THE ARTS | Reshaping ideas, expressing identity
29 July 2008
The Message
Rap classic depicts life on the hard streets
(The following is excerpted from the U.S. Department of State publication, American Popular Music.)
Performed by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, “The Message” (1982) established an influential trend in rap: social realism. “The Message” is a grim portrait of life in New York City’s South Bronx section. On top of the stark, cold electronic groove Grandmaster Flash intones the rap’s hook:
It’s like a jungle sometimes, makes me
wonder how I keep from goin’ under
The sudden sound of glass shattering introduces a rhythmically complex and carefully articulated performance that alternates the smooth, slyly humorous style of Grandmaster Flash with the edgy, frustrated tone of MC Melle Mel:
Don’t push me ‘cause I’m close to the edge
I’m tryin’ not to lose my head
Ah huh huh huh huh
The two MCs time their performances with great precision, compressing and stretching the spaces between words, and creating polyrhythms against the steady musical pulse. The lyric alternates between the humorous wordplay typical of hip-hop MC performances and images of desperation. The relationship between the grim reality of ghetto life and the tough-minded humor that is its antidote is summed up by Melle Mel’s humorless quasi- laugh: “Ah huh huh huh huh.” The second half of “The Message” paints a chilling picture of the life of a child born into poverty in the South Bronx, followed by the sound of the Furious Five meeting on a street corner. A police car screeches up and officers emerge, barking orders at the young black men. “What are you, a gang?” one of the policemen shouts. “Nah, man, we’re with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.” Flash enters from one side to defend his friends: “Officer, officer, what’s the problem?” “You’re the problem,” the cop shouts back, “get in the car!” We hear the car driving away with the Furious Five in custody, arrested evidently for the crime of assembling on a street corner, and the track “fades to black.”
A whole stream of rap music can be traced from this gritty record, ranging from the political raps of KRS-One and Public Enemy to the “gangsta” style of Los Angeles MCs like N.W.A., Snoop Doggy Dogg, and 2Pac Shakur. As the first gritty description of life in the nation’s urban ghettos of the 1980s to achieve wide commercial circulation, “The Message” established canons of realness and street credibility still vitally important to rap musicians and audiences.
[This article is excerpted from American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3 by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman, published by Oxford University Press, copyright (2003, 2007), and offered in an abridged edition by the Bureau of International Information Programs.]
