The Real Sun City Show Is On the Second Stage

Remember "Sun City?"  Okay... well, remember "We Are the World?"  "Sun City" was one of those records that came on the heels of "We Are the World," with major artists of all musical genres coming together to make a joint record for a good cause.  In the case of "Sun City," it was about ending apartheid.  There were lots of big names, including Bob Dylan, Pat Benatar, Miles Davis, Lou Reed, Herbie Hancock, Hall & Oates, George Clinton, Bonnie Raitt, etc etc. But what made "Sun City" of a lot more interest to us here at Werner's is that it featured rappers!  Melle Mel, Run DMC, Kurtis Blow, Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Cheese providing some cuts - now we're talking! And it's a lot more hip-hop with big 80's beats and producers like Keith LeBlanc.

But, still... how good is a song that features Kurtis Blow and Bonnie Raitt on the same track really going to be?  As you can imagine, the rappers had their parts, essentially drifting in a sea of sappy pop music. So, you know, it's interesting, but we heads will really want to stick with "Self Destruction" and "Close the Crack House" to get our enormously collaborative, charitable kicks.

But "Sun City" wasn't just a single - even though that's all anybody remembers - it was a whole album.  And while most of it is more of the same except a lot more underwhelming, there was a highlight. In a show of "we're just beginning to wrap our heads around the concept of political correctness in 1985," the producers of the Sun City album decided to take all of the black artists, and give them a solo song of their own. They didn't separate them by genre - the jazz, the rap, the reggae, is still all mushed together... but it's a lot more cohesive and less blandly poppy than the title track.  Finally, we didn't have Kurtis passing the mic to Bonnie.

Despite being multi-genre'd, this isn't just more cohesive, but more hip-hop.  Each MC gets a lot more time to flesh out verses, as opposed to quickly saying a short soundbite in unison with another rapper, so you can't even make out their individual voices and then clearing the stage, and this time around we get extra rappers.  Scorpio is here and holy shit, it's The Fat Boys! ...Actually, if you listen to "Sun City" real close[what? so I have a little extra free time] you can hear a super brief sound clearly made by The Fat Boys right before Run DMC's second appearance.  I'd bet you dollars to doughnuts that The Fat Boys were originally a part of this song and then cut out, perhaps because they were considered too much of a silly novelty act for the song?  Or because their manager wanted too much money?  Anyway, they're here on "Let Me See Your I.D."  Unlike this "Sun City," which I'd only recommend to completists who have to have everything guys like Melle Mel laid their voices to, this song's actually worth your time.

Still... it's not perfect. Mostly because Gil Scott Heron has about half the vocal time on this song. Pretty much between every rap verse he comes on and does a spoken word bit... not even really spoken word like Saul Williams, but like, just self-indulgent structureless rambling. It's boring, sucks the life out of the song, and it even gets kind of insipid, "you ask somebody, 'where is the third world,' they go, 'oh yeah yeah, I know! it's a disco, Go up about three blocks and take a left.' Or they might tell you the third world is a new health food restaurant. I know the first time I heard somebody talkin' about there was trouble in the middle east, i thought they were talkin' about Pittsburgh."  And that's it, then the hook comes in. But, still, here we a big, full verse by Mel, DJ Cheese providing cuts while Buff Love does a big human beatbox solo and Miles Davis blows his trumpet, Duke Bootee flexes a nice post-"Message" rhyme, Kurtis Blow, well... he was kinda off in his own world in 1985, it's pretty corny... but still, it's mostly good stuff.

Still, wouldn't it be great if there was a version that stripped away Heron's B.S.?  And, okay, now you might be thinking, "Slow your roll, dude. You're talking about Gil Scott Heron like he's Marky Mark or something."  I know, I know.  I'm not disparaging his legacy and classics like "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" or "Winter In America." Granted, as a purely hip-hop head, I spin Kane and Rakim instead of Heron for my musical enjoyment; but when I listen to "Revolution," I feel it, I get it.  It's really fucking good. But his contribution here is nowhere on that level. Here he's jamming up the song like rush hour traffic.

But hey! There's actually a 12" that solves everything! Yes, "Let Me See Your I.D." was also released as a single. The A-side is just the album version, and there's also a Beat and Scratch mix on the flip. But the important part here is the Street Mix. Instrumentally, it's a bit more stripped down, which is mostly an improvement, though I do wind up missing a few nice instrumental bits from the original (Miles!). But the important thing is that they take out all the talky filler and give you just a flat out, 100% rap song. See, the important thing is now we finally have a song we can listen to in regular rotation. It's no longer a case of "well, if you sift through all the other stuff, there are some nice hip-hop nuggets that can be unearthed." This is a really good fucking hip-hop record!  This changes it from something interesting for historians to a dope song for any fan of old school rap.

