White Lines (Don't Do It)

This song is about cocaine, urging listeners not to do it while making the case that drug laws in the US are racist and unjust, with poor Black kids getting much harsher penalties for drug offenses than white businessmen. It was the first popular rap song about drugs. Unfortunately, the group didn't heed their own advice and some members developed severe drug problems. Cowboy, who was a rapper in Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, died of complications from AIDS in 1990 after developing a crack addiction. Flash revealed in his autobiography that he heard the song while on his way to buy crack, stating that he felt like Melle Mel (the rapper on the song), was speaking to him personally.

Grandmaster Flash had nothing to do with this song, but it was originally released under his name. Grandmaster Flash is a DJ, and in the early days of hip-hop, they were considered more important than the MCs who rapped over their beats. The band was known as Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, and it was Flash who assembled the group as a way to provide vocal entertainment for his DJ sets (note that his name comes first). While Flash was indisputably the star of their live shows, when the group started recording in 1979, the dynamic changed. Flash made his living revolutionizing the way existing songs could be manipulated, creating beats that flowed seamlessly together. He did this on the 1981 song "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel," but when it came to creating original songs, that was the specialty of the Sugar Hill Records house band and the group's lead rapper, Melle Mel. The composer credits on "White Lines" belong to Melle (Melvin Glover) and Sugar Hill owner/producer Sylvia Robinson. By the time they put this song together, Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five were fractured, and they broke up before it was released. By this time, Melle Mel appropriated the name "Grandmaster," calling himself "Grandmaster Melle Mel." Flash and Mel went to court over the name, and in the end, this song is officially credited to "Grandmaster and Melle Mel."

Melle Mel wrote the lyrics, but the backing track, including that killer bass line, is interpolated from a dance song called "Cavern" by the group Liquid Liquid that came out earlier in 1983 and was big in the clubs. The vocal melody also comes from "Cavern," with the words "what side" becoming "white lines." It's not clear if the "Cavern" writers were ever compensated, but they don't have songwriting credits on "White Lines."