December 15, 2023 • 55 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Morning everybody, it's the j n V. Charlamagne to God,
we are the Breakfast Club. You got a special guest
in the building.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Come on, man, one of the architects of this thing
we call hip hop. Man, one of the people who
helped later foundation for this thing we called hip hop.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
We wouldn't have jobs if it wasn't for this brother.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Right, wouldn't be a DJ, if it wasn't for this brother,
and most people out there, most DJs out there wouldn't
be DJs. If it wasn't No, all DJs wouldn't be
it wasn't for this brother, Ladies and gentlemen, grand Master Flash, welcome, thank.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
You, good morning, black Man, thank you, thank you for
having me Man.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
I appreciate it. Come on, man, happy to have you.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Absolutely appreciate this man.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
You know, we celebrated the fifty years of hip hop,
you know, this year, and Nby and I was on
the radio having a conversation and it just felt like,
you know, the architects, like that era of the eighties,
you know, wasn't getting honored properly, and none of us
to hear if that, if that foundation isn't late you
said the eighties seven, the seventies. Yeah, the seventies from
the beginning, and the eighties I feel like weren't getting
(01:00):
on it, you know, properly. How do you feel about that,
Grand Master Flash?
Speaker 5 (01:04):
And that's one of the reasons why I feel that
it's paramount that I do lectures. I do corporate towards
the lectures, and I've been doing them for private people,
but now I kind of want to do this for
the public so they could understand that this thing didn't
just fall out of a tree. It didn't just go
from the seventies to where we are. You know, there
(01:25):
was four DJs that did this. Coolhork was on the west,
AB was Bronx River, African DJ Breakout was the north.
I was the east, and pretty much this is how
it really started. And you got to realize this, ladies
and gentlemen, we did this with no Internet, no social media,
(01:48):
no apps, no.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Quick hardware where it would just work a lot of
these things.
Speaker 5 (01:55):
As I was telling you, Envy, I had to do
this with nothing going into the backyards and you know,
getting old receivers and old turntables and stuff and kind
of like jury rigging my sound system.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
For people listening when he says the West to South
to nor if he's not talking about West Coast, he's
talking about New York. The Bronx, the Bronx, Bronx. I
wanted to clear it up. And also, you know I
was talking to of course grandmass Flash behind the scenes.
A lot of he didn't know, you know, where we
had the ability to go to these stores and buy equipment.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
He had to actually make it.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
So his first sound system actually came from old cars
in the junk yard. He would pull the speakers out
of the cars in the junk yard and make sound
systems to play at parks and parties and wherever wherever
it was. So you had to actually know electronics. And
it just wasn't just about DJing, right, So what what
got you into wanting to be a DJ? I know
you were telling me the story behind the scenes that
(02:44):
you know, you were just intrigued by electronics in your
house when your mother and father plugged something in and
you wanted to understand how it works. So you would
start effing up the crib pretty much to figure it out.
Speaker 5 (02:53):
Yeah, and when I was a toddler, everything in that
house that was electrical. I was intrigued, Oh how did
that happen? So I used to unscrew the backs of
the stereo in the living room. My sister's hair dries
the table radio, all these things. And also what got
me into this when I was a toddler. My dad
(03:14):
was a collector of records. And I'm on this respectable airwaves.
So I will just say when I got caught touching
his vinyl as a toddler, he used to heavily repermnd me.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Right, I can say that. And what I used to
do was a kid, I.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
Waited for him to go to work, and when the
door slammed, I went back in that closet and the
rule was, you know, don't touch the brown box in
the living room.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
And I used to watch Dad when he came home
from work how he operated it.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
So I figured out how to get into this closet
where his stuff was, and I would take this square
thing that had a black disc and he would put
it in this brown and sound would come out of it.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
That was probably my first love.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
But then moving forward, guys, when I heard a drum
break from one of the most important black artists of
that time, his name was Curtis Mayfield.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Move on up that break and then you and I
can relate here. That break was.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
About i'd say about five minutes of just the drums.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And I thought all records was like that.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
So when I started collecting my records, the drum break
was like five ten seconds. So what also got me
into the DJing is I used to watch the disco
DJs like my Boyer Flowers, Pete Jones, and I noticed
that their transitions were glass smooth. But then my boys
(04:58):
knocked on my door at my mom's house and said,
we want to take you to this other side of
town to watch these other DJs. And respectfully, I was wondering,
why is it that everything that he was doing was
a train wreck. He was playing the incredible music, had
(05:19):
the incredible sound system, but why was.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
He playing like that?
