For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday theme, Jim Adams has given us hip-hop/rap music. I really don’t listen to or know much about hip-hop/rap music, so I found a site, Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs of All Time. I scrolled to the number one song, a song I never heard before, and decided to feature it here. The song is “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
“The Message” was released as a single by Sugar Hill Records on July 1, 1982, and was later featured on Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s debut studio album of the same name. Written by Clifton “Jiggs” Chase, Edward “Duke Bootee” Fletcher, Melle Mel, and Sylvia Robinson, it was an early prominent hip-hop song to provide social commentary. The song’s lyrics describe the stress of inner-city poverty. In the final verses a child born in the ghetto without perspective in life is lured away into crime, for which he is jailed until he commits suicide in his cell. The song ends with a brief skit in which the band members are arrested for no clear reason.
According to Songfacts, “The Message” changed rap music’s tone and content forever. With its hard-boiled chorus (“It’s like a jungle sometimes / It makes me wonder how I keep from going under.”) and unflinching observation of the perils and anxieties of contemporary urban life, “The Message” pushed hip-hop records away from their early emphasis on party anthems and empty braggadocio and toward the fearless social commentary that has dominated many of the form’s most important recordings since.
Ed “Duke Bootee” Fletcher, who was a staff songwriter as Sugarhill Records, started writing this song on a piano in his mother’s basement in 1980. He made a demo of the song with his own raps and took it to label boss Sylvia Robinson, who asked Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five to record it. Flash would later speak of the song as a landmark in the evolution of rap, but he and the group wanted nothing to do with the song at the time, and even ridiculed it when he heard the demo. “The subject matter wasn’t happy. It wasn’t no party shit. It wasn’t even some real street shit. We would laugh at it,” said Flash.
With the band balking at recording the song, Robinson decided to record it with the group’s rapper Melle Mel trading verses with Fletcher. At this point, Flash asked Robinson to let the entire group perform on the track, but she refused. Melle added some additional lyrics to the song as well.
“The Message” was named the Greatest Hip Hop song of all time in a 2012 list compiled by experts for Rolling Stone. The magazine said it was the first track, “to tell, with hip-hop’s rhythmic and vocal force, the truth about modern inner-city life in America.”
Here are the lyrics to “The Message.”
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
Broken glass everywhere
People pissin' on the stairs, you know they just don't care
I can't take the smell, can't take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat
I tried to get away but I couldn't get far
'Cause a man with a tow truck repossessed my car
Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head, ha-ha-ha-ha
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
Standin' on the front stoop, hangin' out the window
Watchin' all the cars go by, roarin' as the breezes blow
Crazy lady, livin' in a bag
Eatin' outta garbage pails, used to be a fag hag
Said she'll dance the tango, skip the light fandango
A Zircon princess seemed to lost her senses
Down at the peep show watchin' all the creeps
So she can tell her stories to the girls back home
She went to the city and got so-so siditty
She had to get a pimp, she couldn't make it on her own
Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head, ha-ha-ha-ha
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
My brother's doin' bad, stole my mother's TV
Says she watches too much, it's just not healthy
All My Children in the daytime, Dallas at night
Can't even see the game or the Sugar Ray fight
The bill collectors, they ring my phone
And scare my wife when I'm not home
Got a bum education, double-digit inflation
Can't take the train to the job, there's a strike at the station
Neon King Kong standin' on my back
Can't stop to turn around, broke my sacroiliac
A mid-range migraine, cancered membrane
Sometimes I think I'm goin' insane
I swear I might hijack a plane
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 goin' under
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
My son said, "Daddy, I don't wanna go to school
'Cause the teacher's a jerk, he must think I'm a fool"
And all the kids smoke reefer, I think it'd be cheaper
If I just got a job, learned to be a street sweeper
Or dance to the beat, shuffle my feet
Wear a shirt and tie and run with the creeps
'Cause it's all about money, ain't a damn thing funny
You got to have a con in this land of milk and honey
They pushed that girl in front of the train
Took her to the doctor, sewed her arm on again
Stabbed that man right in his heart
Gave him a transplant for a brand new start
I can't walk through the park 'cause it's crazy after dark
Keep my hand on my gun 'cause they got me on the run
I feel like a outlaw, broke my last glass jaw
Hear them say, "You want some more?"
Livin' on a see-saw
Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head, say what?
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
A child is born with no state of mind
Blind to the ways of mankind
God is smilin' on you but he's frownin' too
Because only God knows what you'll go through
You'll grow in the ghetto livin' second-rate
And your eyes will sing a song called deep hate
The places you play and where you stay
Looks like one great big alleyway
You'll admire all the number-book takers
Thugs, pimps and pushers and the big money-makers
Drivin' big cars, spendin' twenties and tens
And you'll wanna grow up to be just like them
Huh, smugglers, scramblers, burglars, gamblers
Pickpocket peddlers, even panhandlers
You say I'm cool, huh, I'm no fool
But then you wind up droppin' outta high school
Now you're unemployed, all non-void
Walkin' round like you're Pretty Boy Floyd
Turned stick-up kid, but look what you done did
Got sent up for a eight-year bid
Now your manhood is took and you're a Maytag
Spend the next two years as a undercover fag
Bein' used and abused to serve like hell
'Til one day, you was found hung dead in the cell
It was plain to see that your life was lost
You was cold and your body swung back and forth
But now your eyes sing the sad, sad song
Of how you lived so fast and died so young
So don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head, ha-ha-ha-ha
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under, ha-ha-ha-ha
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under, ha-ha-ha-ha