The Message

Interesting album that maybe isn't as defined by its masterpiece title track as I originally thought going into this. There's some genuinely cool stuff to dig into here outside of that. I mean, just to get it out of the way, 'The Message' is maybe the most important hip-hop song of all time. Like a genuine gold standard for storytelling, flow, pacing, and production that was just unheard of at the time. And it's not really a "legacy" track either, like maybe "Rapper's Delight" is - a song that you kind of just need to hear if you're a fan of hip-hop history, but might not necessarily go out of your way in the day to play it. Nah, 'The Message' is a genuine bop that still stands the test of time, with a funky electronic groove and some damn solid rapping - the deliver of "It's like a jungle sometimes" alone just feels so prophetic and powerful. And I love how there's no real hook or chorus here; between all the verses, it's just the beat playing out with a whole lot of empty space, giving the listener a breath to reflect on what was just said. A genuine masterpiece and, again, the blueprint for socially conscious hip-hop as we know it. And the rest of the tracklisting, it's solid. I guess I just found it really hard to grasp what I was listening to here, it's just super varied. 'She's Fresh' sounds like a Funkadelic song frankesteined with your typical call-and-response emcee type hip-hop stuff from the early '80s. No real rap verses but the song's really dynamic nature more than makes up for it. 'Scorpio' for as repetitive as it was, was honestly really neat, clearly drawing a lot from the emerging techno scenes of Detroit from the time, not unlike Afrika Bambaataa's 'Planet Rock' - early hip-hop sure loved their electro. The spotify version of this album has a second version of 'Message' which also had this early techno feel, and some more really solid verses with some really pretty synth-pad work. It's like all the songs leading up to the title-track show hip-hop's various roots and influences, be they electornic, funk, or disco, and how they all manage to come together to form what we know as hip-hop today by that iconic closing track. With a genre as vast, varied, and complex as hip-hop, sometimes it can be hard to point to a record and call it a pillar-stone or essential building block. But I truly believe what Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five put together here is a bridge that truly took all of hip-hop's influences, from electronic to funk, and started really putting those pieces together to form the start of a wholly unique and incredible genre.

esta bueno eu

Started my day by trying to get to work but a train has broken down blocking the road. Frustrating. But this album is making me smile. Very nice energy. Well balanced: some very energetic and upbeat stuff, a few tender numbers, some harsh social commentary. I could do without the religion but it's a good message none the less. Solid album.

Innovative. Sometimes clever, sometimes not.

15 Oct 2026 · 8/10 This was so good! I really enjoyed it, it was super varied. I will be listening again. It's extremely goofy at times though, but charmingly so. It also feels dated, obviously.

Electric boogie! Klinkt heel basic tegenwoordig, maar dat was toen echt vet!!

They got me in the first half... At some point the bars got to real and scared me... Great flow and message 3/5

10/13/26. An album I always considered the birth of hip hop, but was surprised on how funky and soulful it was! It's truly feels like a mashup of black music at the time, with The Message serving as the anchor track.

Parts of the album are important to culture and the progression of hip hop, and other parts sound like a much less talented EWF. 3 stars.

i think that this album gets put in the bucket of “influential but not actually that worth listening to”, which i disagree with. the first two tracks are solid bangers and the genre experimentation that follows is always at least decent, if a little goofy. and then The Message is the closing track and it’s just such a great song. this album isn’t a masterpiece but it has the grooves it needs. remember: hip hop started off as dance music. deserves to be one of the 1001? it’s undoubtedly the most important hip hop album from the early 80s. which means it represents an inflection point where disco and rapping went hand in hand. obviously yes

Just got Tom Tom Club 2 days ago and now this one which samples it. Tom Tom Club did it better. This got a little boring but I appreciate it.

Ok, o álbum começa com "Scorpio" e essa batida eletrônica que me faz estranhar bastante no início, e fico sem saber o que esperar do resto do álbum. Como um bom amante e devorador de álbuns, eu fico. E sou recompensado com o início, ou podemos dizer, com o fortalecimento do rap social. "The Message Pt. 1"... cara, eu já escutei essa batida tantas vezes. Minha Nossa! Que som e letra incríveis! É o rap colocando o dedo na ferida e expondo a realidade dos marginalizados. Acabou a vibe positiva dos anos 80 no rap e é hora de convocar nossos irmãos para algo maior. É hora de nossa identidade ser evocada para o mundo. Aumenta o som desse carro e vamos botar pra foder! E é engraçado. Claro, não faço ideia se foi intencional, mas essa quebra que existe de "Scorpio" para "The Message" soa como se fosse algo do tipo: "Estamos indo para esse lado aqui, tá? Gosto da festa, mas sou maior quando tenho voz e pessoas que me escutam e se identificam." "Survival, only the strong can survive!"