Speaker 5 (05:23):
You know, because the rules are the laws, and you know,
especially if you got people on the dance floor, the
idea is to keep everybody in unison correct. They should
not be trying to find it beat as you transition.
So from that point on, it's when I came up
with the quick mixed theory. You know what mix theory
from a mathematical perspective. I took sonics and through it
(05:47):
out the window. Because if I play a song, I
hear it a certain way. If I put the headphone
on your ear, you hear it a certain way, and shah,
you hear a certain way. So I said to myself,
I'm going to take that out of the equation and
I'm gonna just collect records from all genres pop, rock, jazz, blues, funk, disco,
R and B foreign American and just listen to the
(06:10):
drum break. And I found that, unlike Curtis Mayfield, these
drum breaks on these other records always always short. That
made me quite angry. I was disappointed. So in Mom's house,
I came up with a hand mechanic fingertips to vinyl
(06:35):
fingertips to cross Vader DJ style that is used by
every hip hop DJ on planet Earth. And I figured
out the way of counting the bars as the vinyl
went forward, and how many times I would have to
rewind it back to get back to the top of
the break and take that ten second break and make
(06:58):
it seamlessly ten minutes. So if you on the floor
and I'm playing a Michael Jackson drummer break. I'm playing
that for ten minutes and I'm gonna flip to a
London break or a drumming break or or whatever break.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
And this became the way.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
And then what happened was these incredible people called hip
hop producers took this style of the seamless loop and
I'm gonna show you that on the wheels to steal and.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Understand Me'm saying your quick mixed theory turn turned into
what people called sampling basically correct.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
That's so that's exactly what you bring it back from
the beginning. But one thing you learn from this interview
with grand Master Flash is he's not just a musician
when it comes to turntables.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
He's actually no disrespect.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
He's a nerd and geek, like he wants to understand
the mechanics of it. Most people just want to understand
the success of it and be successful and be a
big name. But he under actually understands the mechanics of music,
DJ and trans positioning records, record players, mixes, just and
this is just having a thirty second conversation with Have
I figured out.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
What I found so interressing about this? In the last
five minutes you explained where DJing started yep, and where
hip hop production start correct, So people will call you
an architect and say you're wanted the founding fathers of
hip hop.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
That is why, absolutely thank you. And I gotta tell
you it's like.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
I've been listening to a lot of depressing the promotion,
you know, from last summer to now, and this particular
area of who, what, where and why is not talked about.
Why aren't we talking about what Bam did? And quite frankly,
the gang thing was really bad back then Shaw and
(08:47):
if he didn't calm that down, they would have not
been to a block parties, you know what I'm saying.
And then as DJ breakout in the North, he came
up with a sound system where he used garbage cans
as his base. Bottoms Who Hurt had an amazing sound system.
I had the shittiest sound system, but I had a
hand technique that people wanted to see, you know. So
(09:08):
it's just these kind of things where I go around
doing these corporate tours.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
It's called the birth of a culture.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
Corporate tourist, and I've been doing a lot of these
things privately, but I think that now I have to
go to the universities to the YMCAs and do this public.
I'm gonna do two major lectures, one in Manhattan and
one of the Bronx where it's gonna be free, and
I want people to really mechanically understand how I came
up with this quick mixed theory and how it connects
(09:34):
to where we are right now. You know, I'm gonna
keep it real with you. I didn't create hip hop.
