Before 1982's "The Message," rap music had only produced a couple of truly huge recordings: 1979's "Rappers Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang, which is credited as the first commercially successful rap record; and "Planet Rock" by the Soul Sonic Force, which launched the electro subgenre of rap. Prior to "The Message," which was credited to Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, rap records consisted mostly of boasting and exaggerated storytelling. With the exception of The Harlem World Crew's "Rappers Convention" and Kurtis Blow's "Throughout Your Years" and "The Breaks," the subject matter of rap records didn't often steer away from cars, fly girls and partying—the excesses of the early 1980s.

In 1982, the national poverty rate was 35.6% for African-Americans—three times that of white Americans. "Reaganomics" had a stranglehold on urban America and rap music (or any other genre) had yet to speak to it. It would ultimately be Sugar Hill Records percussionist Ed Fletcher aka Duke Bootee who would pen the record that opened the door for what would much later be termed "reality rap."

"I used to tell Sylvia [Robinson, Sugar Hill Records founder], 'these motherfuckers ain't talkin' bout shit, I can out rap all of 'em," Fletcher told me in our last interview before his passing on January 13, 2021. Fletcher wasn't an MC, and didn't think much of rap music until he joined Sugar Hill Records in 1980 and saw Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five perform. "They would use the entire stage and incorporate these dance moves, while others just stood in one spot; and what Flash did on the turntables was incredible."

"I would say, jokingly, that I was better than the rappers, but I wrote poetry before there were any rap records and I read five newspapers a day. I felt that more could be said than what I was hearing," Fletcher revealed. Between playing on records by The Sugar Hill Gang, Spoonie Gee, The Mean Machine, The Sequence and Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Fletcher wrote his own songs. There was a particular song that Fletcher had written which he called "The Jungle;" he would periodically say the hook ("It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under") around the studio and Sylvia would always inquire about the song.

"The first version had a spoken word cadence and bongos almost like a Last Poets song," he explained. "I was also playing a water bottle on it. I called it 'The Jungle' because that's what the percussion sounded like."

"Jiggs Chase (Sugar Hill Records arranger and writer) came by the house one day and said that we needed to put some lyrics on that 'bottle track' and see if Sylvia would be hot on it," Fletcher said. "I lived across from a park and I would hear a bottle get broken every once in a while, and I started with that 'broken glass everywhere.' Once I put the lyrics to the song, I let Sylvia hear it and she really liked it, and she actually wanted it for one of her groups."

Grandmaster Melle Mel of Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five recalled their first thoughts on the track.

"No one wanted to do the song," he says. "Wonder Mike from The Sugar Hill Gang threw the tape into a park across the street from the studio. I believe that she tried to get Spoonie Gee to do it also. Everyone hated it." Mel's group mate Rahiem concurs. "It sounded like a Last Poets track. It wasn't what we, and most importantly our audience liked," he shares. "You couldn't breakdance or do the freak to it. 'Planet Rock' was the hottest record in the world at the time, and we wanted to do a record like that."

Robinson suggested that Fletcher make the music more commercially accessible, which meant replacing the "jungle" track with something more reflective of the times. "We were in my basement smoking weed and listening to My Life In The Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno. That's where a lot of the trippy trance like inspiration for that track comes from," says Fletcher. "But we had been touring with Zapp, and I loved 'More Bounce To The Ounce' and the bassline to 'The Message' was inspired by that, they are very similar. 'Genius of Love' by The Tom Tom Club was a huge record at the time, and that was also an inspiration."

After the lyrics and new music were done, Ed Fletcher laid a reference vocal track for whomever would be recording the song. Sylvia Robinson was more certain than ever that she had a hit on her hands. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five had just released "It's Nasty" and her flagship group The Sugar Hill Gang needed a hit. Robinson still had no success getting any volunteers to record the song that was deemed "too slow" and depressing for rap music's upbeat, party vibe. Melle Mel finally gave in.

"I saw how adamant she was about the record. It was the same drive and passion that she had for 'Rappers Delight,' which nobody believed in either, but she called it," said Mel. "She was showing the song so much attention that I felt that even if the song didn't hit, it would gain exposure for our group."

"Sylvia never wanted more than two voices on the record," says Ed Fletcher. "Rahiem tried it, but Sylvia left my reference vocal on the track. She said that I sounded convincing like I meant it."

Melle Mel said a rhyme at the end of the 12-minute version of their first recording, 1979's "Superrappin,'" on Bobby Robinson's Enjoy Records, which was so out of place that it went virtually ignored for two years. While the rest of the song talks about how proficient Flash is on the beat box and how fly their rides are, Mel comes with a verse that was so prophetic that it couldn't be fully appreciated in 1979.

"Mel told Sylvia that he had something that would work on the end of 'The Message' and it was a rhyme that he said on 'Superappin' from 1979. When I heard it I said 'Oh shit, that's it!" Fletcher said. The infamous "A child is born with no state of mind..." verse which Melle Mel often refers to as "The Ghetto Koran" is one of his best, and serves as a glimpse into what urban America would look like in a few short years when crack cocaine decimated communities. The fact that Mel was likely 17 or younger when he penned that verse is a testament to his greatness.

"Sylvia was heavy into numerology and when 'The Message' was complete and came out to 7 minutes and 11 seconds she knew that we had a hit," says Melle Mel. "No one believed that the song would work. Not me, not even Fletcher and he wrote the song. For whatever it's worth, Sylvia Robinson is not only hands-down the greatest female producer ever, but one of the best producers period. Not only did she produce The Moments and her own hit records, she produced 'Rappers Delight' and she produced the record that would change the face of Hip-Hop and that was 'The Message.' That song is the difference between every other group and us."

"The Message" did everything that Sylvia said that it would, putting the group in constant prime time radio rotation (a humongous feat for a rap record at the time), placing them on Soul Train and making their name a household one around the world. "The Message" opened the doors for Public Enemy, 2Pac, NWA and every rap act that spoke about the social conditions of urban America after them. Ironically "The Message" also caused dissension in arguably the best group to ever pick up the mic device. The full length album titled The Message, which was released later in 1982, would be the last time that the group recorded together outside of a few short-lived reunions throughout the years.

The success of the "The Message" led to Melle Mel & Fletcher recording "The Message II (Survival)" and "New York, New York" together, and then Melle Mel recorded "White Lines," "Beat Street Breakdown", "King of The Streets," "Vice" and other songs solo, although the records were still credited to the group.

"That record was the demise of my formula. The price was too high to pay for that record," said Grandmaster Flash. "What 'The Message' did was make us a household name, so everyone (in the group) should be thankful for that," says Melle Mel. "'The Message' may have been my coming-out party, but my check was the same as everybody else's. I don't think that 'The Message' broke up the group, but it planted the seed that built a certain amount of animosity that destroyed our working relationship and the creative continuity that we had. That's what 'The Message' did."

'The Message" is part of the Library of Congress archives among the works of Edison and other important contributions to society—it was the first rap record achieve that prestigious accolade. It is also in the Grammy songwriting Hall of Fame and Rolling Stone magazine ranked it #59 in the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and #1 in the Greatest Rap Songs of All Time. In 2007, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5 became the first rap group inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and they received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement award last year. They remain the most decorated of rap music's first generation of recorded artists.