80's Flashback

Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, The Message, 1982. Gritty depictions of life in the ghetto were standard fare in the early days of hip hop (and continue less frequently today), but The Message, with its slowed beat and menacing Don't push me, cuz I'm close to the edge refrain, earned the group its 2007 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame, the first hip hop act so honored. Rolling Stone hails The Message as the best single of the 1980s and places it at #51 on its 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time list. The track reached #4 on Billboard's R&B chart, but received scant pop radio play, topping out at only #64, possibly due to the word "fag" appearing twice, once in reference to a man sent to prison where he was forced to become "an undercover fag," and later in the song when Grandmaster Melle Mel observes that a homeless woman, now reduced to eating out of garbage cans, "used to be a fag hag."