Thursday, September 24, 2020

Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five - The Message (1982 Hip Hop video with selected comments)



UPROXX Video, Nov 24, 2011

Statistics as of September 24, 2020 at 10:42 PM ET
Total # of views - 
5,068,241
Total # of likes - 46K
Total # of dislikes - 787
Total # of comments - 1,827

This video's summary:
From the 1982 Album: "The Message"...
DJ Grandmaster Flash and his group the Furious Five were hip-hop's greatest innovators, transcending the genre's party-music origins to explore the full scope of its lyrical and sonic horizons. Flash was born Joseph Saddler in Barbados on January 1, 1958; he began spinning records as teen growing up in the Bronx, performing live at area dances and block parties. By age 19, while attending technical school courses in electronics during the day, he was also spinning on the local disco circuit; over time, he developed a series of groundbreaking techniques including "cutting" (moving between tracks exactly on the beat), "back-spinning" (manually turning records to repeat brief snippets of sound), and "phasing" (manipulating turntable speeds) — in short, creating the basic vocabulary which DJs continue to follow even today. Flash did not begin collaborating with rappers until around 1977, first teaming with the legendary Kurtis Blow. He then began working with the Furious Five — rappers Melle Mel (Melvin Glover), Cowboy (Keith Wiggins), Kid Creole (Nathaniel Glover), Mr. Ness aka Scorpio (Eddie Morris), and Rahiem (Guy Williams); the group quickly became legendary throughout New York City, attracting notice not only for Flash's unrivalled skills as a DJ but also for the Five's masterful rapping, most notable for their signature trading and blending of lyrics. Despite their local popularity, they did not record until after the Sugarhill Gang's smash "Rapper's Delight" proved the existence of a market for hip-hop releases"... **** Here's an excerpt from the summary of another YouTube video of this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrsPhMGN1f4&ab_channel=reelblack

reelblack, June 3, 2020
"Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was an American hip hop group formed in the South Bronx of New York City in 1978.... The group's use of turntablism, break-beat DJing, and conscious lyricism were significant in the early development of hip hop music.
In the late 1970s, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five built their reputation and achieved local success by performing at parties and live shows. By 1980, the group had signed with Sugar Hill Records. Under Sugar Hill Records, the group rose to prominence in the early 1980s with their first hit "Freedom". It was not until the release of the song "The Message" in 1982 and the album of the same name that they achieved mainstream success. The song provided a political and social commentary and went on to become a driving force behind conscious hip-hop....
-snip-
Click https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/grandmasterflashandthefuriousfive/themessage.html for the complete lyrics for Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five's hit Hip Hop track "The Message".

**** Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post showcases a YouTube video of the 1982 Hip Hop track "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five. Comments from that video's discussion are also included in this post. The content of this post is presented for socio-cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes. All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five for their cultural legacy. Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publisher of this video on YouTube. -snip- Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2015/02/youtube-comments-about-grandmaster.html for a 2015 pancocojams post about this Hip Hop track. That post includes some comments from two other YouTube examples of this track.

**** SELECTED COMMENTS FROM THE DISCUSSION THREAD FOR THIS EMBEDDED VIDEO (with numbers added for referencing purposes only)

2014 1. bobafettfan32 "32 years and people still don't get The Message." ** 2. JakeYencikMusic "this is so much better than the stuff they call hip hop now.

It's putting so much meaning and power into each line and it's not all about sex money and drugs." ** 3. /home/gligar13 "You better check yo self before you wreck yo self!" **** 2015 4. Dj Roxanne

"This was THE JAM in my early years.. motor city skating..

this some george clinton, Sugar hill Gang,Nucleas , dazz band.. my friday night.. and right now damn! shit is more real then when i was a kid.. Dont push me cuz im close to the edge.. more so then ever!!" ** 5. Kali West "Coming up in the hood loving hip-hop I didn't know anything

about these guys. Now that I'm older I pay homage by going back and listening to their music, DOPE. They're just as important as 2Pac, Eazy, BIG, Dr.Dre, Rakim and Jay-Z. Take a listen." ** 6. Tarantulisimo "It's actually "Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 7" when it comes to this song/video. All the rapping is done by Melle Mel & Duke Bootee, but Duke Bootee isn't in the video -- Rahiem lip-syncs to his verses. And the 7th member who appears in the video & on the album cover is Flashes sidekick DJ EZ Mike...." ** 7. Vee Owens "Hip Hop Hall of Fame!"

