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“The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

With the release of their song, “The Message” in 1982, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five gave hip hop and rap culture a new aspect and took it into a whole new direction. They would become one of the first artists’ who would call out and bring to light the political and lifestyle issues that African Americans had to face. This website looks at the visual aspects in the music video, the instrumentation and sound effects used in the song, and lyrics of the song the made “The Message” the first prominent song to use social commentary.  By looking at the lyrics and video for “The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, we can see that it gave rap a new meaning by portraying the struggle of real-life inner-city poverty and this is important because they used their music to try and raise awareness about social injustice rather than previous hip-hop which was used to boast about a glamorous lifestyle and party chants with the sole purpose of selling as many copies as possible. “The Message” also served as a blueprint and has impacted the way that hip hop artists today represent the struggles of a minority in their music.