About the song
When originally released on Sugar Hill Records, the record was credited to Grandmaster & Melle Mel (some international issues carried the credit Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel). This was done to mislead the general public into believing that Grandmaster Flash participated on the record, when in fact he played no part and had already left the Sugar Hill Records label the previous year.
Some of the lyrics in “White Lines” (“something like a phenomenon”) echoed lyrics from the song “Cavern” by Liquid Liquid (“slip in and out of phenomenon”) from which the famous bassline was borrowed. In fact, the entire “White Lines” was a note-by-note appropriation of “Cavern”, taken from a performance of the Sugar Hill house band (featuring Doug Wimbish on bass, Keith LeBlanc on drums and Skip McDonald on guitar), with a rapping track overlaid.
Meer op wikipedia