Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

• 1. Introduction

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  Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five coined a word that would define a generation of music. At a party in the South Bronx, a performer named Cowboy began scat-singing the words "hip/hop/hip/hop" to mimic the cadence of a U.S. Army marching drill. That improvised chant, born in 1978, became the name of an entire art form. The questions worth asking are not just how a group from New York City built hip-hop from the ground up, but why it took a song called "The Message" to make the rest of the world pay attention.

• 2. Inventing the MC

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  Before the Furious Five existed, Grandmaster Flash was cutting his teeth with a crew called the L Brothers, which included Mean Gene Livingston, Claudio Livingston, and Grand Wizzard Theodore. Flash then pulled in his friend Cowboy, along with Melle Mel and Nathaniel Glover, who performed under the name Kidd Creole. Those three called themselves the Three MC's, a name that matters: Melle Mel and Kidd Creole were, by the group's own account, the first rappers to call themselves Masters of Ceremonies. The abbreviation that now defines an entire performance tradition started there, in the Bronx, with those two men.

  After Scorpio and Rahiem joined the fold, the full Furious Five was in place. Their first single, "We Rap More Mellow", was released under the name The Younger Generation because the producer thought that name sold better. The group's early reputation was built entirely on live performance, playing parties and shows across New York City before any recording industry came calling. It was only after the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" proved that hip-hop could sell records that Flash and the Five felt the commercial door had opened. Their first proper single on Enjoy Records, "Superappin", followed in 1979, leading them to sign with Sylvia Robinson's Sugar Hill Records.

• 3. Turntablism on Record

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  In 1981, Grandmaster Flash released a recording called The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel. It was a multi-deck, live recording of one of his performance routines, and it featured Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" and Chic's "Good Times" woven into the mix. The release marked the first time that scratching and turntablism appeared on a commercial record. What had existed only in the air at parties and live shows was now something a person could press into vinyl.

  "Freedom", the group's Sugarhill Records debut in 1980, had already reached number 19 on the R&B chart and sold more than 50,000 copies. The follow-up, "Birthday Party", was also a hit. But the turntable recording was a different kind of statement. It documented a technique, not just a song.

• 4. The Message

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  "The Message" arrived in 1982, and it was not quite what it appeared to be. The song was produced by Clifton "Jiggs" Chase and Ed "Duke Bootee" Fletcher, and Fletcher wrote it. Sylvia Robinson later added Melle Mel's rhyme from an earlier song to complete the recording. Other than Melle Mel, none of the Furious Five actually performed on the track, apart from some background vocals at the end. The song peaked at number 4 on the R&B chart and number 62 on the pop chart.

  Its impact stretched far beyond those chart positions. In 2002, the Library of Congress chose "The Message" as one of the 50 inaugural recordings added to the National Recording Registry, a list reserved for works of cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance. Rolling Stone placed it at number 59 on its 2021 list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The album that shared its name became a landmark in hip-hop history.

• 5. The Lawsuit That Broke Them

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  In 1983, Grandmaster Flash filed a lawsuit against Sugar Hill Records for five million dollars in unpaid royalties. The legal dispute had immediate consequences: the single "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)" was credited not to the full group but to "Grandmaster & Melle Mel." That song reached number 47 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. A second lawsuit, filed over elements of the song being taken from Liquid Liquid's "Cavern", ultimately contributed to Sugar Hill Records' collapse.

  The royalties fight cleaved the group in two. Melle Mel, Scorpio, and Cowboy departed after the success of "White Lines" and formed Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five, releasing an album under that name in 1984. Grandmaster Flash, Kidd Creole, and Rahiem moved to Elektra Records and brought in three new members: Kevin "The Lord LaVon" Dukes, Russell "Mr. Broadway" Wheeler, and Larry-Love Parker. Sugar Hill Records owned the rights to the Furious Five name, so the new additions could not use it officially. Melle Mel's faction fared better commercially during this period. His group's most notable single, "Beat Street Breakdown", peaked at number 8 on the R&B chart.

• 6. Solo Paths and Later Years

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  Melle Mel met Quincy Jones at the Grammy Awards in 1985, and the two began a collaboration that would take years to surface. The song "Back on the Block" from Jones's album of the same name won Mel the Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group in 1991. He picked up a second Grammy in 2002 for Best Spoken Word Album, for his contributions to Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones. That same children's book project, The Portal in the Park, featured a then-unknown Lady Gaga, who performed with Mel on the songs "World Family Tree" and "The Fountain Of Truth."

  Grandmaster Flash's post-disbandment career took its own shape. He produced Just-Ice's album Masterpiece in 1990 and later served as musical director for The Chris Rock Show. He received the DJ Vanguard Award from Bill Gates in 2004 and RIAA's Lifetime Achievement Award at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in 2005. His autobiography, The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats, was published in 2008. Keith "Cowboy" Wiggins, the man who first sang those words "hip/hop/hip/hop" at a party, died on the 8th of September 1989.

• 7. Legacy

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  On the 23rd of January 2007, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, making them the first hip-hop group ever to receive that honor. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. holds the vinyl records and turntable used by Grandmaster Flash in its historical archives. In 2021, the group received their first Grammy Award for lifetime achievement, becoming only the second hip-hop act to earn that recognition after Run-DMC.

  Their influence runs through an unusually wide range of artists. The list named in the record includes Anthony Kiedis, New Order, Public Enemy, Eminem, the Wu-Tang Clan, Tupac Shakur, The Notorious B.I.G., and The Roots. Ice Cube recorded "Check Yo Self" with Das EFX, and the remix sampled the music of "The Message" directly. In 2022, Nathaniel Glover, who performed as Kidd Creole, was found guilty of manslaughter in connection with the death of a New York City homeless man and sentenced to sixteen years in prison. Billboard ranked the group among the greatest rap groups of all time in 2023, forty-five years after Cowboy first improvised his march-cadence chant in the South Bronx.