“The Message” by Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five

"The Message" hit the streets on Sugar Hill Records on July 1, 1982, and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five used it to yank rap off the dance floor and drop it on a cracked city sidewalk. Duke Bootee and Melle Mel had written it back in 1980, prompted by the New York City transit strike that year, and the credits also carry Clifton "Jiggs" Chase and Sylvia Robinson. The funny thing is the group didn't want to make it: Melle Mel later admitted they were used to party rhymes and bragging about how good they were.

What they cut instead was a grim report on inner-city poverty and the pressure it piles on, ending with a kid born with no way out who drifts into crime, prison and suicide, then a closing skit in which the group get arrested for nothing at all. It laid down the road Public Enemy and KRS-One would later march down.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.