This summer marks the 50th birthday of hip-hop, the genre of music that started in parks and house parties in the Bronx in New York City but has since taken over the world as the dominant global culture and form of entertainment.
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So, to get a better sense of those early years, we dive into some history with one of the forefathers of the musical genre, Grandmaster Flash. The inventor of the Quick Mix Theory, which allowed DJs to extend breaks in records longer so people could rap and dance to them, Grandmaster Flash is a hip-hop pioneer.
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Yes, with all that experience and influence, one might wonder what the now-65-year-old Grandmaster Flash, who was part of the group the Furious Five, had to say about his craft, the music he helped create and the world at large. These are the best 20 Flash quotes.
1. “Conquer your neighborhood, conquer your city, conquer your country, and then go after the rest of the world. That’s my mantra.”
2. “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.”
3. “When I am performing live, I walk into a room, and I just try to get a feel for the vibe, and I am coming from different angles musically. I might come with a new song, I might come with some hip-hop, with some R&B. Once I find my way, then I am hitting you, and hitting you all night.”
4. “All you have to know is mathematically how many times to scratch it and when to let it go—when certain things will enhance the record you’re listening to.”
5. “Do not let any record company disturb your creative flow. You are not writing for the record company. You’re writing for the public.”
6. “Hip-hop has become real constrained. The creative juices and creative flows have been diminished.”
7. “We can come from our own particular point of view and lay it down. We should not be throwing verbal rocks at each other. We’re all responsible to continue the growth of hip-hop.”
8. “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.”
9. “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.”
10. “If there is a record I don’t have, I haven’t heard it yet. My collection is always growing, but I can’t really play it anywhere—no promoter is willing to pay for my crates of vinyl to fly with me, so I have a team of people to digitize it all.”
11. “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.”
12. “What has happened is that to some degree they have taken an attitude where they don’t listen to demos of diverse subject matters. They’re looking for demos like the record the guy on the left just did.”
13. “For anybody to say well this is not hip-hop and that’s not hip-hop, that is not the way the formula was laid down. It was for the people who were going to continue to take anything musically and string it along.”
14. “Before this DJ thing, I was hopelessly taking things apart to try to figure out how they worked. I’d go mess around with burned-out cars, with my mom’s stereo—I was public enemy No. 1 in my house for that. So my mom noticed that I was interested in this and decided to send me to school so I’d know what I was doing.”
15. “I needed a way to have the platter continuously spinning while I’m moving the record back and forth. I went to a fabric store. When I touched this hairy stuff—felt—I found it. I rubbed spray starch on both sides and ironed it until it became a stiff wafer. After that, I was able to stop time.”
16. “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.”
17. “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.”
18. “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.
19. “We can even sing off-key, but if it’s produced properly it can be a hit.”
20. “We gotta stop fighting amongst each other. I think the only rift should be when [we] take the stage and try to out-perform each other.”
Photo by Johnny Nunez/Getty Images
