Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos

"Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos"
Single by Public Enemy
from the album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
A-side	"Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos"
B-side	"B-Side Wins Again"
Released	January 6, 1989
Recorded	1988
Genre	Hip hop, Political hip hop
Length	6:01 (single) 6:23 (album) "B-Side Wins Again": 3:49
Label	Def Jam
Songwriter(s)	Carl Ridenhour Hank Shocklee Eric "Vietnam" Sadler William Drayton
Producer(s)	The Bomb Squad
Public Enemy singles chronology
"Night of the Living Baseheads" (1988) "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" (1989) "Fight the Power" (1989)

"Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" is a song on the American hip hop group Public Enemy's 1988 album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. It was released as a single in 1989.^[1] The song tells the story of a conscientious objector who makes a prison escape. It is built on a high-pitched piano sample from Isaac Hayes' "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic", from 1969's Hot Buttered Soul.