15 MINUTES WITH GRANDMASTER FLASH

It’s long been established that pioneering DJ Grandmaster Flash, along with his seminal rap group The Furious Five, is a living legend. Not only did Flash invent the art of turntable manipulation known as “cutting” (thereby placing a heavy cornerstone in hip-hop), he and The Furious Five were the first hip-hop group ever inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in March 2007. The group’s classic debut record, Superrappin’, was released in 1979 and their most significant record, “The Message”, went platinum soon after its release in 1982. The Grandmaster himself has received numerous accolades including the RIAA’s Lifetime Achievement Award, BET’s Icon Award, VH1’s Hip Hop Honors and Bill Gates’ Vanguard Award.

Grandmaster Flash played an irreplaceable role in hip-hop’s past, but nowadays he’s eyeing a promising future. The tools of Grandmaster Flash’s trade have changed considerably since he laid the foundation. MP3’s have supplanted vinyl records and portable computers have phased out the trusty turntable. An avid lover of technology, Flash has embraced the new, digital world of deejaying; he’s got an endorsement deal with Native Instruments and their Traktor Scratch audio/mixing software. Adrenaline City Entertainment, Grandmaster Flash’s own label, will release his brand new album, tentatively titled The Bridge, later this year. Doubleday Books is also publishing Flash’s long-awaited biography, a tome that sheds light on his inspiring (and at times, difficult) life story. Grandmaster Flash kicked it with ANGEL Crew’s Khalid Strickland and detailed what he’s been up to as well as what’s next.

ANGEL: After keeping your life story on the low for so long, why’d you decide to finally put your autobiography book out?

Grandmaster Flash: I think us as human beings never voluntarily expose our skeletons. It’s human nature, we just don’t. We try to basically, you know, clean it up… cover it up, whatever the case may be. It’s never a voluntary thing and when it is voluntary it’s never easy. I’d been asked for quite a few years to do this. One of my people that work with me, Mark Green, said one thing that really drove the whole thing home. He says, “Flash, this story that you can tell… if you’re honest with it, you can perhaps help someone. This story might run parallel with somebody else’s life.” And from that perspective I started giving it some thought. Then when I met Janet Hill at Doubleday, she sat me down and she tells me the type of stuff that they do…I have to be very honest - For a long time I wasn’t ready to do this. It was a mixture of anger, lots of things that were unanswered, some pain. But I was able to come to grips with a lot of that and that allowed me to just candidly tell the story. But it was not easy, not by a long stretch. It took me three years to do it.

ANGEL: A lot of people may think they know a lot about Grandmaster Flash already by reading things online or watching TV specials and stuff. What are some of the things people may not know about you that they may learn in this book?

Flash: What it was that brought me here. Let’s just say I’ve been able to sort of not talk about this in front of media for the last twenty-five years. I’ve been able to not go there because it was considered a Pandora’s Box. So I was able to not be in a position to have to talk about this part of my life. So this is the home, the innocence, the pain, the good, the not-so good. It’s a story about a guy from the hood who comes of age. I’ve never really expressed this story in any publication, ever. So this isn’t like a hip-hop story (discussing) my contribution to hip-hop. That is included in the book, but it’s a whole path that I walked and a whole lot of pain I went through to get there and to this point, this one hasn’t been told.

ANGEL: You’re working on a new album, right? You’re in the studio today.

Flash: I’m in the studio right now (laughs). I’m working on the tracks and when they gave me the call to do this interview I’m like, “Shit!” (laughs) Because when you’re in the groove creating, it’s really hard to break the groove. No disrespect to you, but I was in there working on some hot shit (laughs). It’s cool. The name of the album is going to be called The Bridge and it’s on my own label which is Adrenaline City Entertainment. I’m still in the music stage so I have a wish list of who I want to be on it, but I don’t want to say what that is because it might happen, it might not happen. But right now I’m in the music stage of it. I don’t really want to hone in on who’s going to be on it and who’s not, but I’m going to do this record my way.

ANGEL: What inspired you to start your own label?

Flash: I watch a lot of my peers… some of them were behind the scenes basically being the power, like a Russell (Simmons). Or some were artists, like a P. Diddy, you know, Andre Harrell. A lot of these people are my buddies; we used to hang out in Disco Fever and just chill. And I watched a lot of these people go from what they were to what they’ve become, and they’ve all become moguls and respectable people in the industry. I’ve been blessed to have been and done so many things. This is one of the things I really wanted to do. I also want to do movie scores, soundtracks, commercial music and remixes. So this is just another road I want to go down and we’ll see what happens.

ANGEL: In rap music, live shows especially, the focus has seemed to shift away from the deejay; now the emcee is in the forefront. Do you have any thoughts as far as the role of a deejay in rap music now?

Flash: The (shows) I go to see, I still see the deejay. Like if I go see Busta, I’m seeing DJ Scratch back there or I’m seeing Scratch with Diddy. If I go to see Jay-Z, I’m seeing Just Blaze. For the most part, I’ve seen it, but I do know statistically there are very few emcees/rappers that do it. Maybe it’s another step in where hip-hop is going. But for me it does look a little weird not to have the cat in the back, driving the jams as the emcee rocks his rhymes. To me, the two work hand-in-hand. And to not see it, sometimes it’s a little strange. But some people don’t prefer to do it. It’s a little weird to me.