I didn't coin the word. I created the tools that
allowed hip hop to transcend from where it was to
where it is. And with how these tools, like the beatbox,
the turntables, the quick mixed theory, the extending of a
(09:57):
bed of music so a human being can speak, going
so that the rapper could be born. These are the
things that I did, and these are the things that
the world is not talking about.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
I mean that's especially this year because the focus is
on the artist, but it should be a lot more
focused on the DJ.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And the producer.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
All I was gonna ask, you know, how do you
feel when you look at something that you created, right?
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And you created out of love?
Speaker 5 (10:23):
Right?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
What you said just now? You didn't say it was money.
You didn't say I did this because I wanted money,
you said, I enjoyed it. I love listening to music,
I love playing in the park. And then you see
in this the commercial success of hip hop.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
I sent Charlamagne something this morning about Charris One saying
why he didn't want to perform at the Grammys. He
felt like the Grammy's never respected hip hop. So why
come now, how do you feel when you see the
commercial success of hip hop and all these brothers and
sisters making money, and all these companies making money off
of hip hop, but some of the founders are not
making the money that's deserved because if it wasn't for
you guys, nobody wouldn't be able to make that money.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
That's a twofold answer.
Speaker 5 (11:02):
Just think and be this thing that I did could
have missed, And if this all would have missed, I
wouldn't be here talking to you right now. So that's
one side of it.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
It exploded.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
But there are like, there are some companies out there
giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars. I've seen this
on the internet just recently. But they are those men
that are in a hood that didn't have the commercial success.
Nobody's saying, hey, here's five hundred thousand dollars for you
(11:42):
or one hundred thousand dollars. They're not saying that, Like
there are those who lost their life that are not
even here to even enjoy this, and they have families,
you know. So for me, I have to until God
takes me. I have to go around and mechanically break
this thing down. I think that people should interview the
(12:07):
producers like that. Just that boggles my mind because they're
the ones that really.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Know how the record is made.
Speaker 5 (12:16):
They're the one that stays in the studios for two
and three days to make sure the record goes from
start to finish before the masters is handed in, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So for me and people should know more about Coohirk
and their team. They should know who Coke the Rocket is.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
Like they're going around saying he was a rapper, he
said DJ I used to watch him, you know. And
in this Timmy tim And is the original Clark Ken.
You know, people should know who breakout team is Barren
you know, and Bam Body and Jazzy J and Grand
Master Flashing Graham was your Theaterore. Like all these people
(12:52):
and all these names, you don't hear nothing, yes, right,
talk to about them when people are putting out this press,
they're not even coming to ask, well, Flash, what do
you think? And respectfully, I'm gonna say this. For you
to really first hand know what this is, you have
(13:15):
to be at least sixty years old. And I'll be
kind and say fifty eight fifty seven. That means you
had a first hand eyeshot of seeing us do this.
If you are thirty or you're a forty and you
were saying that you are a hip hop extraordinary person,
(13:37):
nine times out of ten, if you ain't talking to Flash,
you ain't talking to HRK, you ain't talking to BAM,
you got secondhand information, and you gotta realize you're feeding
the babies like incomplete information.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
And this is one of the reasons why.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
Because I tour one hundred and fifty countries a year,
so financially I'm good, I'm cutting all that in half
because I gotta go to these universities. I got to
go to these YMCAs and I gotta teach these babies
of where this thing comes from. Because what saddeness mean
is this. If you are from a black family, you
know who Miles Davis is. If you're from a white family,
(14:16):
you know who the Rolling Stones is. Why is this
so much of a blur of who, what and why
we're and how when it comes to hip hop?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Why is that?
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I think we gotta be the generation to do that
because to your point, if you're sixty years old, now
you're probably a grandfather, grandmother.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Our grandparents weren't listening to.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Hip hop, you know, Okay, but now when we got
grandparents and grandfathers, grandparents who were listening to hip hop,
and then parents who grew up in hip hop, they
can tell their kids eight, this is where it started, right.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Because, like you said, most if you if you're in
the age of forty to fifty, a lot of them,
hip hop started with right. I remember, that's where it
started from. Because even me, like, you know, my parents
weren't in a hip hop but I was. But the
first record I ever bought was Run.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
My dad was seventy something. He didn't he didn't like
hip hop at the time. He wanted he was like,
you need to listen to James Brown, Temptation, the original rapper.
