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Duke Bootee, the pioneering rapper who co-wrote and appeared on Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s classic “The Message” – Number One on Rolling stoneThe list of the 100 greatest hip-hop songs of all time – passed away Wednesday at the age of 69.
Born Edward Fletcher, the rapper died at his home in Savannah, Georgia. The cause was end-stage congestive heart failure, his wife, Rosita, confirmed to Rolling stone.
Fletcher was a member of the house band of Sugar Hill Records alongside other New Jersey funk veterans like bassist Doug Wimbish, guitarist Skip Alexander and keyboardist Jiggs Chase, the latter of whom recruited Fletcher for Sugar Hill Records.
Fletcher originally wrote the song in 1980, detailing the struggles of downtown life amid a New York City transit strike that year. Although “The Message” is credited to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the song – then titled “The Jungle” – is an brainchild of Fletcher, who submitted a demo of the track while he was a session musician for the Sugar Hill Gang. Grandmaster Flash and Co. was initially reluctant to record the song due to its lack of appeal to the club, but Sylvia Robinson, manager of Sugar Hill Records, persuaded Furious Five member Melle Mel to write verses. for the track. Shortly after becoming a hit in 1982, the song alone would give mainstream hip-hop music social and political awareness.
“The post” was a knockout of the park, “Public Enemy’s Chuck D would later say. Rolling stone. “It was the first dominant rap group with the most dominant MC saying something that meant something.”
Place the song at number five of his best hip-hop songs of all time for Rolling stone, Questlove wrote in 2012: “The world (myself included) came to a complete stop in his tracks the week he made his radio debut in June 1982. Hip-hop was once known as fodder. , fashion. “The Message” fired a 180 and proved that it could be a tool for socio-political change. “
It’s Fletcher delivering the oft-quoted opening salvo on “The Message” – “It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep myself from sinking” – as well as some of the most powerful verses from the track: “Ticket collectors, they call my phone / And scare my wife when I’m not at home / I have an ass education, double-digit inflation / I can’t take the train to go to work, there is a strike at the station.
“The neighborhood I lived in, the things I saw – it was like a jungle sometimes in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Even though we lived in a nice neighborhood, I would sit in the living room and watch what was happening across the street in the park. The lyrics were sort of cinematic: I tried to convey a message to the company, ”said Fletcher The Guardian in 2013.
“Rappers were in their late teens then and doing happy, upbeat songs to party, so it was completely new,” he added. “Fortunately, Sylvia had the strength and foresight to put it out. Grandmaster Flash himself was not on the song. He didn’t think people wanted to hear this shit. Miss Mel was so crazy about it.
When ‘The Message’ was added to the National Register – the first hip-hop song to receive this honor – the Library of Congress noted, “If there is one message that unites ‘The Message’, it’s that living this life in, the day has a huge psychological cost that adds up. To hammer that home, the song ends with a brief skit where the band is arrested for no reason – a postscript that is still making headlines as of this writing.
After the success of “The Message”, Duke Bootee and Miss Mel reunited for “Message II (Survival)” from 1983; that same year, Miss Mel and Duke Bootee also recorded “New York New York”, which was again credited to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
In 1984, Fletcher recorded his only solo album as Duke Bootee, Bust me. The following year, he formed his own label – Beauty and the Beat Records, which released his single “Broadway” – and appeared alongside Miss Mel on the All-Star Artists United Against Apartheid single “Sun City”. (“We’re here to talk about South Africa – we don’t like what’s going on,” Duke Bootee and Miss Mel say on the single.) It was also the subject of a tribute, “Duke Booty ‘, on Miles Davis’ last studio album, 1992 Doo-Bop, which merged jazz with hip-hop elements.
After reducing his involvement in the music world, Fletcher turned to teaching, first as a high school teacher and college professor in New Jersey before moving to Savannah in 2007, where he became a critical thinking and communication lecturer at Savannah State University until his retirement in 2019. “I give them what I call the Fletcherian Principles, which start with finding a way to take care of themselves, find someone you can support, who can support you, pay your taxes, take care of your teeth, ”Fletcher says of the teaching.
Fletcher was still receiving publishing royalties from the infinitely sampled “The Message,” but his indispensable role on the track and his huge impact on hip-hop have been largely erased from music history: he does. was not among the winners when Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five became the first hip-hop group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. “It [still] represented in the Smithsonian and in many places, ”says Rosita Fletcher Rolling stone.
When asked if her husband had received the due recognition he deserved for “The Message”, Rosita Fletcher replied, “No. Never, ”noting that Fletcher wrote much of the music and lyrics for the track in a basement in Elizabeth, New Jersey, at the time, but that he didn’t have the equipment to registration required to register it alone. As Fletcher joked in 2013, “Rolling stone named it the number one hip-hop record of all time. I always thought, ‘Shit, if I had known what this was going to do, I would have kept it to myself.’
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