ANGEL: You’ve been all over the globe. How is the hip-hop scene different in other parts of the world as opposed to its birthplace country? Is there any difference at all the way people receive hip-hop culture?

Flash: I’d say yes. I think overseas they want to see more of a different mixture of hip-hop. Meaning… in their melting pot, they’ll mix hip-hop from both sides of the school, old and new, all in one pot and take a serving of it. America might put it in two different pots and say, “take your choice”, to put that in layman’s terms. Overseas, they want to hear a little bit of both and they put both in high esteem. Whereas here, it’s “which one do you want to put in high esteem?” I’ve been blessed to do both sides of the schools and do it successfully, but that’s the way I see it.

ANGEL: How have you incorporated the new technology, like Serato and the other scratch programs they have for the computer, into what you do now?

Flash: Before I was a deejay, I was a scientist. So I was always, even in the early seventies, going behind the stereos, behind the washing machine… taking apart and turntable and looking into the internal workings of how it works. First and foremost, I am a scientist so I do respect technology. So here it is, many decades later and at first I had to get used to what they was doing. The deejay’s walking in with a laptop and no boxes of records. I’m like, “Where are the records at?” He says, “They’re in the laptop.” I’m like, “What the fuck are you talking about, they’re in the laptop?” He says, “They’re in the laptop.” So it took me a while to understand what that is, but I was keen and eager to want to know because I’m a scientist.

I kind of researched them all, and the one at this present time I’m sort of working with and learning to fully understand is Traktor Scratch. It’s fairly new, it’s by Native Instruments and it gives me the feeling of what’s important to me; it feels the same way I’ve always played. So you only have to look into a laptop to find the record. That’s a little bit weird, but it’s cool though. I’m a scientist so I’m cool with it.

ANGEL: What do you hope to accomplish with “The Bridge”?

Flash: I’m a deejay, man. I’m a producer and I just want to express my production and musical point of view, that’s it. The public will call it what they want to call it. But this skill, I’ve had this forever. I’ve been in front of a recording console since ’81 so I know my way around producing a record and a lot of people don’t know that. They say, “Grandmaster Flash the deejay, he invented the way deejays play music”. Yeah, all that’s true.

But then, scientifically and electronically I’ve been behind recording consoles with some of the best engineers of all time and I’ve learned how to operate them. This is just another area of something I know how to do. I think what’s also to my advantage is that I’ve traveled the world is because I travel the world and I deejay. I have the advantage of playing different genres… in front of races of people and different ages. So I kind of get the common denominator of what it takes to make a jam that will rock the dance floor. Whether it sells millions or will it sell anything, I don’t know about that. But how to make a jam that’ll rock a dance floor, I think I know how to so that.

ANGEL: Since I’m talking to a pioneer I have to ask this. A lot of people debate “who is hip-hop” or “what is hip-hop”. Like, “these Southern guys ain’t hip-hop” or “snap music ain’t hip-hop” or “so-and-so ain’t hip-hop” and shit like that. Is there actually a definition for hip-hop? Is hip-hop something that can really be defined?

Flash: Me, quite personally… I think once you start categorizing and defining… it’s two things: it’s poetry to the beat of music and it’s also music that is taken from other genres of music to create it’s own. It’s also breakdancing. It’s also graffiti artists. It’s also emceeing. Once you start categorizing it, it’s like… I think that kind of screws it up a little bit. I think it screws it up for the most important people; the future listeners. Because if you can give them one big title with all the music, of all the greats, they got one place to go to. But when you start making subtitles and subtitles, how does the tradition live on?

Like, there’s rock and that’s it. There’s jazz and that’s it. There’s R&B and that’s it. Why does it have to be this and that? Because this cat emcees from a darker perspective, why does it have to be called gangsta? Why can’t it just be hip-hop? Why not? If this cat talks from maybe a different perspective, which is not as dark, it’s lighter… why does it have to be all this and that? Why? That there is a little weird for me, I think it’s all hip-hop. It’s a deejay with an emcee and the breakdancers, the graffiti artists… it’s poetry to the beat of music, it’s music to the beat of deejays… it’s hip-hop. Just give it one title and this way, a thousand years down the line, people can go back and do the proper research without looking a hundred different places to find out who did what and why this happened. That’s what makes this thing so confusing in my opinion.

ANGEL: Nowadays, hip-hop in general is under heavy attack from critics. To them, hip-hop is the blame for all of society’s ills. To them, the phrase “hip-hop” is synonymous with negativity. How do you feel when haters dismiss all that’s evil and bad as hip-hop?

Flash: This is how I look at it, and I will put this under classifications of all music. Me, myself, personally… hip-hop or rap, whatever you want to call it, is not bad. There are people that are in it, be it an artist or be it a fan, that are troubled. And they enjoy hip-hop. The word hip-hop, why does it have to be bad? Why can’t it be that this person that does (wrong) is bad? That’s the part that really throws me. Okay, there are people who are artists, people who are producers, people who are fans… who love hip-hop, that are known for being into hip-hop culture… that might have done something real fucked up. Why do you connect it to hip-hop?

Connect it to the person. Connect that shit to the person; that this person did this real fucked-up shit. Instead it’s, “well, hip-hop is fuckin’ up again”. Why is it hip-hop? Why can’t it be that person, or that group of people, that’s doing some real crazy shit? How does hip-hop take the blame? That part I don’t understand.