Seriously, if you like stuff from 1985, get this 12"; you'll definitely be happy. And it even comes in a picture cover because it had a budget.  :)

Mel's Message Week, Day 3 - The Sequel

Still 1982, Grandmaster Flash and the rest of The Furious Five have come around to "The Message" - it's a runaway hit, the title of their album. But now that it's time for the sequel, Melle Mel and Duke Bootee are still doing it on their own. Flash and the Five aren't even credited on the label this time, though Sylvia and Joey Robinson are still taking writing and production credits.

It's called "Message II (Survival)," and once again it's just Mel and Bootee rapping on this. But there's another MC who should have writing credit on this record. Check out these lyrics:

"In jail they got a game and they call it 'survival,'
They run it down to ya on your first arrival.
They tell ya what you can and can not do,
So if you ever go to jail, watch your (mm mm)."

Duke Bootee kicks that short verse near the beginning of the song. But now check out these lyrics to another rap classic, and see if you notice anything familiar:

"For you sucker sucker crews who commit the crime,
You wanna do bad but don't do the time.
I say you wanna be this but then you wanna be a crook,
You find and old lady and take her pocket book;
And then you steal your mother father's money on the sly;
You can run, but you can't hide.
When the cops grab you, your face turns pale;
And I'ma tell you a little story about the jail:
You see, in jail they got a game and it's called 'survival,'
And they run it down to ya on your first arrival.
They tell ya what you can and can not do,
But if you go to jail, watch your poo poo."

That's right. That's from Spoonie Gee's debut single "Spoonin' Rap" on Sound of New York (1979). Of course, Spoonie took it a little further...

"'Cause when you go in the shower, he's a-pullin' his meat,
And he's a-lookin' at you, and say you look real sweet.
And at first there was one, now ten walked in,
Now how in the hell do you expect to win?
I said you better look alive, not like you take dope,
And please, my brother, don't drop the soap.
And if you get out the bathroom and you're alive,
Just remember: only a man can survive."

For ages, I just assumed the lines were bitten. After all, Bootee is a musician first and foremost. He rhymed on these records, but he never really made any claims of being a serious MC. The original intention was for his vocals to be replaced on the original "The Message," and he was only rapping on this one because of the success of the last one (and the growing divisions within the group over the whole mess). So I assumed he had a little trouble coming up with some rhymes and figured he could sneak a lifted passage or two under the radar.

But, actually, in an interview with The Foundation (by the way, have I mentioned that The Foundation is fucking awesome, and if you haven't gone there and ready every single interview than you're really missing out?), Rahiem, explains that, "Spoonie G wrote that song to get out of his contract [with Sugarhill]."

The beat should be familiar, too. There's some new instrumentation by the usual players on top, but the basic track is Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five's earlier hit, "Scorpio" with the fast, electronic sounding beats and sound effects.

Still, this is a pretty great song. Some of the added music, especially the super funky bassline, really elevates this above "Scorpio" IMHO, which gets kind of monotonous and dull. And it sure doesn't hurt that Mel's simple vocoder effects have been replaced by some great new lyrics by Spoonie, "you've got to lock all your windows, chain up all your doors, to protect what's inside of your houses, stores. Beware of the food - it might be no good, 'cause there's someone trying to poison the whole neighborhood! Today they found something in somebody's store they said, killed ten people, and hurt four more."

Mel also changes up his flow for majority of the song, and instead of giving his usual, ultra-aggressive delivery, gives a very earnest, softer, almost pleading delivery for most of his lines. You might almost think it was another member of the Five doing his parts, but no, that's Mel. He only really switches back to his traditional style for the ending, when he brings back a portion of his famous, "a child is born with no state of mind" verse for an encore performance.

Of course, this record didn't have quite the impact the original did. A lot of the recycled elements feel like quick cash-grabs, and you just can't have an important, musical and cultural First twice. The hook, while effective, didn't become the anthem that "The Message" or even "New York, New York" did. But it's still a really great record that stands up to the test of time a lot better than many other records from that era, even other hits by Flash and the gang. If this record had gotten formulaic, it was at least a terrific formula.

Mel's Message Week, Day 2 - The Actual Message

So, three years later, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five built a song around that famous verse from "Superrappin'." Or, rather, Melle Mel did, almost on his own. Apparently the rest of the group weren't convinced at all of this bold concept: to make a hip-hop record that was serious and political as opposed to light and bouncy. Little could they imagine the world of Public Enemy, NWA and Edutainment that hip-hop was about to define hip-hop - "the black CNN" as Chuck D famously described it - for the latter half of the decade.

