"The Message" - Grandmaster Flash /"Check Yo Self" - Ice Cube

Going to kick off this new blog today with a very obvious one.
Two legends of Hip Hop; seminal hiphop superstar Grandmaster Flash (and the Furious Five) with "The Message" and NWA gangsta turned Hollywood hero Ice Cube with "Check Yo Self".

"The Message" - Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.


Ah the 80s! When you couldn't say piss on TV, but you could call people fags and threaten to hijack planes. Younger kids probably remember if from the Grand Theft Auto Vice City.


- Grandmaster Flash Lyrics

Getting the lyrics for the song is a quick Google away, getting the spoken part towards the end, however, has proven impossibly difficult, so I decided fuck it, played the thing over and over (I'll never get sick of that song, when me and a friend worked in an internet cafe we used to play it daily, it was the cafe anthem)
and wrote it out.

Grandmaster Flash - The Message transcript

"Yo Mel you see that girl there?"
"ooh ooh!"
"Yo that sound like Cowboy man!"
"Yo W’sup fool!"
"Yo w’sup munney?"
"Yo!"
"Where’s (?) and Rahim at man?"
"Dey upstairs coolin’ out."
"So what’s up for t’nite y’awl?"
"Yo we can go down to the fever man."
"Let’s go check out dunebug man."
"Hey you you know that girl betty?"
"Yeah man."
"Her moms got robbed man."
"What?"
"She got hurt."
"When did diss happen? When diss happen?"
(screech!)
"Freeze – don’t nobody move nuthin’ – y’awl know whut this is - geddem up!"
"What?"
"Get ‘em up man!"
"We down with grandmaster flash and the furious five man!"
"What is that a gang?"
"Naaaw!"
"Shuddup! I don’t wanna hear your mouth!"
"Officer officer, what’s the problem?"
"You the problem! …Get in the car, get in the car, get in the gawd-damn car!
I said get in the car!"



Elements of the above spoken word section were also homaged by Newcleus' Jam On Revenge (a.k.a. the Wikki Wikki song) which also uses elements from "Rappers Delight" from Flash's contemporaries the Sugarhill Gang.
On their Journeys By DJ mix album "Sixty Minutes of Madness" Coldcut took what sounds like an acapella of Jam on Revenge, timestretched it, and mashed it over drum and bass beats.
The infectious melody from Jam on Revenge was also nicked by Nightmares on Wax, for their song from the 1995 Album Smokers Delight



So yeah, anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. In 1994 (if memory serves) Ice Cube came out with his "Bootlegs and B-Sides" LP. A mish-mash of EP b-sides, unreleased tracks, remixes and a megamix. With anyone else such an album would generally be bad enough were it not for the sacrilegious sampling of Grandmaster Flash on top of it. But then we're not talking about "anyone else", we're talking about Ice Cube.
In its review for the album Mixmag voiced the same concerns before adding "but Ice Cube is the man." Now that's a fucking understatement and a half!

"Check Yo Self (Remix)" - Ice Cube.



Here are the lyrics with a less-sanitized version of Cube's own public health announcements.


Check Yo Self (Remix) Lyrics




Finally here's the original with Das FX which came from 93's Predator album. Actually now that I write this I realise that both Ice Cube and the Predator movies have massive potential for future posts.

"Check Yo Self" - Ice Cube feat Das FX.