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
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.
A scratch is nothing but the back-cueing that you hear in your ear before you push it out to the crowd.
For instance, if you're playing a record with drums - horns would sound nice to enhance it so you get a record with horns and slip it in at certain times.
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.
As an individual I was known as the DJ or the mixer.
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 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 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.
Do not let any record company disturb your creative flow. You are not writing for the record company. You're writing for the public.
But I had two very special people who helped to take my style to the next level. Thank God for my first MC Cowboy and my first student Grand Wizard Theodore, and to go out after creating this art form and finding everyone jamming to it - that too was pretty scary.
All you have to know is mathematically how many times to scratch it and when to let it go - when certain things will enhance the record you're listening to.