So Melle Mel hooked up with one of the members of Sugarhill Records' house band, Duke Bootee, and they crafted this song on their own (note the billing on the label... Flash and the Five developed a long history of confusing and ever-changing billing on their records like pretty much no other group). Bootee didn't just work on the instrumental for song, he actually wrote and performs one of the verses - the only one not by Mel. In fact, it even goes further... according to an interview with Bootee at The Foundation, he wrote all of Mel's verses, too (except for that famous, final verse).

While "Superrappin'" may've had the famous verse first, and other rap records managed to make some social and political points, "The Message" turned out to be revolutionary. While the instrumental is still by The Sugarhill Band and contains your standard disco/ funk elements, it's much darker and atmospheric, and it's set to a drum machine instead of live percussion. Instrumentally and lyrically, it lead hip-hop into a whole new direction. Not that every rapper took it (care free party rap remains a staple of the genre to this day), but it opened the door to so much, from the post-Run DMC era of stripped down beats to pretty much the whole concept of serious and "hardcore" MCing.

I have a fun memory of this record. In high school, we had to do a presentation where we typed up the words to a song, played the song in class, and discussed the lyrics. Most of the kids were surprised I listened to stuff like this, considering it was so old school - I'm not so old that I went to high school in the 80's, guys. But one of my best friends had already called dibs on The Geto Boys' "Chucky," so I figured I had to go in a different direction.

Anyway, my English teacher was impressed I figured out Duke was saying "sacroiliac," but marked me wrong on another line of the song, where Mel tells the tale of the "Zircon princess" who, "seemed to lost her senses. Down at the peep show, watchin' all the creeps so she can tell her stories to the girls back home. She went to the city and got so, so siditty, she had to get a pimp; she couldn't make it on her own." She was convinced the song had to be saying she got "social security." So, since I'm looking back at this record, I decided to do a little research and see what the rest of the world thinks about this line.

The original hip-hop anthology, Rap: The Lyrics actually has it as "social security." But the later Anthology of Rap agrees with me. Being on the side of "the big book of plagiarism" was almost enough to make me rethink my stance on the subject, but it occurred to me that whatever they had must have originally come from the internet, so I checked The OHHLA, and they also have it as "siditty". Actually, they have it as "seditty." In fact, googling around, I've found literally over a dozen spellings of this word. But however you spell it, I'm convinced they meant the term found in this Urban Dictionary link. This is just one of those old school slang words everybody was using back in the days, and it hadn't even occurred to me that they could be saying anything else.

I mean, I can understand the logic of wanting to think it must be "social security." Rapgenius has it as "seditty," but then if you click the word, they say, "My guess, from listening to the song and given the context ('she couldn’t make it on her own'), is that what’s actually being said is 'Social Security' — which maybe is being used euphemism for welfare, or disability given that she’s a 'crazy lady'" - it makes sense. But I think that's just a case of us trying to re-edit the song afterwards. I mean, just listen to the song: there aren't enough syllables for it to be "social security." I can hear "so so" as "social," but "security" has a whole other, distinct syllable with a definite "your" sound in there. And Mel's not exactly a midwestern mumblemouth-type rapper. He comes from the old school tradition of enunciating the Hell out of whatever you're trying to say. Hell, Maya Angelou even uses the term in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: "St. Louis teachers, on the other hand, tended to act very 'siditty' and talked down to their students from the lofty heights of education and whitefolks' enunciation." ...I wish I had that Angelou quote back in English class; I think that would've gotten that incorrect mark off my paper! hehe

Anyway, I apologize for the long tangent. It's a powerful song, from Mel's dynamic opening, "broken glass everywhere!" to the mature and heartfelt lyrics of all the verses, including Bootee's, talking about, "the bill collectors that ring my phone and scare my wife when I'm not home." It works and holds up on every level. Even today, you're not going to find many rappers with metaphors and imagery like, "rows of eyes disguised as windows, looking down on the poor and needy." And, of course, it has one of the most famous and bitten hooks in hip-hop history: "don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge... I'm tryin' not to lose my head. It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under."

There are multiple pressings, of course, but pretty much only the one version of the song (not counting remixes made by other artists long after the fact), about seven minutes long with the instrumental on the B-side. Unlike songs like "Superrappin'" or "Rapper's Delight," no one really pares this one down. I mean, maybe a compilation or two will shave a bit of the extended instrumental at the beginning or the skit at the ending (that Newcleus famously imitated on their classic, "Jam On Revenge"), but you'd be hard pressed to find any versions that cut any of the verses, all of which are iconic and essential. This song is one of the few real game changers, even moreso than other songs that managed to set trends. And Grandmaster Flash and the rest of the Furious Five, who originally didn't want to get down with this song, wound up making it the title of their debut album.