Features

ThaFormula.com - Do you feel that you get the respect and the love that you deserve for what you have contributed to Hip-Hop?

Grandmaster Flash - I think that I am probably more visible then I've ever been in my whole entire career.  If I ain't on BET, I'm on MTV or VH-1.  If I ain't on MTV, I'm on a world tour.  I get major incredible love from people.  I’ve had people come up to me and kiss my hand, it's so scary.  I personally don't feel the wrath of being shafted or forgotten.  Historically speaking my name will always show up because I keep myself visible.  I think I do quite well.  I did 5 years on HBO with Chris Rock where I was his musical director.  I think I've done ok.  I don't know if what I've done has been as public as you would like me to be which I appreciate, but all in all for me to have been in this game for 31 years, I'm just glad to even still be here.

ThaFormula.com - I remember a while back you were very angry at the industry because you felt you weren't getting that respect...

Grandmaster Flash - I think when I was angry, it was more with the company I was with and the way they destroyed my group, but that's another story.  Overall, I was pretty angry at the world at that point in time.  When I decided to just go back to what I do and to take care of what I do, this is where I find all these problems.  Corporate America has damn near forgotten the DJ, when the DJ is the person who created Hip-Hop.  So I'm here to speak on it.  Now it's time for me to speak since I haven't spoken for a long time.  I want to talk to people who are willing to take this historical journey with me.  I don't want the questions about what happened at Sugar Hill Records or this rapper this or whatever.  I was angry for a long time.  But if I seen them people now, I would give the people at Sugar Hill a kiss and say thank you, because I learned something as I looked back on it.  I'm opening a record label right now called Adrenaline, so I know what I won't do because I’ve been there.  I'm picking up demos from artists around the world who don't have an opening to be heard.  As far as turntables are concerned, people need to understand that this was a 4-year science on how I put this thing together to make the turntable an instrument.  The DJ is the unsung hero here and there is only a few of us that's really getting any real recognition.  

ThaFormula.com - When did you start collecting vinyl?

Grandmaster Flash - When I became a teenager is when I started acquiring my own collection.  I went to school for electronics to understand how to build things that I couldn't afford to buy or things that didn't exist at that point.  I had to create a mixer and I had to go out and find the right turntable with this thing I call the torque.  That is how I judged a turntable that would be able to handle the cut.  Then I had to try and find the right needle.  These kinds of things that the world don't know about.  So there is no value on it because I never talked about it.  So now I'm gonna talk about it.  

ThaFormula.com - Did you know what you wanted to put together at the time?

Grandmaster Flash - When I used to watch DJ's play at that time, they weren't concerned with beats per minute.  One record would be playing and the next one would be to fast or too slow.  I would notice that the break part of the record would get people very energetic.  But a lot of times the records back then had breaks that were like 10 seconds long.  That pissed me off.  So I said to myself, there has to be a way for me to extend and rearrange its arrangement.  That's when I started dealing with duplicate copies of records and taking that part that was 10 seconds long and making that shit 10 minutes if I wanted to, without the listener knowing.  Once I did that I was able to blend rock with Jazz or Blues, as long as it had a break.  Also, beats per minute was a thing that took me a good 3 years of my life to lock down.  I called it cuttin'.  The whole thing was called “the quick mix theory.”  Now for some reason the whole world calls it scratching which is really not the proper title.  So I have to go out there and wave the flag and say that's cool what you sayin', but this is what it was.  It's just like when the world took the word Hip-Hop and called it Rap.  When you think about Rap, it excludes the break-dancer and the DJ.  When you think about Rap, you think about vocals only.  So I'm here for Hip-Hop.  I have no problem with Rap because I play it all.  But I got to get this story out even it rides along side Rap.  I ain't trying to kill nothing.  I'm here to say that they should exist together and that Hip-Hop is the title.  When it comes to this DJ’ing thing, it was called cuttin'. 

ThaFormula.com - What was the Clock Theory?

Grandmaster Flash - The Clock Theory is where you wouldn't have to lift the record up.  You would just spin the record back and keep one part going.  You would go to turntable number one and then spin it back, go to turntable number two and then spin it back to keep that one part going.  If you tried to pick up the needle, the chances of you being able to catch that part on time over and over again would be damn near impossible.  That's when I came up with the Clock Theory Rule.  I would mark the record with a crayon or tape.  At that time DJ's weren't touching the vinyl.  They were picking the arm up, but nobody would physically put their damn hand on the record.  So it needs to be clear that I was the first DJ to make a record dirty.  I mean if it wasn't for Kool Herc's thinkin', Hip-Hop wouldn't even have been created.  This is bigger then a Rap record or whatever the case may be.  This is like the building of a culture.  Hip-Hop was conceptually thought of by a DJ.  The big sound system and the big outdoor dances was going on before I even touched the turntables, but I wanna make clear that I decided to take one passage off the record and make that a song.  Today they call it looping.  I was looping 31 years ago manually.  Now they stick it in the sampler and press a key on the keyboard and it just repeats over and over again.  I been doing that for 31 years.  Nobody talked about it because nobody knew the science because I'm the scientist.  I'm the geek that did this.  I just didn't say anything about it.

