| There's a POISON Goin' On... | |
| Type: | Studio |
| Artist: | Public Enemy |
| Cover: | Pepoison.jpg |
| Released: | July 20, 1999 |
| Recorded: | 1998–1999 |
| Genre: | |
| Length: | 51:45 |
| Label: | Play It Again Sam, Atomic Pop |
| Producer: | Tom E. Hawk, Flavor Flav |
| Prev Title: | He Got Game |
| Prev Year: | 1998 |
| Next Title: | Revolverlution |
| Next Year: | 2002 |
There's a Poison Goin' On is the seventh studio album by American hip hop group Public Enemy, released July 20, 1999, on Atomic Pop Records in the United States. Its title is adapted from the title of Sly & the Family Stone's album There's a Riot Goin' On (1971). The album was originally made available via internet on May 18, 1999, via the now defunct Atomic Pop website.
In a positive review, Alternative Press said There's a Poison Goin' On worked "best as an eyes-closed, headphones on high-volume experience. It takes extremely seriously the idea that hip hop should be consciousness-altering music",[2] while Greg Kot wrote in Rolling Stone, "there is some jigginess on this record....the emphasis is on sparser, more spacious mixes- less claustrophobic and dizzying...but still gripping." The Wire deemed the album a comeback for Public Enemy and the group's most abrasive work since Fear of a Black Planet (1990).[3] Muzik found the music not only abrasive but also "defiant" and "provocative ... vintage PE, all the more welcome at a time when there had seemed to be no one left who was prepared to make rational, thoughtful, incisive hip-hop."[4] Robert Christgau was less enthusiastic in his consumer guide for The Village Voice, offering the one-line quip, "hating playas is fine, hating play amn't".[5] He cited "41:19" and "What What" as highlights and gave the album a one-star honorable mention, which indicated "a worthy effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well like".[6]
In June 1999, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) claimed that "Swindler's Lust" was "offensive", "outrageous", and "suggestive of age-old anti-Semitic themes and rhetoric". The organization sent a letter to Atomic Pop saying there were "classic anti-Semitic code words" and accusations toward "Jews for the plight of financially underprivileged Blacks" on the song, which was titled as a word play on the title of the 1993 Holocaust film Schindler’s List. The record label responded in a letter stating the song had "no anti-Semitic references".[7]