The Message

It's not quite a 4 for me but it's better than a 3. I get why this album means as much as it does all these years later.

Old school Hip-Hop

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

De waarde van The message voor de commerciële rap is al erg vaak beschreven. Dan gaat het met name over het titelnummer en It's Nasty. En eerlijk is eerlijk. Deze nummers klinken heerlijk, zijn erg creatief en hebben zeker hun waarde voor de commerciële rap gehad. Gelukkig laat wiki het derde geniale nummer niet volledig onbenoemd. Scorpio is een erg vroege betekenisvolle electroplaat. Ik herken die electro zeker, maar waardeer ook vooral de combinatie met het acid-geluid.

Zijn Grandmaster Flash en zijn vrienden trouwens ook begonnen met die zogenaamd gevoelige ballad die zo'n twintig jaar lang verplicht was op elk pop-album? Net als bij al die andere albums, geldt hier: schoenmaker, blijf bij je leest. Dat zou een trendsetter zijn die minpunten oplevert.

Ik kan dus niet elk nummer zo sterk waarderen, maar dit album biedt drie baanbrekende nummers, die ik zelf nu nog regelmatig luister en is daarmee vijf sterren waard.

Better than I expected for one of these groundbreaking very dated hip hop albums - it holds up more than some of the much more stripped back early boombox stuff - the full sounding disco/RnB beats give it a compelling dynamism and groove, a big party feel, so the verses are just icing on the cake. The Stevie Wonder song and You Are are shockingly bad though - pure syrupy pap and awful crooning. The spacey synth riff on the Message makes up for it though.

Fun, definitely fresh!

old hiphop hits differently…

Very good, groundbreaking, entertaining, meaningful.

A good slice of old school hip hop. The opening four tracks are great climaxing with the irresistible’It’s a Shame’. But then ‘Dreamin’ and ‘ You Are’ take us down a very different road and not one i enjoyed before the stonewall classic ‘The Message’ steadies the ship. For the main it felt like this album was a 4/5, but 2 duff tracks out of 7 mean this cant be anything above a 3

Fresh: brilliantly funky bass, some brass stabs and the word "fresh" said about 80 times.

It's Nasty (Genius of Love): so quickly into a sample that makes me want to sing a completely different thing (Mariah Carey). Kazoos!!

Scorpio: the robots are taking over. I thought this track was essentially pointless.

It's A Shame: more sampling problems for my brain where I don't think of the original, or Grandmaster Flash (this time it's Monie Love). I liked the lyrical content and whoever was doing the response part of the singing. There was too much scratching for my tastes.

Dreamin': weird. Feels like it should be on a completely different album. Enough that it made me do a double take.

You Are: boring.

The Message: clearly the standout, great fun and, once again a great bass line.

Don't. Push. Me. Cos. I'm. Close. To. The. Edddddge!

3/5

disappointement ngl

A great listen and a special document of a time and place. I can understand why hip hop fans hear this as undeveloped (or just plain uncool), these were artists at the cutting edge still figuring out what a "hip hop album" would sound like. But I kinda love its rawness. It's nice to hear how hip hop grew out of, and overlapped with, funk, r&b, disco, rock, electro, and other styles. Also, much respect to the musicians who made this record (people like Reggie Griffin) who are the behind-the-scenes pioneers of hip hop music.

2.43

Just super not my thing.