"Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" is a 1989 song by the American hip hop group Public Enemy from their second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. The song tells the story of a draft dodger who makes a prison escape. It is built on a high-pitched piano sample from the 1969 Isaac Hayes song "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" from the album "Hot Buttered Soul".

The vocals are done mostly by lead Public Enemy rapper Chuck D, with sidekick Flavor Flav appearing in between verses, seemingly speaking to Chuck over the phone. Flavor went to another room and did actually call the studio to achieve this effect.

In 1995, English trip hop musician Tricky released a cover version entitled "Black Steel", with Martina Topley-Bird performing the vocals backed by the techno-rock band FTV.

The song features a slower, more melodic beat in comparison to other songs from It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back but still remains highly chaotic. Aside from the aforementioned Hayes sample, the song samples "Little Green Apples" by The Escorts and "Living for the City" by Stevie Wonder.

The lines in the scratch breaks, "Now they got me in a cell" and "Death Row/What a brother knows", are samples from another song from the same album, "Bring The Noise".

The title and cover art of writer/director Bayer Mack's 2016 American documentary drama In the Hour of Chaos are influenced by Public Enemy's song.

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