ThaFormula.com - Why did you stay so quiet about it for so long Flash?

Grandmaster Flash - I watched the parade go by man and I watched so many DJ's say what they created and what they did and I'm saying wow!  But I didn't want to get into no controversy with nobody else over what they did and what they didn't do.  I just said “alright, silence is golden.”  But what's happening is that the resurgence of old school is so big now that people want to know.  

ThaFormula.com - How did you go about putting together your mixer?

Grandmaster Flash - Mixers existed, but the mixer that I had was a microphone mixer.  My favorite mixer was this Sony MX 6.  What I had to do was go and get these special preamps from Radio Shack to readjust the line level so that it could accept the voltage output of a cartridge coming out of a turntable.  Once I was able to do that, then I had to build some sort of system so that I could hear the cut in my ear before the people would.  So I came up with the system called the Peek-A-Boo and it consisted of a switch that when it was in the center position, it was off.  When you click it to the left, you would hear the left turntable.  If you clicked it two times to the right, you would hear the other turntable.  This was enabling me to be able to take apart and mix whatever music to the beat and keep the floor rocking.  So this is like 4 years of my science here that I've never talked about. If you’re a DJ, I'm speaking for you too.  I'm waving the flag for you too because people need to know that DJ's stood in their rooms for hours and sometimes days trying to figure out how to do something that would amaze the crowd.  This DJ’ing aspect didn't just happen by chance.  This shit is well thought out science and this is where I'm going with this.  People need to know that the DJ is the BUILDING BLOCK OF HIP-HOP!  Why was one of the biggest Hip-Hop producers of all time a DJ?  Because he has a keen ear, we hear very keenly.  That's why Dre can do the things he can do for as long as he's been doing it.

ThaFormula.com - Most of the top producers of the past and even now were DJ's at one point...

Grandmaster Flash - All of them were DJ's.  All of them got inside of a turntable.  Even with Puff because he had a club called the Red Zone way back in the day.  He used to be a promoter/DJ.  So he could hear things.  Dr. Dre could hear things.  Jermaine Dupri used to open up for me.  He was a dancer, but he also did the DJ aspect.  I know all these things because all these people grew up watching me.  It's time to talk about it now. 

ThaFormula.com - Once you got your tables and mixer set, when did you decide it was time to go out into the public eye?

Grandmaster Flash - My first official step out was in the 70's and this park called 63 Park on 168th Street in the Bronx.  After being in my bedroom for like 3 years, I decided to test this.  When I tested it, people was hatin' it.  They were just saying why is he taking that part and repeating it?  So I was ridiculed for a long time.  But there was two very important people that seen what I was doing that helped me sell this to people.  One was my first MC, Cowboy.  He found a way to talk over this and to get people to rock with me over this.  Second, was my second student, Grand Wizard Theodore once I taught him how to do this.  Now I was already a teenager at that time, but Theodore was a baby.  So I used to put a milk crate under him and bring him out in the parks.  So them watching me or him, a lot of DJ's had to go home and rethink their strategy totally.  This was the new way to play.  

ThaFormula.com - How were those block parties compared the shows and parties of today?

Grandmaster Flash - I'll compare an outdoor festival to a block party.  A block party was at a neighborhood park, free of charge.  People would bring their children and you would see people in there as old as 70 or 80 years old.  Everyone just staying in this one area for about six or seven hours.  It served the community.  The police officers loved us because everybody was in one place.  All the party people and older people together.  The neighborhood grocery store would give us stuff for free.  The big time drug dealers used to bring in franks and juice and all that kind of stuff.  All the stick up kids would cool out.  This was all love.  Today it's a hundred times bigger now so it has to be guarded and protected.  Back in the days it was just like a giant backyard BBQ.  A lot of people have never seen a block party and I'm sad because I never filmed it.  But that goes back to I never thought.  I mean who would ever think that it would get like this.  I was just doing what I was doing and I was just happy about that.  Just doing something that people enjoyed.

ThaFormula.com - So you were cuttin' it up on belt drives right?

Grandmaster Flash - Yes.  That was how I came up with my formula.  I examined like maybe 7 or 8 turntables.  I went from a pioneer, to a Fisher, to a Magnavox.  Then I was going up this shopping center and in this electronic store window, there was this ugly ass silver turntable.  It was very ugly looking but it compelled me to go in the store.  I asked the guy in the store, can I please turn on that turntable to examine it.  The guy granted me that.  I had to find a turntable that from dead stop, to all the way up to speed, it had to start up in at least half a turn or a quarter of a turn.  This particular belt drive table after years of looking, started up in about a little more then a quarter of a turn.  Then I would put that wax paper your mom's used to make cookies on the turntable, and then put a record on top of it to test it.  So Technics goes on the map and everybody buys this turntable. It was called an SL-20, which is 10 years before the 1200.  So this is what everybody is using.  

