Message deemed greatest hip hop song ever

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The 1982 hit “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was named the greatest hip hop song of all time on Wednesday, in the first such list by Rolling Stone magazine to celebrate the young but influential music genre. “The Message,” which tops a list of 50 influential hip hop songs, was the first track “to tell, with hip hop’s rhythmic and vocal force, the truth about modern inner-city life in America,” Rolling Stone said. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, a hip hop collective from the south Bronx in New York, was formed in 1978 and became one of the pioneers of the hip hop genre. The full list spanned songs ranging from Sugarhill Gang’s 1979 hit “Rapper’s Delight,” which came in at No. 2, to Kanye West’s 2004 hit “Jesus Walks,” which landed at No. 32. “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.”