THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.

290-Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five featuring Melle Mel and Duke Bootee-The Message.

1982-Number 8 single.Best Bit-At 3.44. This is the song that changed Rap music forever. Before this song MC’s only told people to take to the dance floor, and put their hands in the air.

‘The Message’ was the first Hip-Hop song to provide a social commentary rather than the self congratulatory boasting, or party chants of earlier Hip-Hop. It’s influence cannot be stressed enough, as it paved the way for artists such as Public Enemy (see also best songs 578 and 37) and N.W.A., (see also best songs 564 and 128) In 2012 ‘Rolling Stone Magazine’ named the song the greatest Hip-Hop song of all time.

The original demo of ‘The Message’ was written in 1980 by Edward ‘Duke Bootee’ Fletcher (1951-2021) who at that time was employed as a songwriter at Sugar Hill Records. He took the demo which included his own Rap to Sylvia Robinson (1935-2011) (see also best songs 597-523-466-87 and 17) the co-founder of Sugar Hill Records, who asked Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five to record it, but they initially wanted nothing to do with it, Grandmaster Flash has said,’The subject matter wasn’t happy, It wasn’t no party s..t, it wasn’t even some real street s..t. We would laugh at it.’ With the group not wanting to record it Sylvia Robinson talked Melle Mel (see also best songs 523 and 85) of the Furious Five to perform the song with it’s writer ‘Duke Bootee. Grandmaster Flash then had a change of mind and wanted to record the track, but Robinson refused. The only input on the song from Grandmaster Flash, (see also best songs 87) or the other four members of the Furious Five is at the end of the song, where they do a skit about being arrested by the police while stood on a street corner minding their own business.

As well as writing the majority of the songs lyrics ‘Duke Bootee’ also wrote the music, which unlike many ‘Hip-Hop’ tracks at the time didn’t have an up-tempo ‘Disco’ beat. ‘The Message’ has a ‘slow groove,’ and a reverberated synthesizer hook. ‘Duke Bootee’ has said that he was influenced to write the music after hearing the songs ‘More Bounce to the Ounce’ by ‘Zapp’ from 1980, and ‘Genius of Love’ by ‘Tom Tom Club’ from 1981. The other songwriting credits on the song include Melle Mel who provided additional lyrics, and Clifton ‘Jiggs’ Chase, who was a producer at Sugar Hill Records, and also worked on this track, along with Sylvia Robinson.

‘A child is born with no state of mind, blind to the ways of mankind. God is smilin’ on you, but he’s frownin’ too, because only God knows what you’ll go through.’