RAPS TO REPS BY JAKE BRONSTEIN Melle Mel is to hip-hop what Elvis was to rock 'n' roll. Now he wants to be a competitive bodybuilder Writing a proper profile takes days. At least for me it does. You see, the idea is, if you spend enough time with a person, you come to understand why he is the way he is, what motivates him and, ultimately, what's it's like being him. The only way to truly understand someone is to walk a mile in his shoes. And it takes time. I tell Melle Mel's manager all of this, to which he responds: "Great. Why don't you go with him to the gym tonight, interview him there, and we're done." Nice. I'm told to stand on the corner of 42nd Street and 9th Avenue, in New York City's Hell's Kitchen, at 5 p.m. sharp, when the hip-hop-legend-turned-bodybuilder will pick me up. Only he doesn't. Not until almost two hours later. At first, I chalk it up to rapper bullshit — just another famous person acting famous at the expense of others. Now I realise it's not that at all. Cold, bitter, tired and sore from waiting an eternity for something I'm not sure will ever happen…this is exactly what I asked for: this is what it's like being Melle Mel. Born Melvin Glover, Melle Mel first came to the world's attention in 1982 as the lead emcee in Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five on their debut album, The Message. You know the line "It's like a jungle sometimes/It makes me wonder how I keep from going under/Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha"? That's Mel. The song "White Lines (Don't Do It)" — "get higher, baby"? That's him, too. (He co-wrote both songs.) On Chaka Khan's "I Feel For You," that's Mel rapping, "Chaka Kahn, let me rock it/Let me rock it, Chaka Kahn." He came to the attention of M&F more than two decades later, in 2004, when an editor's girlfriend saw him guest-posing at a regional NPC show in New Jersey. It was obvious that the two decades away from the spotlight had been spent in the gym; the man was huge, with six-pack abs. And he first comes to my attention sitting in the passenger seat of a beat-up minivan with the horn honking. I climb in the back and we're off. THE NEW MESSAGE To hear Mel tell it, everything happens for a reason. So did he know "White Lines" would be a classic, that it would still get airplay and have bodies moving more than 20 years after he wrote it? "I did, actually," he says as we make our way uptown to Peak Performance in the Bronx, tonight's gym of choice. "I didn't even write it. It came to me in a dream. I saw myself walking into the Roxy, the hottest club at the time, and I heard it. The first verse anyway, exactly as it sounds on the record. The second verse, though — the ‘don't do it' part — we added that later to make it PG. Radio friendly." The transformation of his body has been no less calculated. "Music these days is all about image, and it's all bullshit," he begins. "I mean, since when did going to prison make you a musician? When did selling drugs make you a good performer? Since when did being a thug mean getting your record played on radio? Better yet, when did pretending to be a thug equal album sales? All of it can be bought. Get the right publicist, spend a million more on your video than you did making the album, sign the right clothing deal and, bang, you're a star. The one thing that can't be bought is the body. Hire all the trainers you want, you still gotta lift that weight. You still gotta earn it yourself. That's my new image. That's my new message." Mel is mad at the music industry. He's quick to point out that the songs he wrote are undisputable classics, even to this day. The Furious Five's debut album went platinum at a time when the only other hip-hop act that achieved similar success was the Sugarhill Gang, a fabricated group whose biggest hit, "Rapper's Delight", showcased party rhymes borrowed from another act and a rhythm section lifted from an already-top-10 song. And Mel achieved all of this with minimum help from his label, Sugar Hills Records, which worried that the Five's lyrics were too harsh, too street, to ever see commercial success. In one historic gaffe, executives rejected a music video produced for free by an unknown director, Spike Lee, featuring an unknown actor, Lawrence Fishburne. The group was never allowed to make a second album and splintered soon thereafter. By '85, just three years after first appearing on the scene, Mel no longer had a contract with a major label. "They say it's not what the people in the street want," says Mel, trying to make sense of it all 20 years after the fact. "Who cares what the people in the street want? You think the people in the street know what they want? What do they know?" Then, pointing to faceless strangers on the curb: "You think that lady knows what makes a record hit? You think that guy on the corner knows what he wants to hear? F**k no. You've got to make it and sell it to them. Someone's got to have a vision. You know, until she got sentenced to jail, none of Lil' Kim's records went platinum. How come she's still putting out albums and I'm not?" Incredibly, while most musical "flashes in the pan" eventually have to get their hustle on in other ways, the few songs Mel did release are so powerful and so influential that he's about to embark on a European tour. In fact, Mel and the Furious Five are finally getting some long overdue recognition. When Rolling Stone named its 500 rock-dominated list of the greatest songs of all time, "The Message" was No. 51. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five were featured at the VH1 Hip-Hip Honours 2005, and recently nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Those are no small feats. We sit in silence as we make our way across the bridge, trading in the glossy skyscrapers of money-making Manhattan for the low-slung government housing of the boogie-down Bronx, before Mel blurts out, "I make music almost every single day." Then, almost to himself: "It'll happen. F**k it, let's lift. Time to get big."

