During a newly published interview with YaHeard.com, The Furious Five’s Scorpio blasted deejay and frontman Grandmaster Flash, claiming that he never contributed to any of the group’s music, including their 1982 hit record, “The Message.” Scorpio also called Grandmaster Flash “Hip Hop’s Milli Vanilli,” referencing the German-born pop duo who were stripped of their Grammy Award after it was revealed that the vocals on their music were not those of the group’s singers.
“From ‘Super Rappin’,’ from ‘Freedom’ to ‘It’s Nasty’ to ‘Beat Street’ to every record we ever made,” Scorpio says. “‘The Message’ was the most critically acclaimed record but it’s been everything. He’s not on any of them, that’s why we came with the Milli Vanilli thing.”
Scorpio states that Grandmaster Flash had nothing to do with putting The Furious Five together.
“Of course we are upset. This dude is running away with — not saying he’s not entitled to nothing but if you know that most of your fame came from being with us and you didn’t cut on any of the records, you didn’t produce on any of the records, you didn’t rap or sing on any of the records, come on, you have to show the cats more respect than that. You can’t look at them like you’re the master plan. You’re going around telling the earth you put The Furious Five together, making it seem like he had a formula. It wasn’t no formula. Flash had nothing to do with putting our group together. When I came in the group he definitely wasn’t the one to say. It was all up to Duke, Mell, Creole and Cowboy. Then we got Rahiem in the group. He’s got the world thinking he put this together. ‘I got Melle Mell for his lyrics, I got Scorpio because he was the fly dude.’ Not the truth. Flash had a lot of records out on his own after us [and] none of them did well… So much money comes to the table too. If he can’t take it and manipulate it for himself, he deads it.
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Continuing, Scorpio offered an example of where Grandmaster Flash has shutdown potential moneymaking deals for the group.
“Here’s a true story. Do you remember when Rakim had that big campaign with Hennessy? Where they had the posters [and] the billboards all around the country? They wanted to do us, the original Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five,” he says. “And all that was, was just taking a picture for all the print adds and they were going to give us a half million dollars, just for the picture just to do the campaign. They didn’t know us personally but they knew Chubb Rock. Chubb Rock says he will get in contact with us. So the day Chubb finds out, Flash happens to walk into the club that day. Chubb sees Flash like ‘Yo, such and such is looking for you’ and told him about it and Flash calls and tries to get the shit for himself. [He said], ‘Right now I’m not doing nothing with the fellas,’ you know, trying to get the shit for him. Deads the whole deal just like that. Got hundreds of those stories.
“No, no [they didn’t give Grandmaster Flash the deal],” Scorpio continues. “They wanted all of us, he didn’t want none of us to have it so he deaded the whole deal. I got hundreds of deals like that. This ain’t about us hating. It’s just most of the whole planet really thinks that he was the marquee through this. It was really Mel’s voice and his hook. He’s doing like 300 shows a year and they’re thinking we’re the Pips. There’s a new radio station going across the country, ‘Boom,’ they do different things. One of their ads is this, ‘Is the station where you can hear Kurtis Blow, where you can hear Grandmaster Flash?’ Do you think they are saying hear him cut? They’re talking about our music and our records. I’ve been trying to keep peace with this dude for years. Every year just hoping we can all get together and he just deads it. He says, ‘I don’t see myself playing behind any emcees anymore.’ So we do a show now and we stand behind you while we perform now? Well okay let’s do it then, but if he were to do it now he wants us to get up there and stand behind him. He told me that. So now, The Furious Five we have some shows coming up in June in Texas and we were just advertising Grand Masters Furious Five because if we don’t attach that it’s just a harder sell, but then you get ‘The Message’ playing in the background [and] you say, ‘Okay, now I know who you’re talking about.’ He called the radio station and threatened to sue them. He called the headliner and tried to get us kicked off of the tour, and this is just a month ago.”
Later in the conversation, Scorpio highlighted that Grandmaster Flash refuses to mention The Furious Five during interviews and when speaking publicly.
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“If you look at every interview that he does he won’t even say our name,” Scorpio says. “The first thing he will do is say, ‘I won’t say nothing about old school. I’m not talking about The Furious Five.’ When he got the Lifetime Achievement Award for BET, me and Melle Mel were going to go to the show just to go to the show and sit in the audience and this and that. I called and said we want to come to the show and he calls and says, ‘I don’t want them in the building.’ We couldn’t even get a ticket, and then the other year when they honored Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Flash, Bam, even though he wasn’t rocking with Soul Sonic Force at the time, he said, ‘I’d like to thank my emcees.’ Flash gets up there [and] he doesn’t mention one thing about any of us, not Mel, the late great Cowboy. Like in his head he’s thinking he really did this shit.”
To read the full interview, please visit YaHeard.com.
