1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 508. Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five – The Message (1982)

Hip-hop has entered the chat.  

From this early, old school hip-hop, the origins in funk are clear – there's a lot owed to the likes of George Clinton and Sly Stone with their edgier take on the genre in the soundscape. She’s Fresh is replete with funky slap bass (courtesy of Doug Wimbish), but this also introduces the idea of the “crew” - not only the “Grandmasters” Flash (Joseph Saddler) and Melle Mel (Melvin Glover), but also Kidd Creole (not to be confused with August “Kid Creole” Darnell, or the Elvis song King Creole), Keef Cowboy, Scorpio, and Rahiem all as co-vocalists – taking it in turns for lines in the rap sections.  

Sampling also features large – if you’ve been listening along with this list you’ll spot the sample from Tom Tom Club’s Genius Of Love in the second track It’s Nasty. This track also gives us that hip-hop staple where the crew members take it in turns to boast about themselves as musicians - “Grandmaster Flash Is willin' and able / He's the king of the cuts on two turntables” and sexual prowess “We advertise, and specialize, in the exercise / That will energize the young lady's thighs”. I mentioned before how bands like Deep Purple and Iron Maiden established the sound of hard rock and heavy metal, to the extent that they became cliches. This album feels the same for hip-hop – the lyrics are still very much of the “My name is [X] and I’m here to say...” style, but that’s because at this stage they hadn’t been co-opted by all and sundry. 

Scorpio is a bit of electro, a kind of early techno that sounds like Daft Punk covering a George Clinton song with robotic voice effects and funky synth patterns. There’s some scratching in It’s A Shame that features a sample from Mt. Airy Groove by Pieces Of A Dream – you'll recognise it when you hear it even if (like me, not being utterly steeped in R&B) the track or band name doesn’t ring any bells. And talking of which, both Dreamin’ (dedicated to Stevie Wonder) and You Are (a kind of religious love song) are both classic bits of soul/R&B that could be by Wonder himself, or the likes of Al Greene or Marvin Gaye, kind of a surprise on this album and definitely not very “urban” in style. I guess the group are trying to demonstrate their range and, I have to say, they do it pretty well.  

Of course, it’s The Message that we’ve all come for - “It’s like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under”, a gritty excoriation of urban deprivation that pretty much describes the same mix of boredom, disenfranchisement, unsavoury environs, and crime that Paul Weller does in Going Underground, only from a Black American perspective rather than a White British one. Same shit, different place. 

The UK release has the extra track, The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel, which showcases Saddler and the techniques of scratching and mixing – you will recognise bits of Blondie, Chic, Queen, Incredible Bongo Band, and assorted others. By modern standards it seems a bit crude and disjointed, more so than the sampling techniques employed by Eno and Byrne, but consider that Eno and Byrne were collating things in production, while Saddler was dropping samples live using three turntables to crossfade and backspin - something that the wider audience had not been exposed to by this point, and showing the skill in turntablism.