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The World of Rap—Grand
Master Flash & The Furious Five
BoL -- Music
Commentary by Mtume & Kalamu ya Salaam
I thought I was
finished with the “city” theme, but over the past
weekend I started thinking about a tetralogy* of city
songs from the world of rap. All four prominently
feature legendary hip-hop MC Melle Mel and all four are
about Melle Mel’s hometown – and the birthplace of rap
music — New York City. These songs have fascinating
histories, so let’s break them down in chronological
order.
1. Grand Master Flash & The Furious Five feat.
Melle Mel & Duke Bootee – “The Message” – Originally
released as a 12” single (Sugar Hill, 1982); Available
on
Message From Beat Street: The Best Of Grandmaster Flash,
Melle Mel & The Furious Five (Rhino, 1994)
This record is credited to “Grandmaster Flash &
The Furious Five,” so it’s natural to assume that it’s
performed by – oh, I don’t know – Grandmaster Flash &
The Furious Five. It isn’t. The principal creative force
behind one of the greatest songs in the history of
recorded rap wasn’t (and still isn’t) particularly well
known and wasn’t even a rapper.
Back in the early Eighties, a guy named Edward
Fletcher was the percussionist for the Sugar Hill Gang
(of “Rapper’s Delight” fame). Working on his own, he
came up with a percussion-heavy groove (a Last
Poets-sounding workout that would eventually become the
backing track for “The Message”) and a hook to go along
with it (“It’s like a jungle sometimes / It makes me
wonder how I keep from going under”). Edward brought the
track to his boss, the head of Sugar Hill Records,
Sylvia Robinson. Sylvia thought it had hit potential and
therefore decided to record it. That’s about all anyone
can agree on. The rest of the story is murky.
To hear Sylvia tell it, she re-arranged, added on to,
co-wrote and produced it, along the way encouraging,
convincing and coercing a reluctant Ed Fletcher and
Melle Mel into participating in the final product. (A
representative example of that version of the story is
available here.)
Of course, that isn’t the story I heard. Straight
from the horse’s mouth (or one of them, at least) I was
told that Ed Fletcher showed up in the studio with “The
Message” virtually complete – lyrics, vocals and backing
track. The only problem was, the conga-heavy track
coupled with Ed’s prosaic style of talk-rapping made the
demo sound more like spoken word than hip-hop. Despite
that, Sylvia Robinson thought “The Message” could be
big. Sylvia gets a lot of grief for underpaying her
artists, and rightfully so, but one thing everyone
agrees on is her business acumen and her ear for a hit.
Everyone I’ve spoken to on the subject says (or admits)
that Sylvia is the one person at Sugar Hill who was
convinced “The Message” would be big. Strangely enough,
she wanted to release it as a Grandmaster Flash record,
this despite the fact that neither Flash nor his five
MCs had anything to do thus far with creating the song.
Further complicating matters, Grandmaster Flash
himself was quickly becoming persona non grata
around the Sugar Hill studios. To understand why, we
have to stand back a minute. Flash was one of the most
famous and certainly the most skillful of all the
pre-record era hip-hop DJs. But once rap music moved to
the recording studio, house bands took the place of the
DJ. Flash was left jobless. Sylvia couldn’t just give
Flash the boot though – she needed his name. She also
needed his old park routines. What she began to do was
remake Flash’s old music by having her in-house band
re-play the breaks Flash used when he performed live.
Then, Flash’s MCs would perform their lyrics over the
newly-recorded tracks. Oftentimes, Flash wasn’t even in
the recording studio when the band was replaying his
mixes or when his MCs were laying down vocals for the
records that would end up bearing his name.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, none of the six
members of the band were getting paid royalties. If they
got paid anything, it seemed to be on a ‘per complaint’
basis. Flash and his MCs usually received somewhere
between $500 and $1,000 per track, and that’s if they
got anything at all. This includes numerous records that
sold in the hundreds of thousands and at least one that
went gold. (When it comes to Sugar Hill, specific and
creditable sales figures are hard to come by. Not
unintentionally either.) In part because they were
getting short-changed for recorded output, the band made
most of their money from live performances. Of course,
they promptly wasted almost all of it on motorcycles,
cars, clothes and, of course, drugs – lots and lots of
drugs. (On at least one occasion they were paid for a
nightclub performance in cocaine instead of money.)
Needless to say, feelings were hurt and relationships
were strained. The lawsuits and breakups were virtually
inevitable.
