Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five 'The Message': It's like a jungle sometimes It makes me wonder how I keep from going under Broken glass everywher.Recognise the song that I am featuring in this Groovelines. Featuring alternating lead. 'The Message' was the first prominent hip hop song to provide a social commentary rather than the self-congratulatory boasting or party chants of earlier hip hop. It was released as a single by Sugar Hill Records on Jand was later featured on the groups first studio album, The Message. 'The Message' is a song by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
“It was the first dominant rap group with the most dominant MC saying something that meant something.” It was also the first song to tell, with hip-hop’s rhythmic and vocal force, the truth about modern inner-city life in America – you can hear its effect loud and clear on classic records by Jay-Z , Lil Wayne , N.W.A , the Notorious B.I.G. Music video for The Message by.“ The Message” was a total knock out of the park,” says Chuck D. But though The Message is credited to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Flash himself actually had nothing to do with the track.Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five: The Message: With Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Duke Bootee, Melle Mel. Rolling Stone ranked the song as number-one in their list of the best Hip-Hop tracks back in 2012:Grandmaster Flash began working with the Furious Five after 1977, a pairing that quickly attracted attention throughout New York City and moderate chart success with singles like 1980’s Freedom. Released in 1982 on the group’s debut album, The Message, this is a song worth getting deep over.
(Among other things, he invented the scratch.)In a 1983 interview, Flash claimed “The Message” showed that he and the Five “can speak things that have social significance and truth.” But when Flash and the Furious Five first heard Bootee’s original demo (a track the latter called “The Jungle”), they worried that hip-hop clubgoers would not dig the subject matter and slowed-down beat, unusual for an early rap record. He and the Furious Five had become the number-one DJ crew in the borough – pushing aside early pioneers like Kool Herc and Pete “DJ” Jones – with a mix of party-hearty showmanship and Flash’s groundbreaking turntable skills. There was a warning at the end of each verse: “Don’t push me, ’cause I’m close to the edge/I’m trying not to lose my head,” each word enunciated like a gunshot.Flash, born Joseph Saddler, grew up in a neighborhood that closely resembled the song: the South Bronx during the worst of the Seventies urban blight. Over seven minutes, atop a creeping rhythm closer to a Seventies P-Funk jam, rapper Melle Mel and co-writer Duke Bootee, a member of the Sugar Hill Records house band, traded lines and scenes of struggle and decay: drugs, prostitution, prison and the grim promise of an early death.
I have been listening to it when researching it for this feature. Their most notable reunion would finally come in 2007, when they became the first rap group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”.Like all classic records, it can make an impact now and has not lost any of its significance and power. Despite the credit on the record, Flash and the rest of the Five appeared only in a closing skit, in which they’re harassed and arrested by police.“The Message” was a commercial success, peaking at Number Four on Billboard‘s R&B-singles chart, but its messy birth was fatal to Flash and the Five, who split into factions.
Contrary to what the White House was saying or the news media were reporting, black and brown people were not just these unsavory characters addicted to drugs, crime, and unwedded pregnancies. In fact, Melle Mel admitted in an NPR interview that the group originally didn’t want to do the song because it wasn’t what they were used to rapping about.Thankfully, the group changed their mind: “The Message” went on to be one of the most influential songs of all time, and writer Cherese Jackson explained the reasons for its importance in a March 2019 article for Liberty Voice:The reality in 1982 was that millions from the projects in Brooklyn, New York to the ghettos of Watts in California were given very little in the way of choices or opportunities in how they could live. Fletcher, Melle Mel, Sylvia Robinson, and Clifton “Jiggs” Chase, “The Message” arrived when rap was still in its infancy as a musical genre (at least as far as mainstream audiences were concerned, anyway), but it nonetheless stood out from the pack by featuring lyrics which tackled a serious issue – inner city poverty – rather than being a bunch of self-congratulatory boasts. In 2019, Rhino spent some time outlining the importance of an iconic Hip-Hop record:“ Formally credited to Edward G. Maybe it was quite a bold and unusual record in 1982 but, looking back nearly forty years later, and one can see how it has shaped so many great Hip-Hop albums since!I love the background and story of The Message.
But in the long run, it doesn’t really even matter how it did on the charts. The UK, on the other hand, was far more receptive to the song, sending it to #18 on their singles chart. There was a story that needed to be heard, and hip-hop became the vehicle in which that was possible.Mind you, the chart success of “The Message” wasn’t nearly as impressive as its history would lead you to believe: while it climbed to #4 on the Billboard Hot Black Singles chart, it topped out at #62 on the Hot 100. But out of those concrete streets grew a restlessness that would not be quilled. Tucked away neatly out of the line of sight of America, the government could easily throw money, subsidized housing and food stamps at them in hopes they would kill themselves and keep it quiet. People who felt trapped in these inhumane circumstances were lamenting that life was not all good in the “hood.” The hood had become the place were dreams and people were forgotten.
I think that the Hip-Hop scene was fairly new then. One that everyone should seek out and spend some time with. In 2012 it was named the greatest hip-hop song of all time.It was voted #3 on About.com's Top 100 Rap Songs, after Common's "I Used to Love H.E.R." and The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight".In 2002, its first year of archival, it was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry, the first hip hop recording ever to receive this honor."The Message" was number 5 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop."The Message" is number 1 on HipHopGoldenAge's Top 100 Hip Hop Songs Of The 1980s”.I think that the album, The Message, is an incredible listen. It had the highest position for any 1980s release and was the highest ranking hip-hop song on the list. This Wikipedia article shows the song has been celebrated and honoured through the years:“ The song was ranked as number 1 "Track of the Year" for 1982 by NME.Rolling Stone ranked "The Message" #51 in its List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, (9 December 2004).
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