JL : 3, The Message

Vaca catch up

Loved 'Scorpion' and 'New York, New York' was ok. I didn't really like the rest though. It went from electronic, to rap, to r and b, some gospel and then back to rap.

Really uneven. Some all-time classics here, but there are some laughable tracks too.

Oh this album suffered by showing up a day after an album of the same genre which felt much more rich and joyful. But I have to reining myself that this one was released four years prior. These guys were really early pioneers in hip hop. And so even though it hasn’t aged all that well, the others may never had achieved their heights without standing on Grandmaster Flash’s shoulders.

This album in on here because The Message, the song, is on it. There I one other great track and that’s Scorpio, which is an early electro sing with amazing vocoder. It’s Nasty is good but the Tom Tom Club sample is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The rest feel like filler songs. Dreamin’ and You Are were painful to sit through. The Message, being so significant, brings the album up to three stars.

Fairly inoffensive, but a good vibe.

Who's the extra dude on the cover?

The Message is good, but would not be a worse song if it were half as long. The rest was not for me.

The song The Message alone merits this four stars. Some of the rest is pretty good, although they frequently go too long in a song. The ode to Stevie Wonder was interesting, but got a bit much after not too long. I hope they got to meet him, though.

It's musical, but it's still rap, ya know.

AWESOME. It's Nasty + The Message are all-timers.

fine by me.

This album (original ) is great but I am confused by the remake aspect of it The first couple tracks feel like they are straight out of the club. Grandmaster Flash and Furious Five are hosting a dance party and it slaps. It’s Nasty and Genius of Love (one of my favorite songs) works for me. Scorpio is a great bit of Afro Futurism. Unfortunately they do try to sneak in one bit of pure garbage- I mean songs I don’t particularly like. You Are is sappy sentimental religious nonsense. Miss me with that. The record ends strong with their iconic social commentary tracks including the title track Survival, and New York New York. Unfortunately the inclusion of the above discussed garbage tracks keeps this album from getting the 5 stars it might otherwise deserve. Note that I am listening to this 2010 release but engaging with it as if it were the original album I grew up on. I don’t have the bandwidth to listen to the original and work out the nuance there.

A crucial document in American music history. Also a decidedly mixed listening experience. With early, groundbreaking work in any genre there is a certain amount of grace the listener needs to bring to the listening experience. That's baked in here. I never listened to this band in my formative days. I remember The Message being huge. I think I heard it here and there on the radio, but mainly from other people singing, NY, NY big city of dreams ... I was expecting this to be a two turntables and a microphone record. It is not. The arrangements are reasonably full, the music built out into a richer palette than I expected. The first four songs are all interesting. Hearing GM Flash interact with Genius of Love, Rapture, and It's a Shame is really interesting. The sampling and construction of the music itself is fascinating. None of it is great, but it's highly functional ... it's engaging. And of course groundbreaking. Then we get to Dreamin' (Quite Terrible and Seemingly Interminable) and having finally endured that, it's followed up with You Are (More of the Same). Good God. Those two songs are bad. Then the centerpiece, The Message. Outside of its famous "city of dreams / not always what it seems" bit, this is really not a good song. As with so much of the album, the vocals are just not good. And I think the performances are made to sound worse by the recording of them. We will never know. So thin, and not great at working within the music's timing, and ... lame much of the time, as far as writing. The vocals are just not good. Adventures is a fascinating tapestry, but ... kind of a grab bag, too. Overall, this album just isn't a great listen; throughout, it is hit or miss, cheek by jowl, soup to nuts. Bonus sidebar: Skip McDonald, Doug Wimbish, and Keith LeBlanc are all on this record. After playing in the Sugarhill Records house band, they went on to do a lot of work for On-U Sound, especially as Tackhead, as well as solo projects, session work (including with the Rolling Stones -- who hired vocalist Bernard Fowler on a permanent basis, putting an end to Tackhead), and in the fascinating ambient-dub-blues group Little Axe. Both together and separately, they each had a really interesting career after this record. Skip McDonald is for my money criminally underappreciated. I went through a period of watching a slew of youtube videos about This many or That many guitarists who ... should be better known, were left off some list of the greatest, blah, blah ... his name never comes up. Great musician.

