The Message (song)

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"The Message" can also refer to unrelated songs by Flotsam and Jetsam on the album Cuatro released on October 13, 1992 and by Styx on their Pieces of Eight album released in 1978.

"The Message" is an old school hip hop song released in 1982, performed by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. 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 (including most of the lyrics) was written by Sugar Hill songwriter Ed "Duke Bootee" Fletcher, and Flash was originally uninterested in recording it. Furious Five rapper Melle Mel was the only group member that contributed any lyrics to the final version of the song. (Chang, 178)

The song's signature synthesizer riff has been sampled by popular rap artists such as Ice Cube and Diddy. 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. Lyrics, such as "Broken glass everywhere" and "Keep my hand on my gun cuz they got me on the run", have also been used many times in hip hop songs by artists such as Talib Kweli and Snoop Dogg.

Rolling Stone ranked "The Message" #51 in its List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. 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 Message" was included as ingame radio music for the 2002 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. 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.

[edit] Music sample

The Message (sample) (file info) — play in browser (beta)
- Short sample of The Message, by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
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