Saturday 3 October 2015

Rap & Bullshit: conventional rap history narratives that are a load of bollox (part 1)

"The Message was the first socio-political rap song, man!"

Nowadays everyone wanna talk about Duke Bootee & Melle Mel's The Message like it was the first rap song with something meaningful to say, but nothin' comes out when y'all move your fingertips just a bunch of revisionist gibberish and motherfuckers act like they forgot about Kurtis Blow's Hard Times. To wit: Kurtis Blow made a song about the economic hardships of everyday life in 1980, Duke Bootee followed suit in 1982, albeit featuring a recycled Melle Mel verse from 1979. There's no debate, it happened.

Kurtis Blow - Hard Times
(From Kurtis Blow album; 1980)


The solution? Anyone caught persisting with the notion that rap was all fun & games until The Message dropped will be forced to read the collected Rap Radar posts of Brian "B-Dot" Miller every day for a year. Anyone who also persists on crediting The Message to Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five will be forced to subscribe to B-Dot's Twitter as extra penance.

5 comments:

d said...

It really doesnt help when so many old rappers regurgitate all these iron clad truths. Professor Bun B sez Wild Styles a gritty urban documentary made f.u.b.u.

KRS loves this particular one. he stays on-Message

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

This is the best song Kurtis ever made. Better than the Run D.M.C (semi)remake too.

Tomo said...

Pretty funky lol

Anonymous said...

That Cowbell

SE said...

B. Dot's posts are worth reading for the bottomless wells of hate Nah Right exile THE REAL mac DIESEL has for B. Dot.

DON'T HATE ON MY OPINION!!!!