But back to “The Message.” In order to pull off the
switch and make a hit out of what was essentially a demo
by the Sugar Hill Gang’s percussionist, Sylvia Robinson
knew she had to get at least one member of Grandmaster
Flash’s MCs on the record. The only problem was, none of
them was interested.
There’s one famous quote by Melle Mel where he says, “No
one wants to take their problems to a disco.” And the
other four members of the Furious Five didn’t like Ed
Fletcher’s demo any more than Mel did. Make that the
other five members – Flash wasn’t going to be on the
record anyway (he didn’t rap and aside from the epochal
“The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash,” scratching simply
wasn’t done on wax back then) but he agreed with his
MCs, “The Message” was a disaster waiting to happen.
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five was a party group
and hip-hop was party music. A hip-hop jam was about
temporarily escaping from the harsh reality of life in
the urban ghettos. Who the hell wanted to party to
reality?
The turning point came when one of the Furious
Five realized that Mel had already done a “message rap”
of sorts. The Furious Five’s first record was a
sprawling jam named “Superrappin’” that was released in
1979 on Bobby Robinson’s (no relation to Sylvia) Enjoy
label. Near the end of “Superrappin’,” Mel launches into
a long, narrative-style rap that begins, “A child is
born….” It’s a brilliant bit of lyrics – in just one
verse it encapsulates the hopes, dreams, struggles and
ultimate failure of one ghetto child turned man. You’d
have to listen closely to even catch what Mel is saying
though. The lyrics are buried between more commonplace
lines about partying, making lots of money, seducing the
ladies and being an all-around great guy. And even if
you catch the lyrics, you might still be unimpressed
because Mel performs the verse in an almost breathless
jumble, as if he’s trying to get it over with as quickly
as possible. Before “Superrappin’,” no one had ever
performed a so-called “message rap.” Melle Mel may have
been breaking new ground but he doesn’t sound
particularly comfortable doing it.
Ultimately, Sylvia decided to go ahead with the
recording. Melle Mel and Ed Fletcher performed Ed’s
lyrics; the Sugar Hill house band came up with a
re-arranged and modernized version of Ed’s track (along
with a spooky and sinister keyboard line that was added
in later); and Mel ended the record with his verse from
“Superrappin’.” When it was finally released, the record
was billed as “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash & The
Furious Five featuring Melle Mel and Duke Bootee. “Duke
Bootee” is Ed Fletcher.
2. Melle Mel & Duke Bootee – “Message II
(Survival)” – Originally released as a 12” single (Sugar
Hill, 1982); Available on
Message From Beat Street: The Best Of Grandmaster Flash,
Melle Mel & The Furious Five (Rhino, 1994)
It’s easy to wonder today how Grandmaster Flash
and the Furious Five MCs could have been so off-base
about the hit-potential of what eventually became their
signature song. Part of the answer to that question is
these six pioneers were still coming to grips with their
music being recorded at all! For them, hip-hop was live
music, club music, park music. And not just that, it
wasn’t really even music, per se. I’ve talked to Old
School MCs, DJs and b-boys (dancers) who said they never
thought they were “doing” anything and they never called
what they did “music.” They’d say, “We’re going to the
jam” or “Let’s do our thing.” And then they’d do it. The
names given to the participants reflect the ambivalence
– this was no orchestrated “scene” or “happening.”
People were just doing their thing.
MCs were called MCs because the guy with the
microphone at a party or event is the “master of
ceremonies,” the MC. The DJ is the disc jockey, the guy
who plays the records. B-boys were “break boys,” the
guys who could dance the best when the DJ played the
“breaks” – the funky bits of drum, bass guitar and
percussion that frequently show up on Seventies funk,
soul and jazz records. Once MCs started talking over the
music, it was called “rapping” only because that was an
already-existing slang for talking. There’s a phrase
you’ll hear a lot in Old School hip-hop: “rapping to the
beat.” All it meant was, talking over a rhythm. The
point I’m trying to make is: none of this was planned.
Most of the terms that we now think of as being
“hip-hop” were already around. Rapping, DJ, MC,
break-boy (or b-boy for short) – those were all
references to things that already existed. When it comes
to hip-hop (and really, black music in general), asking
who invented what is to miss the point.
