Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five came out of the South Bronx and did more than almost anyone to teach hip-hop how to talk. Flash worked the turntables like an instrument, cutting and splicing breakbeats live, while Melle Mel, Kidd Creole, Keef Cowboy, Scorpio and Rahiem traded rhymes over the top. They built their name the hard way in the late 1970s, rocking parties and live shows, and by 1980 Sugar Hill Records had signed them.

The real breakthrough came with "The Message" and the album named after it. The song is a slow, menacing groove carrying hard-eyed political and social commentary instead of party boasts, and a whole school of conscious hip-hop grew out of it.

The group split into two camps in 1983, came back together briefly in 1987 for the original lineup's second album, On the Strength, and then broke up for good; Melle Mel and Scorpio carry on as Grandmaster's Furious Five. "The Message" was among the first 50 recordings the Library of Congress picked for the National Recording Registry in 2002, and in 2007 they became the first hip-hop group in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award followed in 2021.

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