Conscious Rappers vs Message Rappers

On the surface it sounds like there should be no difference, right? Let's look at the artists and compare some notes.

In 1982 Sugar Hill Records released the ground breaking classic "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. This was a song written by an obscure session musician named Ed Fletcher. At first Sugar Hill boss Sylvia Robinson wanted the song to be recorded by the Sugar Hill Gang. Thank God for Sylvia's ears cause that wouldn't have sounded right.

In fact, none of the Sugar Hill artists wanted to record it. Neither the Crash Crew or the Treacherous Three wanted to do it. I seriously doubt that she offered it to Sequence. I've been told by both Rahiem and Mele Mel that Sylvia Robinson insisted that the band record that song or else.

After much hemming and hawing and leg and teeth pulling, the Furious Five as a unit recorded "The Message". But Sylvia didn't like it. She insisted that Mel and Ed Fletcher record the song together. The song became a classic. It is the first rap recording to be added tothe Library of Congress.

It was the impact of the record that I'm talking about right here though.

After "The Message" came out group after group made "message" type records that talked about unemployment, drugs, the insanity of ghetto life etc. It can be argued that the ripple effects of "The Message" were felt all the way up until 1989 when NWA released "Fuck tha Police".

However, there is a difference between "Message" rap and "gangsta rap".

Who are some of the artists that recorded "Message raps?"

Twilight 22
Divine Sounds
RUN-DMC
Kurtis Blow
Fearless Four
Lovebug Starsky
Jeckyll and Hyde

There were others I just don't feel like writing out all of them. This ain't a library ya know.

Okay, 1987 the conscious era begins. For me it starts with Public Enemy. BDP didn't get "conscious" until the release of their second album "By Any Means Necessary". After that came X Clan, Paris, Def Jeff and so many other groups if they weren't wearing red, black and green then they were singing about red, black and green.

But they were doing "Message Rap". Somewhere, somehow, someone came along and made a difference between the two. When there wasn't. The only difference between the two was the use of Black Nationalist imagery.

All those groups did "The Message" over harder beats.

Why today aren't Kurtis Blow and Mele Mel called "conscious rappers?"

Toasts, Boasts and Street Stories

Back…caught you lookin’ for the same thing!

Okay true believers, history buffs, hip-hop aficionados and people who are just bored out of their skulls, Hip-Hop 101A is back. Dig it, before I go any further special shout to my man Mike G for supplying me with the information for this piece and o-dub over at soul-sides for the inspiring sounds.

Let us move on…

In the years immediately following the release of ‘Rappers Delight’ and ‘The Message’, newspaper reports and magazine features briefly mentioned raps origins being connected with toasts.

For the record: I didn’t know what in the hell they were talking about.

The first toast I ever heard was Hustlers Convention by Lightning Rod (aka Jalal of the Last Poets). At one time the toast “Sport” on the Hustlers Convention album was a staple on the b-boy scene because it opened with a bass and drum break that flowed into some horns. The opening lines went something like this…

“It was a full moon in the middle of June,

In the summer of ‘59

I was young and cool and shot a bad game of pool,

And hustled all the chumps I could find.

Now they call me Sport,

Cause I push the ball short,

And loved all the women to death.

I partied hard and packed a mean rod,

That could knock you out from the right or the left.”

Hustlers Convention contained a full album with tracks by Kool and the Gang along with Eric Gale and Buddy Miles. It was a gangsta ass album when Ice Cube and Dr. Dre were still potty training. Jalal as Lightning Rod, ran down the adventures of he and his ace boon coon Spoon, as they prepared to take on all winners at the ultimate street extravaganza, a one night winner-takes-all in craps, pool and cards at a place called Ham hocks Hall. The event is so high powered that hustlers from every part of the country attend: Finger Poppin Teddy and his call girl Betty, Grit, Big Bill Wheeler (international drug dealer), Stingy Brim Slim and many others.

Lightning Rod must’ve had an eye for cinematography, listening to him will make you think of Madame Zenobia’s in the Bill Cosby/Sidney Poitier flick “Uptown Saturday Night.”

Hustlers Convention ends with Sport sentenced to the chair and then shipped to Sing Sing from there, where he kept on coppin’ a plea. The best line of the whole album is where the Black Nationalist Jalal steps in and unveils the stupidity of thug life with the lines

‘The real hustlers steal billions,

From the unsuspecting millions,

Who are programmed to think they can win…

In my solitude I found out what’s really goin’ down you see…

I learned the whole truth when I was there.”

