Grandmaster Flash
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Grandmaster Flash

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Together with the Furious Five, Grandmaster Flash released such seminal rap songs as The Message, White Lines, Rappers Delight and Apache. They broke a style of music that no one outside their own neighbourhood had ever heard. “For me I think I was hopping that it would grow outside of New York City, that was probably my biggest hope,” he says of those early days in the 80s. “Once it grew outside of New York City into neighbouring East Coast cities, I was really hoping that the world would catch onto this, that’s what I was hoping but never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that me putting my fingertip on to the vinyl and moving it and manipulating it in the motions that I did, never in my wildest dreams did I think that that would become the way that DJs play music.” Even after all these years it is clear that he is not happy with the disintegration of the group, after Melle Mel and Flash fell out. In asking about The Message his answer is so coded, on the surface giving a full tip of the hat to the rappers but beneath claiming the credit. “That’s my rappers on the record,” he says of the ground breaking track of urban decay. “We all designed the record but on that track my that’s what they are saying and I don’t wanna make a claim about what it is they were thinking when they performed those rhymes, I was just the overseer of the whole project, the leader and the foundation of the group, that’s the part that I played. As far as The Message is concerned, you would have to go into the minds of my rappers. I don’t want to be a rapper, I’m proud to be a DJ and I’m proud to do what I have done and what I am doing.”

These days Flash listens to DJs like Armin Van Helden, Crookers, Boys Noise, Felix Da Housecat, Tiesto and David Guetta. “Almost every day,” he says. “What’s important to me is, the few nights that I have off, that I’m not working, I’ll go into a club and just see the gig with the latest greatest DJ, I love to come and sit with DJs who are doing music that’s new to me. Armin Van Helden, Boys Noise, these guys enable me to learn new things just by listening to them. I can enjoy a song but I think my habits are ‘how can we put this in the set to please others,’ that is where I am at when listening to new music. A lot of times when I listen to a great DJ play, I am listening to how he is pleasing people.”

It would be hard to say just when he reached “Grandmaster” status but here is the truth, if Flash ever opened up a DJ school in the model of a Martial Arts academy, DJs the world over would queue up to learn at the feet of the master. This really isn’t such a bad idea; they could be awarded belt levels until one day you too could be a Black Belt DJ or, God willing, a Grandmaster. “If you think about it, I was out of my time then back then,” Flash says of his early days inventing the skills of DJing. “So science is what I was first, before I was a DJ I was a scientist. So whether I am sitting in the driver’s seat where I am the creator of it or wether I’m sitting in the passenger seat and somebody else is making new sounds, it’s fine with me. This modern aspect of DJing allows me to carry thousands of songs now, where at one point there used to be tension between me and the promoter of how much he would pay to load all those creates of records on the plane, I used to carry 10 to 15 boxes and that takes a lot of man power. So now I am traveling with 30 or 40 thousand songs, which allows me to continue to be the international servant that I really am, from a musical standpoint. I like the challenge to be able to please people on all different continents and countries and planets and this and that. I’m really happy about it. I think that every time I go on stage I’m inventing. Depending on the audience, they make me do things and I make them do things and then we become connected as one, I’m just into pleasing people, that’s just what I do. So every time I play there is always something that amazes me and I think ‘Wow, okay’ but that comes from the energy of the audience that makes me go to that next place, the next level technically speaking. I’m just pleasing people overall. If I could put my show into one word, I would like to say, “Joy.” It’s just me on the turntables, Grandmaster Flash, I’m coming out and I’m just gonna do what I do – pleasing them people with the turntables, as I have been doing for the past 15 years.”


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