(AllHipHop News) For the first time in its existence, music magazine giant Rolling Stone recently compiled a list of the Top 50 songs that have influenced Hip-Hop history.
Their selection (based on the opinions of a Rolling Stone staff panel and Hip-Hop “experts” such as Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of The Roots) for the top song ever in the less than 40-year-old Rap genre was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message”.
According to Rolling Stone, the 1982 hit single by the South Bronx collective was able “to tell, with hip hop’s rhythmic and vocal force, the truth about modern inner-city life in America.”
With its stern “Don’t push me/’cause I’m close to the edge…” warning, “The Message” depicted impoverished life in American ghettos in a way that had not been heard before among the fledgling Hip-Hop tracks of the time.
Also included on the list were songs like Public Enemy’s militant “Fight The Power” and the Hip-Hop standard “Rapper’s Delight” by Sugarhill Gang, another pioneering Rap group that formed in the late ’70s.
“It’s a list that would have been a lot harder to do ten or 15 years ago because hip hop is so young,” Nathan Brackett, deputy managing editor of Rolling Stone, told Reuters.
“We’ve reached the point now where hip hop acts are getting into the (Rock and Roll) Hall Of Fame… it just felt like the right time to give this the real Rolling Stone treatment.”
The full Top 50 list, featuring four special edition covers, will be released on December 7 on RollingStone.com and the newsstand version of Rolling Stone.
Source: Reuters