I used to open his closets and just watch all the records he had. He still thinks that he has the stronger collection.
In an interview, he reflected: “My father was a very heavy record collector. Like me, as a child, Saddler was fascinated by his father’s record collection. Joseph Saddler’s parents came from Barbados and his father was a big fan of Caribbean and black American records. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, becoming the first hip hop/rap artists to be so honored. Joseph Saddler (born January 1, 1958), better known as Grandmaster Flash, is an American hip hop recording artist and DJ-one of the pioneers of hip-hop DJing, cutting, and mixing. I was super pumped when my roommate brought this home for me! I tend to love more hip hop and rap, while my dad was picky about beats and a lack of swearing (especially as we hit the gangster rap era). I know I’ll have tons of singles from the 80s, but the 90s are where I’m going to really need to focus when trying to fill gaps before hitting music from the 2000s. I’ve been trying to pick up more 80s and 90s albums, but they’re a bit hard to find locally and I don’t really know how I feel about ordering online. was also the only hip hop act to perform at Live Aid in 1985.
There was a story that needed to be heard, and hip-hop became the vehicle in which that was possible. But out of those concrete streets grew a restlessness that would not be quilled. Tucked away neatly out of the line of sight of America, the government could easily throw money, subsidized housing and food stamps at them in hopes they would kill themselves and keep it quiet. People who felt trapped in these inhumane circumstances were lamenting that life was not all good in the “hood.” The hood had become the place were dreams and people were forgotten. Often mistaken for a threat, “Don’t push me because I am close to the edge,” was actually a cry for help…or at the least, an acknowledgment.
They were children born into abstract devastation and were desperately looking for a way of escape. Contrary to what the White House was saying or the news media were reporting, black and brown people were not just these unsavory characters addicted to drugs, crime, and unwedded pregnancies. The reality in 1982 was that millions from the projects in Brooklyn, New York to the ghettos of Watts in California were given very little in the way of choices or opportunities in how they could live. Thankfully, the group changed their mind: “The Message” went on to be one of the most influential songs of all time, and writer Cherese Jackson explained the reasons for its importance in a March 2019 article for Liberty Voice:
In fact, Melle Mel admitted in an NPR interview that the group originally didn’t want to do the song because it wasn’t what they were used to rapping about. Fletcher, Melle Mel, Sylvia Robinson, and Clifton “Jiggs” Chase, “The Message” arrived when rap was still in its infancy as a musical genre (at least as far as mainstream audiences were concerned, anyway), but it nonetheless stood out from the pack by featuring lyrics which tackled a serious issue – inner city poverty – rather than being a bunch of self-congratulatory boasts. 37 years ago today, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released one of the most iconic rap singles of all time, and if that’s not a good enough excuse to feature the track in our Single Stories column, we don’t know what is.įormally credited to Edward G.