This genre crossing record will appeal to the group’s original fanbase as well as bringing their music to a new generation. New single ‘Some Kind of Sorry’ boasts lyrically dextrous and incisively delivered raps juxtaposed with a biting guitar riff, pounding drums and an infectious, melodic sung chorus. The Furious 5 revolutionised music, helping to create a template for the industry that exists today, yet even now Mele Mel and Scorpio are pushing the boundaries of expectation by taking their sound in a new direction.
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Also among their many achievements is their performance on the anti-apartheid song ‘Sun City’, created by Bruce Springsteen’s guitarist Steven Van Zandt, which saw The Furious Five performing with Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin of the Temptations, Ruben Blades, Miles Davis & Herbie Hancock. The Furious Five also lent their voices to the legendary Chaka Khan for her Grammy winning hit single ‘I Feel For You’, earning a Grammy for Mele Mel, the first for any Rap artist. Quincy Jones used The Furious Five’s vocal talents for two Grammy award winning albums, 1995’s ‘Qs Jook Joint’, which was Jones’ first studio album in six years and 1989’s ‘Back on the Block’. The group have also been honored on the Bronx Walk of Fame, with a street named after them. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5 were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 12th 2007, the first and only Rap group to have been given this honour. The song is considered one of the twenty-five most important of the last fifty years, proven by the fact that in 2013 ‘The Message’ was the first Hip Hop record inducted into the Grammy’s Hall of Fame. ‘The Message’ was the first Rap song to contain a social commentary and is in the archives of the Library of Congress for its social relevance within that time period. In the UK, the group charted in the top ten with ‘White Lines’, ‘Beat Street’ and ‘Step Off’. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5 became a household name on the strength of records like ‘Freedom’, ‘The Message’, ‘White Lines’, ‘Superrappin’, ‘Beat Street’, ‘New York, New York’, ‘Survival’ and ‘Scorpio’. Having toured the world as Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5 with the likes of U2, The Police, The Clash, Prince and Duran Duran as well as many Hip Hop greats, their recordings are amongst the most sampled in the history of Rap music. Grandmaster’s Furious 5 is made up of two pioneers of the original South Bronx Rap scene and creators of Hip Hop subculture Mele Mel and Scorpio.įathers of today’s multi-billon dollar Rap industry, Mele Mel and Scorpio are to Hip Hop what Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are to Rock and Roll. The Sugarhill Gang made history in 1979 with their debut 12” Rap Single “Rappers Delight”!! Their song “Rappers Delight” was the first commercial rap record ever made and later went on to become the largest selling 12” single of all time with over Million Records sold!! To see the entire list, click here.When you mention “LEGENDS” in the music industry, you have to mention “The Sugarhill Gang”. And in the 350 Jersey Songs series, we marked the occasion by posting 350 songs - one a day, from September 2014 to September 2015 - that have something to do with the state, its musical history, or both. New Jersey celebrated its 350th birthday in 2014. But Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five did it first. Later hip-hop groups such as Public Enemy and NWA, of course, built their careers on grittily realistic, uncompromising hip-hop. “Our thing was party tracks and stuff like that. “We didn’t want to do it,” Furious Five member Melle Mel told me in 1997, for a Star-Ledger feature on the label. The group was from New York, but it took took Sugar Hill co-owner Sylvia Robinson of Englewood, a former hit-maker herself (“Pillow Talk,” Mickey & Sylvia’s “Love Is Strange”), to make them see that “The Message” was worth recording. The tone wasn’t preachy, or bitter: Group members were simply telling you about their lives. No one had ever attempted a hip-hop song like this before, one that looked at the worst aspects of modern urban life without flinching (“I can’t walk through the park, ’cause it’s crazy after dark,” “It’s like a jungle sometimes/It makes me wonder/How I keep from going under”). “Rapper’s Delight” proved that there was a huge market for hip-hop, but “The Message” showed that hip-hop didn’t have to be just lightweight entertainment.
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Yesterday, the 350 Jersey Songs looked at the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” the first hip-hop megahit single.īut you can’t really talk about the legacy of the Englewood-based Sugar Hill Records label without also mentioning “The Message,” which came out a few years after “Rapper’s Delight,” and had just as much of an impact.