White Lines (Didn’t Do It)

You know my favourite fact about Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel White Lines (Don’t Do It)?

Coincidentally, it’s the same as my favourite fact about Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five The Message.

Tell you later.

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Released in 1983 White Lines (Don’t Do It) was the first hip hop I can remember hearing. A friend of my dad had chucked a couple of singles onto the end of a tape* I can remember it just absolutely flooring me; it sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before, Carmarthen being some little way from the epicentre of hip hop culture**. It was a jolt.

There was something engagingly sarcastic and angry about it, wrapped up in glorious harmonies and set to a rock solid beat. It blew my young mind, especially the lines:

A million magic crystals, painted pure and white
A multi-million dollars almost overnight
Twice as sweet as sugar, twice as bitter as salt
And if you get hooked, baby, it’s nobody else’s fault, so don’t do it!

All the sniffing and references to blow went totally over my head at the time and continued to do so for an embarrassingly long time afterwards. At the time, ironically I just felt energised by the sheer utterly addictive charge of the track. I can still rap my way through the whole song word perfect, baby.

Melle Mel’s delivery throughout is incredible, managing to be by turns lyrical, sarcastic, melodic and percussive; the recurring use of ‘baby’ at the end of lines to tie it all together remains a genius move. I especially love the part when he gets angry about John Delorean, the ‘a business man gets arrested’ bit. Sadly it’s still true today, baby.

Allied to the Sugar Hill band^* covering Liquid Liquid ‘Cavern’ it is dynamite, that incredible looping bassline. In characteristic style they did not get clearance for the music which ultimately Sugar Hill Records declared bankruptcy over to avoid paying any damages, baby.

As I have mentioned before Sylvia Robinson was the heroine of the times, she gets a co-write and co-producer credit here before being largely forgotten about, unlike Grandmaster Flash himself. Unfair, given that she was involved in creating such a unique, arresting piece of work, baby.

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I bought my copy of White Lines (Don’t Do it) comparatively recently and went for the 12″ in the Sugar Hill Records sleeve. It looks great but the extended version (7:39) isn’t a patch on the original 7″. I have to say I am not a fan of the way it messes around, adding bits that ultimately just do not add a thing to the track – Melle Mel’s ‘Little Jack Horner’ rap is a rare misstep.

My view is get yourself the original single version that so captivated this fey hippy kid 38 years ago. I struggle to think of a better single released since, baby.

White Lines (Do It).

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1537’s Favourite Fact Corner, folks. Grandmaster Flash, legendary turntablist, innovator and adventurer on the wheels of steel does not appear on either White Lines (Don’t Do It) or The Message, his two best cuts by far. Sugar Hill Records led with his name on both releases for brand reasons alone. I wish my work functioned like that, ‘congratulations on the two best reports we have ever read, ever. We know you didn’t write a word of them, but hey, consistent branding, baby’.

1095 Down, baby.

PS: Because you need to hear this:

PPS: the B-side is ‘Scorpio’ by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five. Its a very of its time electro thing, with some great Kraftwerk-influenced beats and vocodered robo vocals. I love it and even attempted some rather ill-advised body popping just now.

*I’m about 53% sure it was Dire Straits Love Over Gold, the other singles were Simple Minds Waterfront and Eurythmics Here Comes The Rain Again, all absolute belters.

**or arguably culture of any sort^.

^in a non microbial sense.

^*including Doug Wimbish I recently discovered. The man gets even cooler.