** REPLY 8. G Force, 2020 "Rep's first super group. 

They were the beginning and the end and Mele Mel was the Alpha and Omega of mc''s.  U want more history funky four fantastic five treacherous three cold crush four. Rayvon and Johnny Wah Mike and Dave and the Crash Crew Jazzy 5 I could go on and on naming pioneers but I will stop there.  Do some googling" **
9. B. Scott Farthingsworth "I grew up not far from here in the '70s and this was reality. Roller rinks turned discotheques, which turned into clubs to see rap, rock, and all live music. Even then, this white boy hard rock guitarist KNEW this stuff was tite. Todays rap is unlistenable to me. Especially when we had Kurtis, Sugarhill, RUN-DMC, KRS, early De La Soul... c'mon. Today's stuff is all about cursing, guns, 'get mine'. Selfish, violent and disrespectful messages that do nothing for the community but keep it down. The rap community now has the most ultimate power to do what's right and step up, and bring a new positive message for all. The ones I mentioned didn't need to talk $#!+ to get a record deal. Bring back what we lost, and that is what we worked so hard to build from the '60s into the '70s (and the '80s killed it dead). What did we

ALL lose? Sadly, I'll tell you:

THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. ** 10. Erika Buzzell "Hip-Hop From New York To Now Playlist: Grandmaster Flash and

the Furious Five hailed from South Bronx. The group was exclusively composed of black young adults from age 16 to 20 all born and raised in the city, except Joseph Saddler whose family migrated to the Bronx from the West Indies early in his life. This song depicts many aspects of their home borough including the appearance of the broken-down, razed buildings; the living conditions within the apartment buildings people found themselves stuck living in due to lack of monetary ability to move out including rats, cockroaches, junkies around the perimeter of the building, and odors in the stairways; the career of prostitution that young girls struggling to “make it on [their] own” fell into; and the cycle of poverty. " ** 11. Sandrine Deshayes "When rap was real and there was a message behind it." ** 12. Geechee flow98 "To all the people that see this post ..if you grew up in NYC

in the 70s 80s 90s and you survived ..rejoice in the fact that you survived ..for better or worse we survived ..pure out a little liquor for the peeps that didn't survive may they rest in peace.." ** 13. Nicolas McPeake "This song changed my life. I remember listening to it in my

kitchen putting the dishes away. I was like 10 or 12, and I couldn't stop listening. The beat, and the stories blew me away... Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat... I've known the lyrics to this song for most of my life..." ** 14. wendell patillo "I remember when they first started I was there from ground

zero my name easy dell that's right I rock well that message is the real talk of rap let's get them their props" ** 15. pat man "those were my days painting trains walls running wild

thought theyd never end hearing this makes me feel old no wait i am old lol" ** 16. Valmont Moore "Rolling stones magazine rated this the best rap song ever,

it is in my book also as the best rap song ever."

**** 2016 17. David Anaya "Dam 80's were great..TIna Marie, Rick James, Patrice Rushen,

Whodini, Run DMC, Grandmaster Flash, Kano, Cameo and the rest.." ** 18. Saiyanshanze13 "The memories...can't be defined or explained.See...I was a

b-boy and was 14 when this came out" Sad that the words...are as applicable today as they were

back then

** 19. Byron "When lyrics came from the soul, that last verse is so dope." ** 20. GreaterGood510 "Last verse killed it the most" ** 21. Chris Donald "Listen to that last verse..... smh, so true" ** 22. **** [This is this commenter's screen name] "I definitely remember "the Message". I took a lotta heat for listening to this in '82 in central Illinois in the small town that I lived in. Bad enough that I was American Indian but, to be listening to "ghetto music" at the same was just too much for the mostly white high school that I attended. Hip hop wasn't cool there, yet." ** 23. Dingo D. Manhunter "This may be considered one of the first rap songs but i am

hearing some great funk." ** REPLY 24. Josh Starks "Blues Jazz Soul Funk Hip-Hop. Everything is connected in the grand scheme.

**

REPLY 25. Adam Moreira "+Dingo D. Manhunter In the idea of telling a story, this is

generally considered the first rap song." ** REPLY 26. Dingo D. Manhunter "@Adam Moreira If you hear some late hendrix(band of gypsies), or any funk bands from the late 60's and early 60's you will hear songs that tell stories and talk about the same subject matter. Machine Gun by Hendrix for example is a haunting war song. This song is pretty much the pointwhere funk, jazz and blues were all combined to make a new genre."

**

REPLY 27. Arkadia Moon

"+Dingo D. Manhunter That's for people who like drawing

bright lines, but this was something more wonderful than that … not really funk anymore, it was this new thing and people were working out what this new thing was and what they could do with it. That's always a great time, when people are purely being creative and expressive and the money-men haven't figured out how to control it and make bank off of it." ** REPLY 28. Freddie B in tha place 2 be "where do you think rap got its start?" ** REPLY 29. gael bourdier "+Dingo D. Manhunter Sugarhill Gang Rapper's Delight" ** REPLY 30. Nate TheDaddy "+Adam Moreira - Naw, there were plenty, this isn't even

their first song.   Most others were just really low printed and underground.  They had tons of rappers in these days, they were just performing at parties instead of putting out actual albums and touring." ** REPLY 31. Saiyanshanze13 "Rap is a part of an entire sub culture called Hip Hop

Technically its roots are as most black music is...African.