In all honesty the first place I heard Hustlers Convention was on the album “Grandmaster Mele Mel and the Furious Five”. Mele Mel did a remake of the toast “Sport” and totally reworked the scene at Hamhocks Hall. At the time, I thought Mel was a genius because I had never heard anyone rap like that before.

Little did I know back then, that that was the original style street hustlers rapped in back in the 50’s and 60’s. There are hundreds of toasts – why they are called toasts is beyond me, but, they deal with street life. They apparently originated on street corners and penitentiaries all over the country. The poems a lot of them sad, tragic, some funny, some remorseful talk about the blows a pimp takes in the game, the lost love of a pimp (Doriella DuFontaine) and the penalty one must take for participating in the game.

Iceberg Slim (a/k/a Robert Beck) a man who was no stranger to jail cells or street corners, recorded his own collections of toasts for an album called Reflections, Slim wrote his own toast to his deceased mother Mary Brown Beck, it’s title? Momma Debt.

One of the most popular toasts is attributed to the late comedian Rudy Ray Moore b/k/a Dolemite, Moore popularized the toast the “Signifying Monkey”, to this day, at 40 years of age, I still don’t know what signifyin’ is, but the monkey, a bad mother fuckin monkey at that, talked shit to any and every one in the jungle.

“Way down in the jungle deep,

The signifyin’ monkey stepped on the lions feet…”

Listening to the toasts I can see where someone could get the inspiration perhaps to say them to the beat, especially when you consider that it was the funk and soul era, it would only be natural to marry street poetry with funky beats.

When It Was All About A Party

Man, I've been sick with bronchitis as well as pneumonia, so I haven't been able to post, but I figure that now that I'm a little stronger I'd hit you with this...

This group right here rocked the mf'n house! They were called the Disco Four. Should've been the Disco Four Plus One More. The crew consisted of Greg G, Country, Mr. Troy, Ronnie D and Cool T. This was an Uptown group that had the hip-hop flavor, but you could really feel the R&B vibe as well.

Their best cuts were "Do, it, Do it", "Throwdown", "Here Comes that Beat" and this one right here "We're At the Party".

This may have been the best cut of that year. I think it was 1983 when this dropped. The harmonies - back in the day, four or five guys would sound like one, well, these guys would harmonize and sound like the 5 Stairsteps or something like that.

None of them, were stand out lyricists. But they all came together well and did the damn thing. My man Troy L Smith from the Foundation has interviewed Greg G (Greg Marius) and is in the process of interviewing Ronnie D (Ronnie Robinson) whose father is Bobby Robinson that owned Enjoy Records. Ronnie is also first cousin to Spoonie Gee.

The production on this cut is great it sounds like the producer - I believe Eric Matthews, replayed or should I say, made a version of Isaac Hayes "You've Lost that Lovin' feelin' if you lsiten to the piano and the bass line, tell me what you think, it sounds like that break to me. But somewhere between "Here Comes that Beat" and "We're At the Party" is the very essence of the Disco 4.

Respect,
Mark Skillz

Founding Fathers Part Two: My Disco Brother...

Because I want to be able to walk the streets of the Bronx in peace I better clarify my position on the last post.

Eh-hem.

Ok...the hip-hop of the Bronx was pioneered by Kool DJ Herc in 1973. Hands down no questions or arguments from me. What Kool Herc did back then inspired Afrika Bam, Flash, Theodore, AJ, Charlie Chase, Breakout and hundreds and hundreds of others.

However, in the other boroughs a similiar thing was going on. The differences weren't major. Whereas, Kool Herc called his set the 'merry go round' (when he played break after break after break after break) cats in Brooklyn and Queens ie; Master D, the Smith Brothers, Grandmaster Flowers, King Charles, Disco Twins, Infinity Machine and many others were playing rhythm and blues and funk and soul records. They didn't specialize in rare and obscure records with five second breaks like the Bronx cats did, but they did spin records like "Phenomenon Theme" and "Ashley's Roachclip" and when the break came on they kept it going. Not by scratching or cuttin, but they extended the break.

At that time damn near everything in Black music was called disco as the producer (Ron Lawrence) of the documentary below asked me recently.

"Yo, what was Grandmaster Flash's right hand mans name?" Disco Bee. He has a point there.

Lil Rodney Cee of the Funky Four used this line in one of his rhymes: "to be a dis-co sensation a rock rock yall."