You know, he didn't know nothing about hip hop. He
didn't want to hear none of that.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
You know. Well, I think for me and this is
such a wonderful time period. But just think of it
like this here, and you know, sometimes this makes me
want to cry. Sometimes is come August, like the mayor
gave me August fourth and cool Hurgust August eleventh, Come
August twelfth, there's going to be a brand new trend.
(15:34):
So we have to get it right now as a
black art form that is core, that has done so
much for so many people. Of course, we have.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
To get it right between now and August.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
Eleventh, or it's going to go down in history incomplete
or incorrect. And that scares the crap out of me.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
So it's safe to say you don't believe the DJ
he gets to respect they should when it comes to
their contraby.
Speaker 5 (16:02):
Absolutely not, because especially the hip hop DJ that understands
the quick mixed story and the mechanics which I will
show you, because that led to the sampling and that
led to these records being made, and that's what we're celebrating.
So we're celebrating the entire cake. But let's go back
and celebrate the celebrate the the uh, the eggs and
(16:23):
the flour and the water and the vanilla, how the
cake was made.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
The process, the process.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Let's celebrate that.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Let's see some of the process.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Let's do that.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
Yeah, actually speak louder than what?
Speaker 5 (16:35):
Now?
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Could I could? I go right there? All right, we
need a pen. I need one of these pens. So
in the shop. I want to tell you envy. Yes, sir,
I appreciate you. Man. You said something a couple of
minutes ago that you thought I would be insulted.
Speaker 5 (16:49):
I grew up as a geek. I was not hip.
I was afraid to wrap the chicks. I stayed in
my house, grabbingunk from the junkyard and trying to piece
together somewhat of a sound system. And then I came
up with a mathematical equation to what is hip hop?
(17:14):
And I called it black math. Okay, quick mix theory.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
Black math.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
It was impossible for me to write a sonic equation
because a sonic equation would then fall under kinetics, and
then it would have been really deep for me to
write this, So I wrote it from a mathematical perspective.
The brain captures a melody in four bars, and that's
(17:43):
why I called it the.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Quick mixed theory black math.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
Every DJ uses the hand mechanics of this DJ technique.
This got me in so much trouble because I was
putting crayons on the record, putting in my hand on
the records. Connoisseurs wanted to nail me, disrespect me. They
(18:13):
really hated me, shah because they would put the record
inside of a little white paper and put it inside
and use the velvet brush to clean it off, and
they would carefully put it inside the jacket.
Speaker 6 (18:28):
Me.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Fuck that. So I got a lot of flack for
doing this. So now there's vinyl one. I'm a horrible drawer.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
So good, we get it.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
We get it and mix in the middle, vinyl two
mm hmm, vinyl two. So this one. The crowds listening
to this.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
Going clockwise, and this is the one that has to
go counterclockwise. And this particular style of DJing and every
hip hop DJ has adopted makes the tone arm ninety
nine zero point nine percent.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Useless. But I would watch those DJs that did this
heavy on the tone arm, and.
Speaker 5 (19:28):
Every time they would transition, it was a train way
four bars.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Forward. It's equal to six counterclockwise revolutions equals full loop extraction.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
Every DJ and every hip hop producer that that made
sample music use this. This theory and me and Envy
we were talking earlier and he was he said something
to me, some people never seen turntables.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
That's right, that's real.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
I've got so much to do. I've got so many
places to go shah, so many people. Because I don't
know if Breakout's going to get an interview off cool
Herk or Coke, it's going to get an interview or bam.
So right now it's pretty much on me. So the
race is on into August.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
So now with this process for people that don't know
that's not a DJ, is what you're basically saying is
back in the day, you came up with this formula
because there was no instrumental so you had to create
your own right or.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
The drum break or the drum break short.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
You had to make it longer so people can actually dance,
and the transition will be like how transitions should be.
