Grandmaster Flash
Grandmaster Flash
Joseph Saddler, better known as Grandmaster Flash, is a Barbadian-born American hip hop recording artist and DJ. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of hip-hop DJing, cutting, and mixing. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, becoming the first hip hop act to be so honored...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRapper
Date of Birth1 January 1958
CityBridgetown, Barbados
CountryUnited States of America
Unfortunately we are arguing amongst each other so much when the bottom line is we don't own anything. We are offspring to a record label owner.
When I am performing live, I walk into a room, and I just try to get a feel for the vibe, and I am coming from different angles musically. I might come with a new song, I might come with some hip-hop, with some R&B. Once I find my way, then I am hitting you, and hitting you all night.
What has happened is that to some degree they have taken an attitude where they don't listen to demos of diverse subject matters. They're looking for demos like the record the guy on the left just did.
Normal kids in their teens want to go and date girls and do mischievous things, your hormones are jumping around, but I stayed in my bedroom in search of something.
As an individual I was known as the DJ or the mixer.
I want to go to - what's that hot country with a lot of money? - Dubai.
Disco was brand new then and there were a few jocks that had monstrous sound systems but they wouldn't dare play this kind of music. They would never play a record where only two minutes of the song was all it was worth. They wouldn't buy those types of records.
I named myself Flash many years ago, as I loved the cartoon. Then my own fans said that I should call myself 'Grandmaster,' because of the way I operate turntables. I put the two together and that was it.
I don't want to be classified as an old-skool DJ or new-skool DJ. I want to be classified as an all-skool DJ who plays it all. I also want to learn to DJ house music in my own fashion.
For us to keep claiming this isn't Hip Hop and that isn't Hip Hop doesn't make sense to me.
We gotta stop fighting amongst each other. I think the only rift should be when take it the stage and try to out perform each other.
The type of mixing that was out then was blending from one record to the next or waiting for the record to go off and wait for the jock to put the needle back on.
I knew there was a way to blend records together, but I didn't know how to. This was haunting me when I was in my teens. In my frustration, I decided to start experimenting with electronics. I tested the torque factor on different turntables. I had to figure needles out. See, there are two kinds, elliptical and conical.
I was a quiet, nerdy kid living in the Bronx. I spent most of my teens in my room, taking apart electrical items to figure out how they worked before putting them back together, and listening to the music my four older sisters and parents played.