ThaFormula.com - So do you think that you have a lot to do with Technics becoming the industry standard DJ table?

Grandmaster Flash - I think Herc & I have a major presence when it comes to this turntable because we allowed them to become the monopoly with the 1200. 

ThaFormula.com - Do you think Technics knows this?

Grandmaster Flash - Let me tell you what happened and these are the things I'm going to talk about in my book.  I tried calling them in the early 90's.  I tried to get someone on the phone so that we could talk turntable business.  Do you know that I could not get nobody on the phone.  I'll never forget it because they had me on hold for a long time, then the person came back and said nobody is available and hung up on me.  I told them who I was but they didn't care.  I had the pleasure of meeting them just this year. I met them at this music conference that happens in Paris once a year.  A lot of these electronic companies are displaying their new stuff.  I'm going to all these booths and then bang there goes the Technics booth.  As soon as I walked in the door, the rep tried to grab me so they could take a picture of me behind their turntables.  I said I was a fool one time, but not again.  The guy was like, "well they didn't know better then."  I said, "what you mean you didn't know better then."  If you are a big time corporation, you had to know that Hip-Hop was responsible for this.  If you find out that Hip-Hop is responsible for it, you got to find out who the people are.  So the rep at Technics was saying, “Flash can we talk to you?”  I said, "you guys can't say nothing to me, here's my number, call my rep. I'm not going near those turntables and you’re not getting my picture next to them."  So this DJ thing is not fully as respected as it should be.

ThaFormula.com - When you did "The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel", you mixed together Black & White music, what do you think that did for the music and was it good or bad for Hip-Hop?

Grandmaster Flash - I think that I wasn't too concerned about what impact it would do.  It was my point of view of how I look at music as a whole.  When you go back to the very beginning, Flash played Rock, Jazz, Blues, Punk, Funk, R&B and more.  Sometimes it was a Black group, sometimes it was a White group, Asian group, or European.  It didn't matter.  If that shit was funky, I was playing it.  I didn't care what people thought.  So when I put that track together, that there sort of solidified my identity.  What happened was me creating one of the greatest rap groups of all time sort of put me in the back, which was fine.  I didn't mind that at that time.  When I made "The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel" it was a starting point of putting DJ's on the forefront.  Because right after that, Grand Mixer DST came out with "Rockin’ It" with Herbie Hancock which was another scratch record.  Then Jazzy Jeff had one and Cash Money had one.  So this started a whole revolution of records performed by DJ's.  So I didn't know what that record was gonna do.  I just wanted to show people my musical point of view.  In America it did pretty well.  When I went overseas, I could not handle the acceptance.  It was so big.  It was so fuckin' crazy.  10,000 people just screaming before I could even get my shit off.  Scary!  As far as mixing the two music cultures, listen to today's music.  There is so much of a hybrid going on.  You have a MC rhymin' over a rock beat, or you have a rock band with a MC as a guest.  Everything that I done with music is now being done in major production now.  Like they are going into the studio with this concept.  Like making an R&B record with a rock feel or a Hip-Hop record with a funk feel. These are all the things I did on turntables for over 30 years.  It's all good now.  The only problem I have right now is people don't know who, what, and why when it comes to your turntables.  The MC is gonna be fine whether I talk about them or not, but the turntable thing I ain't so sure about.

ThaFormula.com - So did you see a lot of people start to copy your style after you set it off?

Grandmaster Flash - I was hoping that they would because I had such a damn hard time getting people to understand it when I first did it.  I was hoping this thing would catch fire.  I was hoping and praying that anyone would take the style and advance it or add to it.  I don't care what you did, just keep it alive by any means necessary.  So today, if a DJ is moving the fader slow or fast and if they are manipulating the record back & forth, it's Flash.  They might do it faster, they might do it with their eyes closed or behind their back, but the whole science goes back to Flash.

ThaFormula.com - So what is Flash doing now and what should we expect from Flash in the future?

Grandmaster Flash - I just received an award from Bill Gates for being the first DJ to make the turntable an instrument.  Microsoft has contracted me to produce a Hip-Hop joint in 5.1 surround sound.  My first MC coming out the gate is J Flow.  He's gonna be on the rhymes and I'm gonna be on the production.  I'm almost done with it and it will be on MSN.Com soon.  I'm also looking for demos from all artists.  People need to go to www.grandmasterflash.com and look up where you send your demos through, because I need to hear it all.  I'm not trying to make a record label that's just R&B or just Hip-Hop.  I wanna hear it all.  This label might not come together real quick, but I'm listening intensely.  Aside from that, I'm touring and I'm also writing a book of my beginnings of where I come from.  So it's not a book on Hip-Hop, it's a book on my life.  We’re still writing some chapters and it's really, really rough for me to do this book.  Lots of crying going on because I have to relive what I went through, so I'm looking at this book dropping in maybe 2005.  I got a lot of stories and it's really hard for me to have to hold it back because of this deal with this company, but it's gonna be well worth it.

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