Hip hop was a lot more than just rapping band spitting lyrics.

There's a whole untold..or seldom if ever told...story and history behind our music" ** REPLY 32. Harden Thicke, 2017 "it isn't considered the first rap song, but it did influence

conscious rap. others call it "alternative" rap." ** REPLY 33. NKA23, 2018 "That´s how early rap songs sounded like. People tried to

sound like a mix of funk bands and Kraftwerk." ** REPLY 34. Alan Geoghegan, 2018 "'Rapper's Delight' was 2 years earlier, though even so, 'The

Message' is unsurpassed and an original."

** 35. RellyOhBoy "And that was really how the South Bronx looked back then.

Hated & Loved it all at the same time." ** REPLY 36. Perivale225 "+RellyOhBoy So true but not just the South Bronx.   Lived in Springfield Gardens and went to Andrew Jackson HS in Cambria Heights and this was common there too.  Open lots with weeds dumped with trash, shady people doing stuff in back alleys and crack vials all over the place.  Didn't think much of it then as a teenager but this video shows how depressed NYC was in the 80's. A time capsule as to how rundown it was.

** REPLY 37. RellyOhBoy "+Miss Perivale Indeed... Queens was the same way. Everything

is flipped and we now have to worry about gentrification." ** REPLY 38. Adam Moreira, 2018 "A lot of East New York as well."

**** 39. Home Boy "I was a little kid the first time I heard this song. I thought

is was amazing, beyond cool! I remember all the B-boys breaking to it in the streets. Such a great song and an amazing message!"

**** 2017

40. Charleston .Chad " "Don't push me cause I'm close to the edge, I'm trying

not to lose my head" "

**
REPLY 41. Amaury Yeet "Charleston .Chad It's like a jungle sometimes,it makes me

wonder how I keep going under" ** 42. chitsb "Nothing. Nothing has changed. It is still a jungle out there

:( " ** REPLY 43. 🅒🅞🅝🅢🅟🅘🅡🅐🅒🅨, 2019 "Nah gentrification changed many of those communities like

NYC while places like Detroit and Flint have gotten far, far worse." ** REPLY 44. ym2612, 2020 "When the cops come and arrest them for no reason at the

end... nothing has changed." ** 45. Robert Peters "The song may be a couple years older than I am, but I remember hearing it for years on the radio in Detroit during my childhood.  It's a timeless classic and a great example of what hip-hop used to be." **** 2018 46. Mystique Ufo Pirate "I remember buying this on cassette and I got in a lot of

trouble for having it. my parents were die hard country western fans. I hid it in a crawl space outside my house. It was winter time and I put my coat on, popped conway twitty in my Walkman and went outside and grabbed the cassette from my hiding space and sat in a snow bank listening to this many times lol ahhh memories lol" -snip- This commenter’s photograph is of a White woman. In response to a question she wrote that she was 37 years old.
** 47. agAnica "it is really interesting for me how the life in NY and Usa

looked like back then. i grew up in the eastern Europe and we knew America only from the movies selected by the government. Those pictures differed from the Message- i had no idea back then that there was so much poverty and crime in the Usa. The land seemed to be heaven on earth. With years the imagination of Usa changed but lately thank to the internet I could get to know about origins of hip hop and grafitti and see the real picture of NY." **** 2019 48. Jon Spikes "REAL RAP MUSIC HERE 👍👍💯" ** 49. Alan Byrd "When this first came out and you heard the "Broken glass everywhere" you knew it was on. Then after hearing the final verse the Rap game grew up right there at that moment.  As did most of us." ** 50. justin justin "One of the Greatest rap song message ever. It also saddens

me that what they rapped about still happens to us black folks many many decades later.

The system is so systemic and engineered against us black people."

****

2020

51. Divine Righteous "0:07 THAT'S HOW IT WAS BACK IN THE DAYS BROTHERS WALKING

DOWN THE STREET WITH A BIG RADIO PLAYING MUSIC" ** 52. HerePhishyPhishy "This song opened a huge door as previous to this it was mostly bubble gum rap which was fun and great and still love it but this told a real street story. 

FF a few years NWA, PE exploded and it was game on.

** 53. AJP 0203 "How did the world go from this to mumble rap🤔???" **** Thanks for visiting pancocojams.

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