That forced us to go out on the streets and make our own entertainment.”
Melle Mel, one of the most phonetically and rhythmically precise rappers in the genre – and the authoritatively deep voice who delivered the anti-cocaine rap “White Lines” – recalled the early days of hip-hop: “Disco was for adults, and they wouldn’t let the kids in. Grandmaster’s squadron of MCs expanded to include Kidd Creole, Melle Mel, Mr. Cowboy’s rousing exhortations, including now-familiar calls to party, like “Throw your hands in the air and wave ‘em like you just don’t care!,” became essential ingredients of the hip-hop experience. Flash worked briefly with Kurtis Blow, but Cowboy became the first MC to officially join Grandmaster Flash in what would become the Furious Five. Turntablists took it a step further by scratching and cutting records, focusing on “breaks” – what Flash described as “the short, climactic parts of the records that really grabbed me” - as a way of heightening musical excitement and creating something new.įlash’s days as a deejay date back to 1974, when he and other deejays who were too young to get into discos began playing at house parties and block parties in their South Bronx neighborhoods. Disco-era deejays like Pete “DJ” Jones, an early influence on Grandmaster Flash, spun records so that people could dance.
#GRANDMASTER FLASH AND THE FURIOUS FIVE BIOGRAPHY SERIES#
Formed in the South Bronx, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were one of the first rap posses, responsible for such masterpieces as “The Message,” “Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel” and “White Lines.” The combination of Grandmaster Flash’s turntable mastery and the Furious Five’s raps, which ranged from socially conscious to frivolously fun, made for a series of 12-inch records that forever altered the musical landscape.įlash, along with DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa, pioneered the art of break-beat deejaying – the process of remixing and thereby creating a new piece of music by playing vinyl records and turntables as if they were musical instruments. Grandmaster Flash (born Joseph Saddler) not only devised various techniques but also designed turntable and mixing equipment. Theirs was a pioneering union between one DJ and five rapping MCs. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five fomented the musical revolution known as hip-hop.
Ness/Scorpio (vocals born October 12, 1960) The Message remains as vital today as when it released 36 years ago, especially in Trump’s racist republic.Grandmaster Flash (turntables born January 1, 1958), Cowboy (vocals born September 20, 1960, died September 8, 1989), Kidd Creole (vocals born February 19, 1960), Melle Mel (vocals born May 15, 1961), Raheim (vocals born February 13, 1963), Mr. You got to have a con in this land of milk and honey. Wear a shirt and tie and run with the creeps It also taught you about the alienation of labour without dropping a heavy textbook on your dirty sneakers: The only thing that trickled down were the dregs, if you were lucky.
Unlike many protest songs, The Message didn’t preach, it just took you to the ghetto, showing how Reaganomics was for the rich. As the first socially conscious rap song, The Message laid the foundations for the political hip-hop of later generations. Hip-hop up till then had been aimed at your feet, but this brooding song nested in your head, made you think. It radically changed the direction of hip-hop from the party anthems of “put your hands in the air like you just don’t care” to “put your hands where I can see them, ’cause we cops don’t care (a fuck)”. Released on Sugar Hill Records, The Message was largely written by the label’s session musician and producer Ed Fletcher, and featured only one of the rappers of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five: Melle Mel. You’ll grow in the ghetto, living second-rateĪnd your eyes will sing a song called deep hate Got a bum education, double-digit inflationĪs the song progresses, the protagonist becomes more animated, agitated, losing his grip: His voice takes on an urgency as the tour takes a detour inward:ĭon’t push me ’cause I’m close to the edgeĪfter a mirthless, paranoid “Ha! Ha! Ha!”, he repeats: I tried to get away, but I couldn’t get farĬause a man with a tow truck repossessed my car. Rats in the front room, roaches in the back I can’t take the smell, can’t take the noise Those opening lines are delivered in the flat, world-weary voice of a man who’s seen too much.
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