Good grief I just wrote an entire review that got lost in a computer glitch. Dang it. Insert frustrated Marty emoji here! This was a real roller coaster. I didn't know what to expect, and in that sense the album delivered, because I didn't understand what the heck was going on. In another sense it didn't deliver, because more than half the songs on here were not enjoyable or interesting. The slow songs were unbearable, in particular. I always liked "the Message" and still do and I found a couple of the other songs interesting and pleasantly weird. Reading the wikipedia entry I'm surprised that the NYT critic in 1982 called this the album of the year (??). Maybe it just sounded so fresh and different at that time? A later critic in 2020 called it a "singles-plus filler cash-in" and that seems much more accurate. It boggles my mind that in the general 1001 album reviews there are people calling this a "masterpiece." Masterpiece of a cash grab!

Love that one of these guys is just "Cowboy". This is earlier than I usually associate with hip hop, but I'm guessing that's why it's here on the list. It's hitting all the big hip hop sounds, and all these guys seems like they're having a lot of fun making their music!

Do you guy think that Kidd Creole is innocent?

alright

Grandmasterful

The Message is iconic, but after listening, I was left with only one question. I’m dreamin’ about you…Stevie Wonder?

Brings back memories. The first rap album i heard. Totally awesome!

A bit of a mixed bag. It's bookended by great tracks, and I really enjoyed the electro funk of Scorpio too. But the fairly insipid soul tracks on side 2 really bring it down. The quality of the best tracks keeps it at a 4 though, despite the inconsistency.

A fundamentally corny hip hop disco album. While The Message is a decent track, I did not find myself moving or grooving to this one as a whole. 3/10

620/1089 - White Lines is what I know from them and is a cool song but it isn't on this album. Overall it was pretty alright. I think I like samples better when I'm ignorant on what's being sampled.

#485/1001. Some of the best electro-hip-hop and some of the cheesiest Stevie-Wonder-ballad-tributes ever on a hip-hop album. Super fun and super dated, but there is something cute in the early hip-hop to-the-beat-flow or whatever they call it. But I got the Message (three times), so don't push me

"Scorpio" and "The Message" keep this from being a downright bad album. The love song to Stevie Wonder, and the follow up "You Are" are two absolutely terrible tracks. The first couple tracks were passable, but forgettable. I liked the scratching on "It's A Shame" but almost everything else about it was, indeed, a shame. I'm giving it a 3, but it's a low 3. Disappointing

Not a fan, was pretty boring to me

No thanks. By the time I got to the penultimate track, I saw there was one more, and went "Oh, no!"

5/10

Fun and funky but doesnt really leave a strong impact on me. Also the track Scorpio sucked so much it almost tanked the rating to a 2 on it’s own. Standouts are She’s Fresh, It’s a Shame, Dreamin (i listened to wonder book on my last review, perfectly timed), You Are, The Message and new york.

This is a bit of an oddity that draws odd parallels with the early Beatles albums. Like them they’ve got key songs in the new style. In this case the message, but also a grab bag of other styles popular at the time including a very strange tribute to stevie wonder in the style of stevie wonder. It’s enjoyable enough but another I’ll never imagine myself going back to

This album defied my expectations. Silly and fun, and slow and soulful, some funk elements.

Fantastic album again. Massively influential, and some cracking songs. A fair few weaker ones on here though, knocking it from a perfect album. But overall just great stuff.

A bit too corny for me. The Message is a banger though

What a blast to listen through. This is just a nice pocket full of energy, positivity and joy. And a classic in its genre at that. Easy. 5/5

Like it 3/5

If I remember correctly, I had Encarta 97 in my family's first PC and one of my first searches was rap music, a 30 second snippet of this song came on. I used to play it over and over. The oldest of old-school hip-hop, and a massive track at the end backed by standard early rapping and beats. Shame that those slow jams in the end really killed the momentum leading to the title track.