So what you hear now when somebody, especially New York
where most DJs slam music, meaning you'll go from a
fast record one hundred tempo to a seventy tempo with
no transition and you slam it. So this was a
creation where people wouldn't stop dancing and the party would
(21:11):
go thoroughly through and people wouldn't even miss a step right,
which a DJ is supposed to do right. And with
this meaning forward four balls forward, six balls backward, you'd
go six balls backward to go back another four balls
to bring this side, bring the left side six balls.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
For the four and six.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
That was the inversion of four to six factor is
what I called it. And I say four plus six
it is ten. So if there was a rapper in
front of me and he needed a quiet area of
the record where the singer wasn't singing, and it was
the least people playing with the drummer, and I'm going
(21:50):
to play a few of those things.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
It shows that, it shows people see it.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Can you answer one questions? You know?
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Of course, you know they talk about gramdmass flashing the
Furious five, you know, produced the message, but they.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Said first DJ to get a Grammy, by the way,
but that.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Yes, But I've read some things where they said you
had nothing to do with the production of it.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
Okay, I had something to do with all of it,
because that company chased me to get my group serious,
the whole group. There was the club I played called
disco Fever and I brought hip hop to this club,
(22:28):
and Sally Abatello gave me. I wanted a Saturday. He
gave me a Tuesday, of course, so most clubs do.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
They gave me.
Speaker 5 (22:36):
I called it Terrible Tuesday off Night, right, But in
about two months time, I was live on that Saturday.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Thank you, sal You know.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
So for me, the message, probably I had least to
do with, but I had most to do with it
because it was my group. And I'm sure they used
your technique, right, they do they use They used my
technique to make all their records. The Message was an
original record, but they knew when they had the Sugar
(23:08):
Hill Gang, they heard of us.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
In the streets.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
The streets was already ringing Grandmaster Flash and the Phurious Five.
So she used to come to Terrible Tuesdays every Tuesday,
just to see how it was, how it was going down.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
So who is she, Sylvia Robins?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
You know? So on Hill. Did I have anything to
do with that record? Minimal?
Speaker 5 (23:34):
But I had everything to do with it because she
needed to have us.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
So here we are.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
I want to have one more question for you, get
on the turntables. How do you feel about DJs today
with the auto mixing buttons and the different programs that
make it easy.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
I'm using right now, right, and you know what it is.
I put it this way.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
I'm a scientist first, I'm a geek first, so I've
been pushing an envelope for fifty two years, so I
respect anybody that's doing it, but follow the laws of
the art transition. I think the things that drive me
crazy when I go out, which is every now and
then envs.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
You know, I'm.
Speaker 5 (24:15):
Listening to the DJ and it's the train wreck thing.
You know that there really drives me crazy. A lot
of today's music is really one tempo bass, so it's
easy to go from one to the other. So how
you crashing this record into this record with us back?
We had to use the pitch quite a bit to
(24:38):
make this record beat match with lost record. Of course,
these records here are almost coming out of the oven.
They're all the same temple almost. So I don't understand
why is it that these people who play today don't
beat match that?
Speaker 1 (24:53):
There?
Speaker 5 (24:54):
Makes me totally crazy, and it goes against the laws
of what we learned.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Let's see what see some transitions.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Matt's do it if you can.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
The first thing I guess if you can what you
talked about the first how you would make your own
instrumental backing.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Let me play the first record.
Speaker 5 (25:12):
That got Because some people think that there was another
DJ that inspired me. I came from a totally different perspective,
scientific and mathematical. So I came from nothing with my
stylech nobody put me on. I ended this record was
(25:40):
the grand recond record. Why I wanted to DJ Curtis
Mayfield nineteen.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Seventy, How old are you twelve? Going to the thirteen? Wow,
I'm sixty six?
Speaker 4 (25:57):
Now let's.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Break is still going? The break is still going.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Five minutes right?
