The build up and release of Fear of a Black Planet was met with mixed responses from critics, because of accusations of anti-semitism and black supremacist ideology. An Entertainment Weekly review released the same month as the album’s release begins by dismissing uptight claims of anti-semitism, “As just about the entire Western world must know by now, Public Enemy are those unspeakable anti-Semitic rappers. Or are they?” (Sandow) The writer appears to be on Public Enemy’s side, citing evidence that the group fired Professor Griff, a member of the Bomb Squad, after he said, “Jews were the source of all the world’s evil.” “Welcome to the Terrordome” is also mentioned in multiple reviews as having anti-semitic language, noted in particular because it was one of the record’s lead-up singles. Chuck D appears to say that Jews crucified Jesus while also comparing himself to Christ, potentially angering more than one religious group in the process, but this is also the type of language Chuck D felt he had to use in order to get his messages heard. The line in question is also a bit ambiguous, “Crucifixion ain’t no fiction/ So-called chosen frozen/ Apology made to whoever pleases/ Still they got me like Jesus,” (he later claimed that the “so-called chosen” were critics, not Jewish people).

That Entertainment Weekly review goes on to give the record an “A-” review. That is until a post-script made after the review was published saying that Public Enemy sent EW a “1970 tract,” which references psychiatrist Frances Welsing, who said whites oppressed blacks, because they were compensating as the inferior race. Public Enemy clearly succeeded in riling up a white reporter who didn’t quite get what they were going for, and Chuck D’s real guiding philosophy on race is more clearly stated in his Spin interview with Frank Owen, “This black and white thing is a belief structure, not a physical reality. There is nobody on this planet who is 100 percent black or 100 percent white… The only reason that Public Enemy promote Afrocentricity and Back to Black is that we live under a structure that promotes whites.”

“Welcome to the Terrordome” caught headlines for its lyrics, but there may have been more making listeners anxious than just Chuck D’s bars. “Terrordome” starts with a fake-out. Its first three seconds sound like a celebratory big band romp, until it quickly transitions into a beat built on an alarm that falls slightly out of sync with the time signature, getting cut off before it finishes its natural loop. The Bomb Squad employs 16 different samples too, creating a dense, textured beat with breaks just before Chuck D hits the refrain, “welcome to the terrordome” (WhoSampled). The alarm beat repeats relentlessly, and nearly five and a half minutes of this and so many other disorienting vignettes—half a guitar riff here, incomprehensible female voices and laughs there, Flavor Flav scatting everywhere—creates a chaotic experience for the listener, as much in sound as in lyrical content. The Boston Phoenix’s Tim Riley compared the album to a courtroom where a black judge couldn’t control his angry black constituents, “Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet sounds like: an assault on American ‘justice,’ and language – with fear being the operative word.”