Don't Stop the Beat
Hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash talks about his new memoir and the state of music today.
It all started in the Bronx, N.Y., in the late 1960s. The soon-to-be pioneer of hip-hop, Joseph Saddler, would wait until his father left for work, then sneak into the living room to play his records. He'd sit, and listen, and stare—mesmerized by how the music played. Later, he'd turn that obsession into DJ legend, scratching and spinning the turntables to create new beats, which he'd test out at the Bronx block parties from which hip-hop would emerge. He later teamed up with five MCs to form Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, landing a record deal with Sugar Hill and releasing one of the first crossover rap tracks in history, the socially conscious 1982 hit "The Message." In 2007, the group was the first hip-hop act to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But Flash's success didn't come easy, and his new memoir, "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats," makes that very clear. From cocaine addiction and an abusive father to his volatile relationship with his record label, Flash, now 50, writes candidly about the struggles he endured to achieve success, and what came after it. He spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jessica Bennett about the book, his life and what he thinks of hip-hop today. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Describe your childhood obsession with records. How far did it go?
Grandmaster Flash: Whenever dad would go off to work, I'd wait for the door to slam and I'd grab a record and turn on the stereo. Eventually, my dad would scratch his head and be like, "Have any of you been going through my records?" He'd ask everyone, and by the time he got to me, I was so terrified you'd think the word "yes" was written on my forehead. I'd get my brains beat out of me, sometimes until I was unconscious. Then he'd put my hands on the radiator and burn them, in hopes that it would keep me out of the closet. But it only peaked my interest more.
Was it that you loved the music or you wanted to know how it worked?
The plastic grooves of the records to me were like tunnels. I wanted to know, "How is there music inside these little tunnels?" When I became a teenager, I started taking apart all the electronic equipment I could find. I became public enemy No. 1 in my house, because everything that made noise—from a stereo to a hairdryer to the washing machine—I'd take apart, trying to figure out how it worked. When I didn't have equipment, I'd go into people's back yards and take their junk—old stereo equipment, car parts—and bring them back into my room to take it apart. I was in search of something.
And eventually you ended up at a technical high school.
Yes. After a while, my mother said, "You have to stop doing this—your sisters are angry at you, they want to blow-dry their hair and [the dryer] won't turn on." Once I was there, I started to understand what made these things work.
How'd you develop your method for mixing records?
I started learning why things do what they do, and I came up with a science I called "quick mix theory." I learned you could actually do things with the vinyl—touch it—which was unheard of for the time. I just decided one day that I would put my four fingers on the record. And when I held it, and moved it in a backward and forward motion, it was like "Ohhh."
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Member Comments
Posted By: Krohn @ 10/09/2008 7:43:33 PM
Comment: They harassed her until she registered to vote six times!:
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?maven_referralObject=3145562&maven_referralPlaylistId=&sRevUrl=http://www.foxnews.com/politics/
Posted By: Krohn @ 10/08/2008 11:49:34 PM
Comment: "Not all Democrats agree with Mr. Frank that such policies are off-limits to criticism. Last week Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama said in a statement: 'Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable homeownership, when in retrospect, I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong.'
"Mr. Davis is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus."
'Rank snobbery'
Camille Paglia, who supports Sen. Barack Obama, has nothing but scorn for the way the media has treated Sarah Palin.
"The mountain of rubbish poured out about Palin over the past month would rival Everest. What a disgrace for our jabbering army of liberal journalists and commentators, too many of whom behaved like snippy jackasses," Miss Paglia writes at www.salon.com.
"The bourgeois conventionalism and rank snobbery of these alleged humanitarians stank up the place. As for Palin's brutally edited interviews with Charlie Gibson and that viper, Katie Couric, don't we all know that the best bits ended up on the cutting-room floor? Something has gone seriously wrong with Democratic ideology, which seems to have become a candied set of holier-than-thou bromides attached like tutti-frutti to a quivering green Jell-O mold of adolescent sentimentality."
Posted By: Krohn @ 10/06/2008 6:06:37 PM
Comment: The Antichrist!:
When George Soros failed to obtain the election of his candidate, John Kerry, in 2004, he brooded for a while, even said he might get out of politics altogether, but he just couldn???t stop himself. He has stated publicly that he wishes to burst the ???bubble of American supremacy,??? because he says our preeminence in the world is a detriment to global ???equilibrium.??? So far, he has failed, but he keeps on trying.
And Mr. Soros has made no secret either of the fact that he sees the shortest way to effect political shake-ups, what he terms ???regime changes,??? is through very difficult economic conditions.
America has not yet felt the full force of Soros style economic shock treatment. But others have.
Soros made his first billion in 1992 by shorting the British pound with leveraged billions in financial bets, and became known as the man who broke the Bank of England. He broke it on the backs of hard-working British citizens who immediately saw their homes severely devalued and their life savings cut drastically in comparative worth almost overnight.
When the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 threatened to spread globally, George Soros was right in the thick of it. Soros was accused by the Malaysian Prime Minister of causing the collapse with his monetary machinations, and he was branded in Thailand as an ???economic war criminal??? who ???sucks the blood from the people.??? Right in the middle of this crisis, Soros dashed off his book, The Crisis of Global Capitalism, which demanded a ???third way??? toward economic stability.
Wake up, America, before it is too late!!!!