I LOVE "The Message".
But come on, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" wins this by a longshot.
My opinion is that truly great songs have to have more than 1-dimension, lyrically. Which is why Tupac's "Staring Through My Rearview" is also a better rap song than "The Message".
Once you have listened to "The Message" 2 or 3 times, you fully understand what the message (pardon the pun) is. There's no depth lyrically, it is an intentionally simple portrait of inner-city life at the time, which is exactly what was needed at that time to get non-city folks to understand.
Whereas 95% percent of people that have listened to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" still don't understand what the true meaning of the song is, in terms of how Kurt intended it to come across. Yet they can choose to interpret the lyrics in their own way, and relate it to their own lives. Which makes it all-the-more powerful of a song. Kurt wrote that song to express the apathy of "Generation X", and in my opinion, the generation listening to him, including myself (which I term "Generation Y"), and the current MTV generation (Generation Z?) is even further along the apathetic road (all you have to do is watch MTV to realise this)
thus making the song even more relevant than ever.
Melle Mel, Flash and the guys are definately instrumental in shaping hiphop to be what it is day. But in no way are they poets and spokespeople of entire generations of youth, like Kurt and Tupac.
