“The Message” — Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

It’s easy to forget that early hip-hop songs were often protest songs. Not Bob Dylan-style protest songs, I grant you, but protest songs nonetheless.

I love a protest song, but in the 40-odd years since Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five released “The Message” hip-hop, the musical style they helped pioneer and popularise, has too often degenerated into tales of…