Everything about The Message Song totally explained
"The Message" is an
old school hip hop song by
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released in 1982. The song's lyrics were some of the first in the genre of rap to talk about the struggles and the frustrations of living in the
ghetto. The song was written by Sugar Hill session musician Ed "Duke Bootee" Fletcher and Furious Five MC
Melle Mel. Flash and the other members of The Furious Five, although credited on the record, were uninterested in recording the song and are not found on the finished record.
The song's signature
synthesizer riff has been sampled by popular
rap artists such as
Ice Cube on "
Check Yo Self",
Puff Daddy on "
Can't Nobody Hold Me Down" and
Ahmad on "Only If You Want It." The song's chorus of "Don't push me 'cuz I'm close to the edge" has become one of the most well known choruses in rap music history. Lyrics from the song have also been used (albeit with varying degrees of alteration) many times in hip hop songs by artists such as
Akon, Andre Nickatina ("Jungle" and "The Stress Factor"),
AZ ("Sunshine"),
Mos Def ("Close Edge"),
Talib Kweli ("Broken Glass"),
Snoop Dogg ("
2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted", "Gangbangin 101"),
Coolio ("County Line"),
Mickey Avalon ("Waiting To Die"),
dead prez ("Psychology") and
Ice Cube ("
Check Yo Self") .
Rolling Stone ranked "The Message" #51 in its
List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (the highest placing for any song released in the 1980s, and highest ranking hip-hop song on the list). It was also voted #3 on the
100 Greatest Rap Songs
, after
I Used to Love H.E.R. and
Rapper's Delight. In 2002, it was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the
Library of Congress to be added to the
National Recording Registry, the first Hip Hop recording ever to receive this honor. It was even used in a British Government commissioned
public information film on road safety.
The word "pissing", which is said at the start of the song, was censored in the video version, by blanking it out.
"The Message" was included as ingame radio music for the 2002 video game and the 2006 video game, an adaption of the 1983 film. For the
MTV-produced
compilation album Lit Riffs: The Soundtrack in 2004, the band
Katsu supplied a stripped-down
cover version of "The Message". It also appears in the film
Happy Feet. The second and last verse of the song are sung by
Mushroomhead in the song "Born of Desire" off their
XX album. Additionally,
The Madow Brothers have parodied this song with dental lyrics for their dental seminars. American singer-songwriter
Willy Mason also covered this song for BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge on the 25th of February 2005.
In 2007, the 25th anniversary of "The Message",
Melle Mel changed the spelling of his first name to Mele Mel and released "M3 - The New Message" as the first single to his first ever solo album, "Muscles". 2007 is also the year that
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five became the first
hip-hop act ever to be inducted into The
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
It was sampled in the song 'Magic Spells' by the
Toronto based
chiptune-band
Crystal Castles
Further Information
Get more info on 'The Message Song'.
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