I mean, it's not bad as pop, but as hip-hop, not my fav.

I was expecting it to be all primitive hip-hop, but it's actually mostly funk music. The hip is there in small doses, and very good it is too. Some of the other tunes haven't dated as well - the Stevie Wonder naming song is not good.

Right then. Well it was quite fun, The Message (track) is a classic of it's time. And as per track 2, was that really Kid Kreole without his coconuts? as I say it was quite a fun album, not great, but fun. I'll give it a 3

The Message is iconic. Not up for debate. Other tracks were enjoyably funky, but probably won’t be revisiting it any time soon.

What the fuck was this? It seemed like two mini albums all mixed into one. One comedy soul thing - was one of them going on about Stevie Wonder? Baffling and a bit disconcerting. I was expecting/hoping for proto-rap and the smell of the grime and crime ridden streets of NYC, some of crap like that. What I got was confusion and bewilderment, not a completely bad thing as it did evoke an emotion, just not a welcome one. I had to check whether I had put the right album on at one point. File under: a mess.

Started with a couple good songs, but holy crap did it get bad quickly. It’s a Shame and Dreamin’ are two of the cheesiest songs I have ever heard. Absolutely awful. The Message is great but overall this album is just too damn cringy and doesn’t hold up well at all.

Insane. So many songs I've heard and samples that still get used to this day, it's so influential that it almost feels like an FBI psyop for it to not show up more often next to albums like Sgt Pepper's or DSOTM, I can understand not liking the more filler-like songs, but who else could hate on this whole thing besides a white guy in a suit trying to keep a struggling man down?

"Open ses'ame!"

Great storytelling. The electronic rhythms still have plenty of bounce.

love she’s fresh. and i liked the stevie wonder one idc it was so cute :)

It was okay but wasn't for me

Timeless is not the word

I saw Grandmaster Flash and immediately expected 4 or 5. Sadly, this album doesn't do much for me outside of The Message and some of the beats. I wish it were a little more funk and a lot less robo electronica.

Morsomt, men…

Det er gøy, men det er også ganske kårny. Man kan i hvert fall ikke kalle det tidløst. Blir mer en kuriositet, enn noe man faktisk har lyst til å høre på.

The message is amazing but the other songs on here are unfortunately quite dated. Still deserves to be on the list, just not an amazing listen

3.5 rounded up to 4

Amazing! Fun, poignant, influential. It’s dated — obviously, hip-hop has traveled a long way since this album. But it’s also timeless— representing the foundations of an entirely new pop genre. Glad I listened. A 3.

actually raelly cute and funky

Pretty ahead of its time album - interesting electronic elements, very great bass, and catchy lyrics. A bit too much preachy god speak in some songs and the Stevie wonder bit is weird, but overall quite good. 4/5

#443 I was looking forward to this but perhaps the rest of the album doesn’t live up to the title track, which is an all timer. It’s clearly an important album in the evolution of hip hop and draws in lots of samples and covers, including The Genius of Love which couldn’t have been much more than a year old at the time. Dreamin’ and You Are probably the low points on the album for me but at least it finishes with the best track. Heard before? ❌ Would I revisit? ✅ Listen before you die? ✅ Fave track(s): The Message Rating: 6/10 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

didn't enjoy the singing songs. rest was pretty decent.

Fun to hear early hip hop. Upbeat but was a bit long

The title song is iconic and has influenced the entire rap genre. As a whole, though, this is one of those roots records that everyone should check out at least to gain perspective on where it all started. The technology for turntablists and techniques were all brand new which makes this record that much more impressive.

I have heard the Message. It is a good song. I like some early rap.I didn’t like rap when it got into that gangster stuff and the glorification of violence. Misogyny was also an issue. Nihilism too. Well, here goes. This is a good rap album. The vocals are great especially the five part harmony. The rapping is good. They actually use horns on the album! They have a combination of real and electronic instruments. They dedicate a song to Stevie Wonder. They love his music. So do I. There is a big soul influence on the album. All the songs are good. She’s fresh is a real fun song. The best song on the album is The Message. It describes what is going on in the inner cities of America. It is like an update of Stevie Wonder’s Living in the City. Great Lyrics: Don’t touch me I’m close to the edge/ I’m trying not to lose my head. This is a good rap album. A lot of early rap albums were good until rap lost its way. Five stars.

