"The Message" is released

Why it matters

July 1, 1982. Sugar Hill Records released "The Message" as a 12-inch single, credited to Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five. Two of the things you have probably heard about the song are true and one of them is not. True: "Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge" is one of the most quoted rap lyrics ever recorded. True: it is the first major rap record to use the genre to talk about, in detail and with specifics, what it was actually like to be Black and broke in early-80s New York. The not-true part: Grandmaster Flash had basically nothing to do with the recording. The song was written and rapped mostly by Melle Mel and a Sugar Hill house writer named Duke Bootee. Flash hated it. He thought rap was for parties. Flash was wrong about that. What "The Message" proved is that rap could be journalism. Every conscious-rap record that follows (Public Enemy, KRS-One, Tribe's social cuts, Nas's Illmatic, Kendrick Lamar's good kid m.A.A.d city, all of it) is downstream of this seven-minute Sugar Hill 12-inch.