Grandmaster Flash is responsible with taking rap to the next level. At first, rap was a street game of rhyming. With Sugarhill Gang's release of "Rapper's Delight," the second rap song released and the first to hit the charts, rap became a commercial prospect. The next landmark was Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks," the first rap record to go gold. Shortly thereafter, however, commercial rap started to become a parody of itself, with songs like the Afternoon Delights' "General Hospi-tale," a rap song narrating the 1981 season of General Hospital, being the only rap songs to climb the charts. "The Message" changed all that in 1982. It was the first rap song to be politicial. Lyrically, it was in many ways a recasting of Stevie Wonder's "Livin' For the City," but it was the first time lyrics with such considerations were rapped. Also, it was a bit darker. "The Message" ends with a prisoner's suicide.
The forgotten gem of Grandmaster Flash's catalog, however, may be a song he recorded in early 1984 with Melle Mel. "Jesse" was a song championing Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential bid. Indeed, it may be the only rap song urging listeners to join the Rainbow Coalition. It sounds rather tame and dated by today's standards, both musically and politically, but remains at worst an interesting curio and at best a benchmark, laying the foundation for things like will.i.am's "Yes We Can." The best thing about the song, of course, is that it signifies on Ronald Reagan, perhaps the worst president in American history, by looking at how he underestimated Jesse Jackson's leadership potential before he went to Syria.