Good, not great

Title track still so amazing

loved the voices, reminds me a lot to kanye college dropout era :p cant say its a not a single skip album but still pretty solid

This is definitely a classic album that everyone should listen to at least once, just to get some historical context for early hip-hop compared to what it is now. The driving forces behind the production are soul, funk, disco, and electro. Also, listen to how different the rhyming techniques are from what became standard even five or ten years later. The flows are generally simpler, more rhythmically straightforward, and closer to the MC's original role of energizing a party. Hip-hop's vocabulary, wordplay, rhyme schemes, and technical expectations were still being constructed.

So The Message is an all-time jam, and reading more about these guys it's evident that in so many ways they pretty much created the hip-hop genre. There are a couple more super funky tracks on here that were great - then there are 2 or 3 that are pretty dated and come off almost silly. Definitely a must have on any of the most "important" albums of all time.

Sure, this album feels dated, but it was incredibly influential and I genuinely enjoyed it more than a lot of the modern hip-hop that has devolved into narcissistic bragging and boasting. It was a really fun listen and I'll definitely throw this on again.

Another day another rap album another 1 star 1/5 4/9/26

Mixed bag bit of funk bit of pop bit of rap. Singles good.

From the funky starting track down to the soulful piano ballad, it's a bizarre and disjointed album, the different songs are decent if not only memorable because of how strange they are in the context of the rest of the album An okay listen, save for a mite of whiplash

Classic. I'm gonna start saying I'm down by law and I know my way around more frequently

For an album made by at least five furious people, this is surprisingly mellow. The Message is an all-timer, and It’s Nasty and She’s Fresh are pretty good, but the weird Wonder-esque ballads are just unwelcome and ruin the flow. The good is good, but the bad is bad, and so it’s a very middling album overall.

Fun recording.

This is definitely a classic album that everyone should listen to at least once, just to get some historical context for early hip-hop compared to what it is now. The driving forces behind the production are soul, funk, disco, and electro. Also, listen to how different the rhyming techniques are from what became standard even five or ten years later. The flows are generally simpler, more rhythmically straightforward, and closer to the MC's original role of energizing a party. Hip-hop's vocabulary, wordplay, rhyme schemes, and technical expectations were still being constructed.

Man 2 rap albums in a row?? Dude Oh this wasn’t really rap at all. For some reason it wasn’t available on yt music so I had to go on yt to find. I liked it though, it was fun! I will say the beats did get a bit repetitive but the members of the group brought a really nice energy and it was just generally fun to listen to. Idk if I would listen to it again purely bc it’s not on yt music. Probably a 3.1/5

I'm sorry, I can't get past the prominent Wordy Rappinghood sampling in It's Nasty. What a distraction!

This was way better than I expected! I knew The Message (song) and had heard It's Nasty before (along with the Genius of Love source track), but I had no idea that GMF & the F5 had such a gift with actual harmony and melody. Tracks like Dreamin' and You Are are genuinely among the best of soul music, in the same category as Stevie Wonder (appropriately enough) and Herbie Hancock. I loved how funky and listenable this whole album was and listened to it twice all the way through and might have gone for a third time if I hadn't run out of time at my desk. Five stars.

One banger and surprised by some tracks but didn't age too well

An important piece of musical history, and influential beyond its genre. 3 - deserves to be on this list

This album has a major place in the development of hip-hop/rap, but really it has two great tracks and a load of filler. Interestingly Wikipedia says that Grandmaster Flash himself "does not actually appear on "The Message", "Freedom", or many of the other Furious Five songs". So I went to listen to The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel, and I can see his real input.

A lot more soulful than I expected

great album

Understand this is very influential but primitive hip hop like just hasn’t aged well. However, obvious funk and electro influences here make for some enjoyable tracks, especially the title track

R&B, Disco, Electro, Gospel and rap. I enjoyed this but would have liked it less if it were not so all over the place.

it's alright album cover is really pretty though

They were among the groups that laid the foundation for hip hop and were huge influences on the early stages of the genre. Having said that, listening to this in 2026 is funny. Very simple rhyme schemes and a few silly lines throughout.