STILL FURIOUS In many ways, Lance, Mel's trainer, is the yin to Mel's yang. Mel doesn't like driving. Like he does every day, Lance has just driven from the Bronx to New Jersey, picked up Mel and taken him back to the Bronx to pump. In addition to his time spent in the car, Lance works two jobs to make ends meet and claims to have slept only two hours the night before. Mel, on the other hand, often stays in bed until 5 p.m., and has never had another job besides music. Lance lifts to upbeat music while Mel, according to Lance, likes "ballet bullshit". "It helps me focus," interrupts Mel. The dissimilarities don't end there. Lance wears old sweats. At 44 years old, Mel is still outfitted in his retro red-white-and-blue tracksuit, matching bucket hat, shell-toe Adidas and sunglasses. Not quite the Mad Max leather gear he would've worn in The Furious Five's heyday, but still more hip-hop than most men his age would wear to the gym. At night.Mel goes to change into something more sensible — shorts, sunglasses and a T-shirt with his own face on it — and it's time to get down to business. Suddenly, they're both of one mind. Today is back day, and after close to three hours in the car to get here, they're determined to muscle through the routine in less than an hour. "I never understood guys who lift for two, three hours a day…you hit a plateau," explains Mel. "Right, Lance?" "That's why all those Olympia guys looked so shabby this year," responds Lance. "They do it all wrong." For the remainder of the workout, between sets, the two discuss competitions. Mel harbours no illusions about doing the Mr. Olympia, but he does plan on entering his first competition soon. "I've spent most of my life onstage without my shirt on, so I don't think that'll be a rush," he says. "But I want to show them what's possible. At 44, I'm in the best shape of my life. They don't think I'm serious, but I'll make them respect it." Back in the car, adrenaline pumping, Mel is finally upbeat. And an upbeat Mel is a funny Mel. The conversation, much like the driving, is erratic, straying from children — Mel has seven, including two girls named Princess, two boys named Prince and two more named Melvin — to the differences between the coasts (Mel keeps apartments in New Jersey and Los Angeles). But somehow it always comes back to sex. (Mel, on women: "You know what their problem is? There's too many of them. None of them seem to understand that. Why would I bend over backward for one, when as soon as you do, you'll just be staring another in the privates?") What's not a joke are his plans for the rest of the evening. "I've still got 300 more grams of protein to get in before I go to sleep," he remarks. The pair agree to pick me up in the morning on their way to the photo shoot — Mel promises we'll do more talking then. RANG-DANG DIGGEDY But there's not much time for talk the next day, either. First, I'm left standing on a corner for another hour. Mel is both tired (10 a.m. is about seven hours before his normal wake-up) and busy, as he tries to cram in calls he normally isn't awake to make. I'd love to tell you what those calls are about, only from where I sit, it's hard to say. "Did you talk to that guy about the thing?" he says into his earpiece. "Of course not…the other thing, the thing I told you about." A more dramatic person might assume Mel is in the mob. Then Lance's car overheats. When we finally arrive at the photo shoot, at a gym in Long Island, Mel has to rush into the locker room to change. And then it's time for pictures. It's not until two weeks later, after Mel has returned from his European tour, that I finally get him on the phone. There's tons more to know to truly understand him. How did it go overseas? How often does he see his children? If he wins his first bodybuilding competition, will he enter more? Perhaps this is his destiny; does he dream about posing onstage the way he dreamt of "White Lines"? Does he pay Lance, and if not, why does Lance dedicate so much of his time? What does he do with all the songs he has recorded over the last 20 years? And what will he do if he never gets signed again? If the industry never realises the error of its ways? If the majors don't call? Unfortunately, he cuts me off before I can ask any of them. He asks if he can call me back. He says he's trying to keep the line free; he's waiting for an important call. And that's the last I ever hear from rap-legend-turned-bodybuilder Melvin Glover. It'd be hard to say what call he was waiting for, but if I were a betting man, I'd bet they never did call back. After all that, I think I've got a pretty good idea of what it's like to be Melle Mel. M&F