Grandmaster Flash

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Grandmaster Flash

Rap DJ

First Single Caught Sugarhill’s Attention

Grandmaster Flash was one of the founding fathers and a true innovator of hip-hop music. Dubbed “the [conductor Arturo] Toscanini of the turntables,” he pioneered the art of deejaying in the 1970s by inventing many of the scratch-mixing techniques that later became the backbone of hip-hop and rap songs. His group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was one of the first rap acts to break out of the local New York rap scene and become an international success. Their groundbreaking musical and lyrical styles laid down the building blocks of modern rap and influenced virtually every rap and hip-hop artist that came after them. Grandmaster Flash was truly one of rap’s first superstars, but his climb to the top was tumultuous, and his stay there was brief.

Born Joseph Saddler on January 1, 1958, in New York City, Grandmaster Flash began his career in the early 1970s as a mobile DJ spinning records at outdoor parties in the streets and parks of New York’s South Bronx. Fascinated by music and audio circuitry, he aspired to do more than just play other people’s music. “Most deejays at parties would simply play a record all the way to the end, but I was too fidgety to wait,” Flash explained in Rap: Portraits and Lyrics of a Generation of Black Rockers, “so I wanted to do something to enhance the music.”

Pioneered Scratching

Experimenting with two turntables and a homemade cueing system, Flash began mixing together two copies of the same record—a technique that would become the basis for all scratch mixing. He practiced his new craft for nearly a year before taking it to the streets in late 1973. It was an instant hit but with one unexpected drawback. “Half an hour into my thing, in my experimental stage, people would just start watching me,” Flash told Eric Berman in a Rolling Stone interview. “This got me very angry. I wanted to excite the crowd, to make people dance.”

Searching for a way to take some of the attention off himself while still complementing his mixing, Flash invited his friend Keith Wiggins to join him on stage. While Flash mixed, Wiggins would shout improvised rhymes to the crowd in time with the music. The arrangement clicked and Wiggins, who would later adopt the name Cowboy, became one of the first rap MCs (mike controllers).

Over the next few months, four more MCs joined Grand-master Flash—the Glover brothers, Melvin and Nathaniel, who took the names MC Melle Mel and Kid Creole;

For the Record…

Born Joseph Saddler, January 1, 1958, in New York City.

Began as a mobile disc jockey playing in the parks and streets of the South Bronx in the early 1970s; formed Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, 1973, with vocalists Cowboy, Kid Creole, Melle Mel, Rahiem, and Scorpio; group made recording debut with single “Super Rappin’,” Enjoy Records, 1979; Sugarhill Records bought out contract, 1980.

Flash left the group, 1983; signed with Elektra Records and released solo debut album They Said It Couldn ’t Be Done, 1985; released two more solo albums on Elektra, 1986-87. Group reunited for a charity concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden, 1987; released final album, On the Strength, Elektra, 1988. Flash began producing albums for other artists, 1993.

Addresses: Record company —Elektra Entertainment, 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10019.

Rahiem (Guy Todd Williams); and Scorpio (Eddie Morris). Now six in all, they dubbed themselves Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and quickly became one of the hottest groups in the New York metropolitan area. They were even offered a record deal with a small local label, but Flash turned the offer down, not believing that anyone would pay money for a rap record.

First Single Caught Sugarhill’s Attention

The group played to packed houses at shows around the South Bronx for the next few years but failed to gain more than local success. Then, in 1979, the world of rap music changed forever. A small New Jersey record company called Sugarhill Records released the single “Rapper’s Delight” by a group called Sugarhill Gang. One of the first rap singles ever recorded and distributed, “Rapper’s Delight” shot to the top of the charts. Record companies scrambled to sign hip-hop and rap acts. Flash and the Five were approached by Enjoy Records owner Bobby Robinson and asked if they wanted to make a record. This time, Flash jumped at the chance. The group quickly recorded their first single, “Super Rappin’,” which was released in late 1979.

Though not as successful as “Rapper’s Delight,” “Super Rappin’” brought Flash and the Five to the attention of Sugarhill Records’ owner Sylvia Robinson, who bought the group’s contract from Enjoy. They released their first Sugarhill single, “Freedom,” in 1980. The record went gold, selling over 500,000 copies nationwide and spurring Sugarhill to send the group on a 40-city U.S. tour. The following year, Flash and the Five released two more singles on Sugarhill, “Birthday Party” and “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel,” both of which went gold. The latter track featured the first serious use of sampled music and sounds on a rap record.

The group’s biggest success came in 1982 when Sylvia Robinson asked them to record “The Message,” a song she cowrote, featuring graphic lyrics about the horrors of growing up in the streets of a crime-infested ghetto. “The Message” became known as the first “conscience rap” song and opened up rap as a medium for serious social commentary. In the United States, the single went gold in 21 days and platinum in 41 days. It also introduced Flash and the Five to an English audience, reaching Number Eight on the British charts. By then a worldwide success, the group went on tour again, this time playing shows in both the States and Europe.

Royalty Dispute Led to Split

In June of 1983 discord broke out between Flash and Sugarhill over royalty payments for “The Message.” Unable to settle the dispute, Flash left Sugarhill in November and sued the label for $5 million and the right to use the group’s name at another label. The suit split the members down the middle. Rahiem and Kid Creole sided with Flash; Melle Mel, Cowboy, and Scorpio sided with Sugarhill. Flash later lost the court case. He was awarded no money and retained only the right to use the name Grandmaster Flash.

In 1985 Flash signed a ontract with Elektra Records and released his first solo album, They Said It Couldn’t Be Done, which made a one-week appearance on the UK charts at Number 95. Over the next two years Flash released two more albums on Elektra, The Source in 1986 and Ba Dop Boom Bang in 1987. Both were commercial failures.

A lack of solo commercial success forced the original lineup of Flash, Melle Mel, Rahiem, Cowboy, Kid Creole, and Scorpio to reunite as Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel and the Furious Five in 1987 for a charity concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The reunion sparked renewed interest in the group. The six artists began working together on new songs, including a remake of the Steppenwolf classic “Magic Carpet Ride,” and released On the Strength on Elektra in 1988.

But the album went nowhere and the reunion failed. The group split up a second time and the members faded into relative obscurity. Depressed and despondent, Flash turned to cocaine for escape. “It really messed me up,” he said later in a Rolling Stone interview. “I walked away from my beats. Lost touch with what I loved. I no longer had the freedom, like back in the park.” With the help of his sister, Flash eventually kicked his cocaine habit and set his sights on a new profession, that of producer. “I had always wanted to put music together for other people,” he said in Rolling Stone. In 1993 he did just that, coproducing Public Enemy DJ Terminator X’s album Super Bad.

The resurgence of interest in “old school” rap brought Flash back to his turntables in 1994. In the spring, he toured Germany, Japan, and the United States, decaying for rappers Whodini and Kurtis Blow. He later hooked up with MC Melle Mel to help Duran Duran record a remake of his and Mel’s 1983 hit “White Lines.”

When asked in an Entertainment Weekly interview what he thought of younger music acts remaking his songs and building on the techniques he innovated, Flash replied, “It’s great that the newer artists know where it came from, because it wasn’t easy. In hip-hop, the formula was set so that it could be constantly re-innovated. So I would say to the hip-hop world, don’t hold back anything, because that thing that you hold back might be the next big thing.”