Public Enemy's logo, a silhouette of a black man in a rifle's crosshairs. Release and promotion Yo! Bum Rush the Show was released on February 10, 1987, by Def Jam Recordings and Columbia Records. It was promoted with the release of two singles that year: "Public Enemy No. 1" in March and "You're Gonna Get Yours" in May. The album was largely ignored by radio programmers, including most African-American radio stations. On record charts, it reached the 125th position of the Billboard Top LPs and number 28 on the Top Black Albums in the United States. Jon Pareles reported in May 1987, however, that it had become one of hip hop's fastest selling records. By the following year, it had sold more than 300,000 copies in the US, and 400,000 by 1989. On October 3, 1994, the album was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America, indicating 500,000 units moved. Critical reception According to Robert Hilburn in 1988, Yo! Bum Rush the Show was widely acclaimed by critics. However, fellow music journalist Christopher R. Weingarten later recalled American critics were originally lukewarm to the album. In Chang's estimation, white journalists in particular strongly criticized Chuck D's pro-black nationalist sentiments. In a review published in The Village Voice under the title "Noise Annoys", John Leland avoided the group's politics entirely and simply found Chuck D boring, instead preferring the more entertaining rhymes of Flavor Flav. Fellow Village Voice critic Robert Christgau said the group has "literary chops—amid puns more Elvis Costello than Peter Tosh, their 'Megablast' is cutting anticrack narrative-propaganda--and they make something personal of rap's ranking minimalist groove." He found them lacking in levity, however, and complained that "Chuck D takes the bully-boy orotundity of his school of rap elocution into a realm of vocal self-involvement worthy of Pavarotti, Steve Perry, or the preacher at a Richard Pryor funeral." Pareles was more enthusiastic in The New York Times, hailing Yo! Bum Rush the Show as rap's "grittiest" full-length record. While still finding Public Enemy plagued by the "adolescent macho" he deemed prevalent in the genre, he said its songs are "far more convincing - and unsettling - when [Chuck] D takes on money and power", and concluded: "At a time when most rappers typecast themselves as comedy acts or party bands, Public Enemy's best moments promise something far more dangerous and subversive: realism." According to Chang, the album