Black Planet, the Sgt. Pepper's of hip-hop.

Don't get me wrong. It's not a term a music critic should throw around lightly. Like five stars or "album of the year," it's the type of silver bullet any critic worth his or her salt saves for very few works.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band was the culmination of a musical movement up to the point of its release. At the same time, it exploded in a new direction no one else had conceived. It deflated rivals, famously causing one to have a nervous breakdown from which he never quite recovered. Everything, from the album cover to the band's outfits to, of course, the music itself, created a new universe for the album to exist in, complete with its own characters, vistas, sounds and emotions. In short, it was the greatest work its genre would ever produce.

I'm telling you this because I want you to understand the weight behind my earlier statement. Fear of A Black Planet is the Sgt. Pepper's of hip-hop. It's not only Public Enemy's greatest, grandest statement, it's hip-hop's as well.

It takes everything produced in rap up until its time (including Public Enemy's previous masterpiece, It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back) and synthesized it into a cohesive movement. Fear of A Black Planet is the collective conscious of an entire people at the time of its release. It touches on everything - race, sexuality, entertainment, war, disease, religion, philosophy, politics.

Frontman Chuck D is easily the greatest lyricist to come along since Dylan. With his booming voice, clipped phrasing and rapid-fire delivery, Chuck came on like a lyrical tommy gun, living every bit up to his billing as "the Lyrical Terrorist" in the album's liner notes. "When I get mad, I put it down on the pad / Give you something that you never had," he says on his musical manifesto, "Welcome to the Terrordome." It's no boast. Educated and extremely literate, Chuck D raised the bar for rappers everywhere.

At a time when gangsta rap was blossoming on the West Coast with its themes of sex, violence and power, Public Enemy presented a different message. On the album's opening track, "Brothers Gonna Work It Out," Chuck preaches "United we stand, yes divided we fall / Together we can stand tall," adding, "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."

That was just the tip of the iceberg. On Black Planet, P.E. comes down hard on everything from bad 911 response times in black neighborhoods to black men who abuse their women, skewering (often hilariously) popular notions along the way. ("Did you know white comes from black? No need to be confused," the band taunts on the title track.)

But as later albums would prove, as great as Chuck was, it was the music that underscored his message and gave it weight. Coming at you like a sonic hurricane, Black Planet attacks your senses from the get-go, bringing on air-raid sirens, shrieking guitar solos and severely dope beats. The Bomb Squad, P.E.'s legendary production team, layered sample upon sample, producing a full-sounding musical soundscape. No one in rap had accomplished this before. Up until the Bomb Squad, rap music consisted of sparse beats, scratches and samples.

The Bomb Squad's crowning glory was the fury with which these sounds assaulted you. Much like psychedelic bands in the '60s created soundtracks for an entire generation's experimentalism, the Bomb Squad somehow tapped into the black rage that was seething under America's surface in the late '80s and gave it a sound. Along with NWA's "Fuck Tha Police," Fear of A Black Planet anticipated early '90s L.A. riots based around the Rodney King beating.

Like any truly great sprawling album, Black Planet wasn't one-dimensional. The rage wasn't the whole story. The album was funky, smooth and imminently danceable. (I counted at least seven songs that sampled James Brown's "Funky Drummer" and another five that sampled "Sex Machine.") As much as a song like "War at 33 1/3" made you want to go out and tear shit up, songs such as "Revolutionary Generation" and "911 Is A Joke" made you want to throw your hands in the air like you just didn't care.

As a whole, the album built to soaring heights, presenting listeners with a minor masterpiece followed by interludes segueing into another minor masterpiece. (There's just too many to talk about in one review.)

Deep into the second side, the stakes are raised even further, beginning with DJ Terminator X's intense scratch-fest, "Leave This Off Your Fu*kin' Charts," slamming sample on top of sample. "B Side Wins Again" and "War at 33 1/3," are each more intense than the last, leave you feeling as if Public Enemy and their dance troupe-cum-security force, the S1Ws, are literally marching across your record player, ready to go to war with the evil, racist forces of the world.

And then they do.

"Fight the Power," originally included on the soundtrack to the Spike Lee film, "Do The Right Thing," revels in all its glory here. If one song can sum up this album, this is it. Just the rousing call to "Fight the powers that be" sends chills down your spine. "Music hittin' your heart cause I know you got soul," Chuck D anticipates a few verses before delivering whitebread America a crushing blow: "Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me / Straight up racist that sucker was simple and plain / Motherfuck him and John Wayne / Cause I'm black and I'm proud. / I'm ready and hyped plus I'm amped / Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps."

After that, what's really left to say?