With all of that in mind, it’s easier to understand
Flash and the MCs’ reluctance to record a “serious” rap
record. In less than three years, they’d gone from being
the kings of the party scene, local heroes, ghetto
superstars, to suddenly recording and selling hundreds
and hundreds of thousands of copies of their old park
routines. They were flying around the world, performing
in countries they’d never heard of, seeing sights they’d
never imagined, and yet they were barely even adults –
all of them were still in their late teens and early
twenties. (At the ripe old age of 24, Flash was the
elder statesmen of the group.) When they came back from
their tours, they’d go back to the same ghetto tenements
where they’d lived with their mothers before they became
famous. It had to be a crazy life, something like
watching one’s self live a fantasy/nightmare from which
their was no waking up.
As soon as “The Message” hit big – which was
immediately after its release – the search was on for
another record just like it. Luckily for Sylvia
Robinson, an MC named Spoonie G who she’d recently lured
from Enjoy (the same label that Flash and The Five began
on) was working on a message rap of his own. He called
it “Survival.” His record was modeled after “The
Message” – it had a half-chanted refrain just like its
predecessor and the lyrics had a similar feel as well.
(The refrain was important because it gave non-hardcore
fans something easy to remember and simple to “sing”
along too.)
In the wake of the success of “The Message,” Spoonie
knew he had something major on his own hands. The only
problem was, it was becoming more and more obvious to
everyone involved that the artists at Sugar Hill simply
weren’t getting paid. Spoonie knew this first hand; he’d
already recorded several local and regional hits with
Sugar Hill. Along the way he’d learned that he wasn’t
going to get rich (or even financially stable) via
Sylvia Robinson’s company no matter how many records he
sold. The money simply never made its way down to the
artist. The bottom line is, Spoonie wanted out.
Unfortunately, he’d been so eager to join Sugar
Hill that he’d signed a horrible contract, one that
basically gave Sylvia and Co. the complete rights to
anything he recorded or wrote for several years to come.
Perhaps Spoonie could’ve held out or tried to sue to
gain his release from the label, but you have to
remember, in a confrontation between a well-established
record company and a young, inexperienced artist, the
record company holds almost all of the cards. In short,
Spoonie agreed to give up the rights to his new message
song in return for a release from his contract.
Hoping to strike gold twice, Sylvia quickly tapped Mel
and Ed to re-record Spoonie’s lyrics in the same style
that they’d done on “The Message.” The tactic worked.
Released later in the same year as the song that
inspired it, “Message II (Survival)” by Melle Mel & Duke
Bootee hit the airwaves hard, becoming an immediate hit.
Of course, it helped that “Survival” sounded like a
virtual extension of the massively popular “The
Message.” At the end of the new record, Melle Mel even
reprised the first few bars of his “child his born” rap,
making “Message II (Survival)” the third recording in
less than three years that featured those same lyrics.
Next week, more on the strange behind-the-scenes goings
on at Sugar Hill Records and two more classic message
raps featuring Melle Mel.
—Mtume
ya Salaam
* Notice how I threw
that word in there as if it’s part of my normal
vocabulary? I actually just learned it today. A
tetralogy is a series of four related dramatic,
operatic, or literary works.
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The Art of Rap
Once upon a time in a faraway land named for a
powerful woman (or so the story goes), a land of eternal
sunshine, of both mountains and beaches, green valleys
and productive farm land, a land at the end of the new
world where one could find a new life; once upon a time
a young man crashed through the cotton curtain of the
Deep South, the murky morass of Louisiana swamps and
bayous and went to this new land. By day (and sometimes
by night) the young man drove trucks to support his
family but in his heart lived the spirit of a writer.
And because this ‘once upon a time’ young man was
interested in (‘interested’?—no, he was damn near
obsessed with) the new music called “rap,” the young man
began to study the music. He read nearly everything that
was written, he tracked down many of the founding
fathers (& even a few mothers) and interviewed them.
This young man undertook a mission.
The far away land was California. The daring young man
is Mtume ya Salaam. And the mission was a book to be
called: The Art of Rap—the goal was to write a history
of recorded rap.
Mtume, bit by bit, it would be good if you would go on
and drop The Art of Rap.
Folks, what we have with this look at “The Message,” is
a mere morsel, a teaser, perhaps even a trailer for The
Art of Rap. Mtume, I encourage you to share what you
have. It may never be finished to your satisfaction, but
even in its present state, The Art of Rap would greatly
aid our enlightenment.
If, like me, BoL fans want to read more of Mtume writing
about rap, please hit Mtume an email at:
mtume_s@yahoo.com
—Kalamu ya Salaam
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