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
My father was my first inspiration. He had an incredible stereo and a turntable, and I was told not to touch it. But I'd go back and touch it anyway. I gained a respect for the turntables when I was a kid. When I was a teenager, I came up with a 'cueing system' to work the turntables because they didn't have it at that time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For us to keep claiming this isn't Hip Hop and that isn't Hip Hop doesn't make sense to me.
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.
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.
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 want to go to - what's that hot country with a lot of money? - Dubai.
As an individual I was known as the DJ or the mixer.
Conquer your neighbourhood, conquer your city, conquer your country, and then go after the rest of the world. That's my mantra.
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.
I went to junkyards, abandoned car lots. I asked supermarkets for the big jugs they put pig guts in, to make cabinets for my bass speakers.