Or how bout this: (can't remember the groups name but as the MC handed the mic off to the next MC he said) "My disco brother, get on the mic you undercover lover!"

There was an uptown group called the Disco Enforcers. There was another group (actually one of my favorite groups ) called the Disco Four.

All this to say, cats front on disco big time. But everything back then was called disco and there was no such thing or concept as hip-hop. Especially if we're talking about 1975.

King Charles, Grandmaster Flowers and Pete DJ Jones had been doing their thing since the late 60's! These guys mixed the hell out of records. What they did inspired cats in Brooklyn and Queens. At some point (don't ask me when or where) the two different styles (the Bronx style and the BK/Queens style) started converging.

Founding Fathers

This is a documentary coming out sometime next year, I don't know who the producers of this film are, but they are on point in this joint. Some of the people I recognize off the bat are: DJ Divine of Infinity Machine, Sweety Gee and Pete DJ Jones.

One of the premises of this film is that hip-hop didn't just start in the Bronx. One of the first people I remember is a guy who played all over Queens named King Charles. This was 1977 maybe early 1978, that I started seeing flyers all over the place featuring his jams, along with the Disco Twins and Cipher Sounds. At the top of the flyer it would say: Tiny Promotions, or something like that.

I hope Pete Jones says live on camera that he is NOT from Brooklyn! For years it has been reported that Pete DJ Jones was from Brooklyn - he isn't, he lives in the Bronx and is originally from Durham, North Carolina.

I remember a couple of years back my home boy Davey D was on a panel somewhere in New York, when a brother in the audience got real heated up, when a Bronx cat, possibly Grandmaster Caz, said something to the effect of hip-hop starting in the Bronx with Kool Herc.

This brother, who was the maintenance man or something like that in the venue where the panel was being held took real exception to the whole "hip-hop started in the Bronx" thing. He said, hip-hop started in Brooklyn with guys like Grandmaster Flowers and the Smith Brothers and he named off all kinds of streets and projects where the different deejays did their thing at. To top it off, he said the Bronx cats never came around there, so how would they know what they were doing?

To be sure, there were all kinds of mobile jocks in New York in the early 70's. Hands down, no questions. I've always asked the Bronx cats that I've interviewed this one important question, "Yo, what impact did the Jamaican sound systems have on ya'll?"

Everybody from Toney Tone to Kool Herc to Bambaataa said: "None, none at all. They weren't a part of our thing. They did their own thing."

Which is more than likely true, with one exception Grandmaster Flash's sound system the Gladiator was built by some Jamaican brothers on Freeman Street. And in Brooklyn, there is no way in the world those dudes in Brooklyn could not have heard the different sound systems. Deejay culture in Jamaica goes back to the 50's!

The one time I interviewed Kool Herc I asked him about the Jamaican sound systems in the Bronx and he acknowledged knowing a few of them, but said that they had no influence or impact whatsoever.

What pisses alot of dudes from Queens and Brooklyn off is when the Bronx cats dismiss them (the early dudes that is) as being "disco". That's a diss, in the literal sense. It's their way of dismissing those brothers as being something inauthentic. To be sure, yes, the brothers did play what was popular on the radio, but they also played breaks too! The real division between the Bronx and I'm gonna say the other four boroughs, is the fact that there was a heavier emphasis on breaks - rare breaks and scratching. Also the MC'ing was a little rawer too. But it was basically the same thing: Talking over funky ass beats on a sureshot sound system.

See the pic above for my personal opinion as to where hip-hop really comes from.

A Tribute to a Real Rapper...

This guy was sayin' some deep stuff
when Tupac was an itch in his daddy's
pants.

He was a poet, preacher and a communicator
in the soulful age of Rhythm and Blues when
singers not only sang, but rapped as well. And
they said some really deep, soul stirring stuff too.
They talked about life, love, heartbreak,
pain and hard times.

In other words, real life ish.

By no stretch of the imagination was Bobby
Womack a hip-hopper. But we can learn
a lot from he and his music.

"Across 110th Street", "If You Think You're
Lonely Now", "A Woman's Gotta Have It",
"I'm Lookin' For A Love", "Where Do We Go
From Here", "Harry Hippie" and "I Can Understand It";
Womack had a way of getting straight to the heart of
the matter.

"When the skeletons come out of the closet,
And chase you all around the room,
And the memories sail around like a ghost,
And mess you around with a sad long tune. 
If you think you're lonely now - wait until tonight."

