“The Message”

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

(e.fletcher, s.robinson, c.chase, m.glover -- Sugarhill records 1982)

It’s like a jungle sometimes,

Makes me wonder how I keep from goin’ under.

Broken glass everywhere

People pissing on the stairs, you know they just don’t care

I can’t take the smell, can’t take the noise

Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice

Rats in the front room, roaches in the back

Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat

I tried to get away, but I couldn’t get far

Cause the man with the tow-truck repossessed my car

Chorus:

Don’t push me, cause I’m close to the edge

I’m trying not to lose my head

It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder

How I keep from going under

Standing on the front stoop, hangin’ out the window

Watching all the cars go by, roaring as the breezes blow

Crazy lady, livin’ in a bag

Eating out of garbage pails, used to be a fag-hag

Says she danced the tango, skip the light fandango

Was zircon princess seemed to lost her senses

Down at the peepshow, watching all the creeps

So she can tell the stories to the girls back home

She went to the city and got social security

She had to get a pension, she couldn’t make it on her own

(Chorus)

It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder

How I keep from goin’ under

My brother’s doing bad, stole my mother’s TV

Says she watches too much, is just not healthy

All My Children in the daytime, Dallas at night

Can’t even see the game or the Sugar Ray fight

Bill collectors they ring my phone

And scare my wife when I’m not home

Got a bum education, double-digit inflation

Can’t take the train to the job, there’s a strike at the station

Neon King Kong standin’ on my back

Can’t stop to turn around, broke my sacroiliac

Midrange, migraine, cancered membrane

Sometimes I think I’m going insane,

I swear, I might hijack a plane!

(Chorus)

My son said, “Daddy, I don’t wanna go to school

Cause the teacher’s a jerk, he must think I’m a fool

And all the kids smoke reefer, I think it’d be cheaper

If I just got a job, learned to be a street sweeper

I dance to the beat, shuffle my feet

Wear a shirt and tie and run with the creeps

Cause it’s all about money, ain’t a damn thing funny

You got to have a con in this land of milk and honey”

They push that girl in front of a train

Took her to a doctor, sowed the arm on again

Stabbed that man, right in his heart

Gave him a transplant before a brand new start

I can’t walk through the park, cause it’s crazy after dark

Keep my hand on the gun, cause they got me on the run

I feel like an outlaw, broke my last glass jaw

Hear them say, “You want some more?”

Livin’ on a seesaw

(Chorus)

A child is born with no state of mind

Blind to the ways of mankind

God is smiling on you but he’s frowning too

Because only God knows what you go through

You grow in the ghetto, living second rate

And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate

The places you play and where you stay

Looks like one great big alley way

You’ll admire all the number book takers

Thugs, pimps, pushers and the big money makers

Driving big cars, spending twenties and tens

And you wanna grow up to be just like them

Smugglers, scramblers, burglars, gamblers

Pickpockets, peddlers and even pan-handlers

You say I’m cool, I’m no fool

But then you wind up dropping out of high school

Now you’re unemployed, all nonvoid

Walking ‘round like you’re Pretty Boy Floyd

Turned stickup kid, look what you done did

Got send up for a eight year bid

Now your manhood is took and you’re a Maytag

Spend the next two years as an undercover fag

Being used and abused, and served like hell

Till one day you was find hung dead in a cell

It was plain to see that your life was lost

You was cold and your body swung back and forth

But now your eyes sing the sad sad song

Of how you lived so fast and died so young

(Chorus)