A decade after they reinvented hip-hop, Public Enemy no longer bring the media noise the way they once did. But after a falling-out with their longtime label, Def Jam, P.E. are now once again wearing redwood-size chips on their shoulders. There's a Poison Goin On. . . . initially came out as an Internet-only release and rails against the usual cast of hapless subjects: the record industry, Uncle Sam, black radio stations, hip-hop itself. "I'm the reverse of jiggy/All that prettiness," human howitzer Chuck D spits on "Here I Go," while Flavor Flav, still the freshest second banana in hip-hop, ducks in and out like rope-a-dope Ali. Actually, there is some jigginess on this record: Chuck's sometimes self-righteous bitterness is tempered by R&B melodiousness on "World Tour Sessions." But the emphasis is on sparser, more spacious mixes — less claustrophobic and dizzying than Bomb Squad-era P.E., but still gripping. The stoner metal of "Do You Wanna Go Our Way???," the Last Poets-like agit-rap of "Crayola" and the cold-sweat horn bleats of "First the Sheep Next the Shepherd?" suggest that a little midlife crisis is just what P.E. needed.

“Let My Love Open the Door”

A peppy, hopeful love song, "Let My Love Open the Door" became a U. S. Top Ten hit for Pete Townshend in 1980, anchored by the kind of repeating synthesizer figures that he'd used in some of the Who's recordings in the previous decade. Although Townshend brushed the song off as "just a ditty" in Rolling Stone shortly after its release, in 1996 he revealed it was about love of the holiest sort. "It's supposed to be about the power of God's love," he remarked. "That when you're in difficulty, whether it's major or minor, God's love is always there for you."