And this...

"I was the third brother of five, 
Doin' whatever I had to do to survive.
I'm not saying what I did was all right. 
Tryin' to make it out of the ghetto was a day to day fight."

I met him backstage at the Oakland Paramount Theatre in 1996.
I didn't know how old he was. But the brother seemed "old"
to me. I now know that he was about fifty-two - but
from being around him and listening to him he seemed like he
was seventy-two.

My best friend Mark was working with the promoter somehow
or another, so I tagged along and got to hang out with "The Poet."
He was impressed by my knowledge of music.
Only a crate digger knows that it was Bobby and Gabor Sazbo
(I probably spelled it wrong) that originally did "Breezin"
a song that George Benson would later popularize.
Bobby's eyes glistened behind his glasses and a warm smile
enveloped his face with every song of his I mentioned.
After all it isn't everyday that a legendary soul man comes
face to face with a twenty-six year old that knows his
music like it came out yesterday.

At the time I was shopping demos and having no luck.
I had heard all of the music business horror stories: Broke artists.
Ripped off artists. Broken groups. Fat cat record men with huge
pockets made off of near destitute artists. I had to ask someone who
would really know...

"Mr. Womack, how do you make a living in the music business?"

Mr. Womack took a long draw on his cigarette while interrupting
himself from the small space of solitude that he reserved for
himself for quiet private thoughts and said to me: "Son, you gotta
love what you do."

Ain't Someone Ever Gonna Give Me A Break

Kurt Walker probably never had the kind of job where he had to punch a clock or take his lunch to work in a brown paper bag everyday. And he more than likely never stood on line at the unemployment office either. Yet, his music – at least in the first part of his career, was firmly grounded in the blue collar work world of fifteen minute lunch breaks, irate supervisors, low pay and lay offs.

Of all the “firsts” that Kurtis Blow can truly lay claim to(first rapper signed to a major record company, first rapper with a RIAA certified gold record, first rapper turned producer, first rapper on Soul Train and first rapper to make a million bucks) he bears the distinction of being the first and at this point, probably the only, rapper to make songs that paid tribute to that long forgotten shadow of the American silhouette: the hard-working everyday man.

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, politicians used to care about the guy who punched in at 7:30 everyday and punched out at 5:00. He got by on little and managed to eke out an existence on even less. But he’s been tossed to the side like that old worn out sofa that’s been in the living room for far longer than anyone can remember. Discarded. Dismembered. No longer useful. No one targets him as a demographic anymore. He’s been replaced by soccer moms and hockey moms.

There once was a time – when the genre was called Rhythm and Blues, that the music was directly aimed at the blue collar workforce. Men like Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson, Sam Cooke and ZZ Hill come to mind. They talked about “the boss” and real life every day situations. Nowadays every nigga’s a player or a hustler. And everybody knows that players and hustlers don’t work.

For whatever reason Country music never lost this connection with the everyday man.

The last Rhythm and Blues record that truly captured the sentiment of and related to the ‘hard-hat wearing, cigarette-in-one-hand and gin and tonic in the other’ everyday man was an instrumental by John Handy aptly titled “Hard Work.”

In a culture that celebrates out of control narcissism and unchecked hedonism; songs like “Hard Times”, “Tough”, “The Breaks”, “If I Ruled The World” and “Party Time” would probably not make a dent in corporate controlled radio play lists and would definitely never see the light of day on BET.

But if you listen to those songs closely you’ll hear outlooks that only a man who’s been on the wrong side of words like “opportunity” and “profit sharing” can relate to. This is real adult content.

“You work all year to buy a brand new car,

A CoupDe Ville or a Jaguar,

But you didn’t make enough for a good cigar

Cause it’s tough!”

TOUGH: It’s a way of life, lost your job,

Your money but not your wife.

ROUGH: Getting in the black

Uncle Sam’s in your pocket,

And your woman’s on your back.

HARD: That’s the deal,

Had to get a loan

Just to buy a meal

TOUGH: That’s how it goes when it’s getting better nobody knows!

TOUGH: That’s the word,

Unemployment is all I heard.

ROUGH: When you start your day,

Watching the finance man tow your car away.

HARD: To hold a job,

When your being replaced by a little blue knob.

TOUGH: Like a dollar steak

Ain’t someone ever gonna give me a break!

http://www.zshare.net/audio/50805284f7591e7e/