Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five

“Hip, hop, hip, hop…” chants Keith “Cowboy” Wiggins, jokingly addressing his brother who was away in the army. The story goes that the term hip hop was essentially born from this very episode — from a healthy, spot-on bit of ribbing. It's the late Seventies, and Kool DJ Herc's break is already circulating widely through the streets of an increasingly rebellious Bronx, internally divided by countless turf wars. Cowboy, one of the liveliest MCs around, had recently been recruited by Joseph Saddler, aka Grandmaster Flash, the Barbadian-born disk-jockey who had moved with his family to New York, and the mastermind behind the first block parties — genuine neighborhood gatherings that sprang to life between 169th Street and Boston Road, powered by sound systems wired directly into the streetlights. These parties helped give voice to what would soon become the cradle of hip hop culture and of scratch as a musical expression. And it's precisely the memorable technique devised by Theodore Livingston, aka Grand Wizard Theodore, younger brother of that Mean Jean (a friend of Saddler's himself) who, thanks to his distinctive DJing, became one of the supreme mentors of the whole phenomenon, that effectively opened the doors to a new world.

Following them are the trusted Grandmaster Melle Mel, the first in history to call himself Master of Ceremonies (MC) and to give that name to the other members of the group, Kid Creole, Scorpio and Rahiem. The latter would join the already-existing Furious Four in 1978, thus giving birth to the definitive Furious Five. Their first single, "We Rap More Mellow", was released in 1979 under the name Younger Generation. It was followed by "Superappin'", the first track produced as Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, a cornerstone of the entire hip hop movement and a sublime fusion of cascading rhymes, funk, break-dance and the wildest disco music. 1980 brought "Freedom" and its irresistible flow of verses as brazen as they were irreverent, driven by a pulsing groove and syncopated bass, complete with jubilant horns and repeated calls to party. It was the prelude to the imminent LP — to what would, from that exact moment on, become the message to spread.

"The Message" came out in 1982 on Sylvia Robinson's Sugar Hill Records, the hottest Black-owned label of the moment, recently established thanks to the arrival of the global smash "Rapper's Delight" by the trio Sugarhill Gang, a track that still embodies one of the absolute touchstones of Black music. The opening line "I said a hip hop, a hippie, a hippie to the hip hip hop" and Bernard Edwards' sampled bassline from the equally famous "Good Times" by Chic would change the history of Black music forever, giving rise to one of its most enduring evolutions. That intuition was absorbed by the five furies and their grand manipulator Saddler, and enriched with elements drawn from the incendiary funk of James Brown as much as from the Studio 54-style disco music then raging right in the heart of the Big Apple, passing through deep Motown-rooted soul, George Clinton and the politically charged spoken-word of the master Gil Scott-Heron. A remarkably rich sonic puzzle, then, whose interlocking pieces would forever and definitively reveal the true essence of a scene that would reach its creative peak over the following decade through the various forefathers of the so-called old school — Run DMC, A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy.

Opening the festivities is the sparkling "She's Fresh". The introductory theme from "It's Just Begun" by the Jimmy Castor Bunch is masterfully reworked by Grandmaster Flash into a rhythmically fresher (fittingly enough) and more energetic version, before Boobie Knight's guitar solo, lifted from his "The Lovomaniacs", adds just the right jolt of electricity, intensifying the adrenaline rush even further, while the five furies trade hilarious one-liners ("That girl is fresh!") in a charmingly cheeky ritual. The festive, playful swagger of "It's Nasty", complete with a sample from "Genius of Love" by Tom Tom Club, carries on in the same vein, reaffirming the concept and a very precise identity to show off to the whole world ("He's Grandmaster, he cuts faster, we're the furious, serious, and ever so mysterious, five that's rockin' the house"). The cybernetic "Scorpio", meanwhile, anticipates by a couple of decades vocoder voices and rhythmic electrification in pure video-game style.

The call "Yo Flash. This time cut it mellow!" sets the mood for "It's a Shame", essentially a breaking-style rework of the Spinners' song of the same name, originally written by Stevie Wonder, Syreeta Wright and Lee Garrett, and featuring extracts from "Mt. Airy Groove" by Pieces of a Dream. At its core, soulful cadences and far more relaxed atmospheres prevail instead, confirming the group's marked ability to alternate street-level dynamism with loving, chamber-room relaxation. Not by chance, "Dreamin'" is an outright unconditional tribute to Stevie Wonder himself, whose name is repeated over and over ("Stevie, Stevie, that's why (That's why)/ when we dream of you (Dreamin')/we believe anything that you see") and openly idolized in the famous line "Cause he's the greatest!". The track was written collaboratively and precedes "You Are", its twin track, just as melodically syrupy and Wonder-esque.

"The Message" would be the album's third single, but in fact its most significant one. This time, Grandmaster Flash uses just a single vocal interpolation, drawn among other things from that same "Superappin'" already hailed as a beacon of the fledgling rap universe, expertly calibrating a pulsing, penetrating bassline framed by an ecstatic, thoroughly floating keyboard. The lyrics and arrangement are credited to Sugar Hill producer and rapper Edward G. Fletcher, aka Duke Bootee, and Melle Mel himself. The words are a merciless indictment of the deplorable state of their neighborhood, and would go on to become the first politically and socially engaged piece of hip hop writing (with the exception of Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", which nonetheless has an entirely distinct "metre"). And lines like "Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge/ I'm trying not to lose my head/ it's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under" remain, to this day, gospel for thousands of rappers around the world.

It is, essentially, the first real moment of self-awareness for a musical genre that, from here on, would begin to broaden its horizons, elevating itself from a mere sonic phenomenon to a philosophy of thought. From a purely musical standpoint, however, it's the bonus track added that same year for the UK market, "The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel", that embodies the quintessence of cutting (splicing tracks beat by beat), phasing (slowing down or speeding up a record's rotation as needed) and the stylistic inventions credited solely to the supreme Grandmaster Flash, such as the collage of instrumental breaks (ancestor of sampling) and backspinning (the art of spinning a record backwards to repeat entire phrases).

Barely seven minutes in which basslines, rhythm sections, vocals, riffs and multiple elements are cut up, filtered and stitched back together from "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen, "Rapture" by Blondie, the already mentioned and exploited "Good Times" by Chic, "Apache" by the Incredible Bongo Band, "Life Story" by the Hellers, "The Decoys of Ming the Merciless" by Jackson Beck, "Monster Jam" by Spoonie Gee and The Sequence, and the various "The Birthday Party" and "Freedom" by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five themselves. An unsurpassable Black collage that would set a benchmark and define an era, not only within the hip-hop scene but across the entire vast universe of DJing.

*bonus track initially included only for the UK market

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07/12/2014