Speaker 1 (26:09):
This record was so for life for me. I was
why is that? Why is everything else so short?
Speaker 5 (26:22):
And when I started playing other genres of record, because
I was raised in a home where it appearing on
which sister was on the stereo, I would hear motown, disco, funk, jazz, blues,
R and B.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Like I grew up where music had no color.
Speaker 5 (26:38):
A dope jam could be a white jam or black jam,
of foreign jam and American jam. So so Charlotte Magne,
I said, I was gonna I needed your help, right,
So can you come over here please, shaw. Try to
scratch this record, try right right right.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
So he's a DJ allegedly, I don't know if can
do this.
Speaker 7 (27:00):
So so listen now, yeah, try to try and try
to try to try to try to bring the back
the record back, just just but be gentle, be gentle
with your fingers and try to just.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
Go right back.
Speaker 5 (27:17):
Practice trying to go back, trying to go count the Topwise,
he's too hard.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Right now, now, try to try to go back. Heavy.
Speaker 5 (27:29):
No, he's a heavy. It's a heavy, okay, gonta stop.
So my mother was a seamstress, right, so I was
lucky to touch polyester, rayon, con silk, leather swayed.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Well, So you created the.
Speaker 8 (27:55):
Slip man, yes, I oh my goodness, you created the
slip man too.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
So let me tell you what. Let me break it.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
I'm gonna pop the collar for you. So when you
buy the turntables, it comes with a rubber piece. Right,
the rubber piece you cannot DJ with, so all d
days have to toss it. So you had a slip mat.
We didn't know where a slip mat was. So back
then the record came in in a plastic package. We
would open up the plastic package and make our own
slip mat.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
The slip matters on this one.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
But that was grand Master Flashes idea. I just told
you so.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
You got right there, flas Flash.
Speaker 5 (28:30):
I ran it to that.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Problem, right.
Speaker 9 (28:34):
I grabbed an album and I ran to the nearest
material store and I touched rayon silk or cotton, polyester, leather.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Felt. Now, the problem with felt.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
Is when you put it on your when when you
buy a portion of it.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yep, it's limp whom my mother was it looking?
Speaker 5 (29:00):
And first I would cut it out besides of an album, right,
And I would when my mother was a look, And
I went up in the closet in her cabin in
the kitchen and I got spray starch and I made.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
It so that it was stiff. But I called it
a wafer.
Speaker 5 (29:17):
And the reason why I called it a wafers because
during the Easter, Mom would dress us up to go
to the church and the neighbor's church, and you know
that little white that that white thing they give you
during the East. I called it a wafer. And it went
from what that is.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
To this damn you didn't get to trademark any.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Jesus Christ. A minute, wait, a minute.
Speaker 5 (29:42):
It doesn't end there because I still got some resistance
on a certain table.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
With just this.
Speaker 5 (29:47):
So when Mom would make baked chocolate chip cookies, she
would use this paper that felt like.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
Oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
So now I put the.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
The plastic the wax on the platter, and I put
this on top of that. So now the platter moved
comfortably clockwise while I can go pound o' clockwise.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Of the quick knicks theory. See, these are the things I.
Speaker 5 (30:22):
Need to teach people about that this thing, they'd just
fall out of a tree.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
And look at some of this press today they're like,
all right, hip hop.
Speaker 5 (30:31):
Is fifty and there was this party at Boom.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Is that it kipping a whole process.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
But it's skipping the whole process, but it's gipping the
whole process of people who actually put in the energy
and work. So for me, I had no idea. Right,
you just follow all the DJs and other DJs.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
What they do.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
They open up the thing, they get rid of that
rubber piece, they cut the plastic, and that's how you DJ.
But if it wasn't for Flash's mind of thinking this way,
most DJs wouldn't have that.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Now come here, now, now put your hand on the gently.
Speaker 10 (31:03):
See now it's the movie.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah yeah, oh my gosh. And that's the problem. Every
d everybody thinks that that's the problem. So let's play
some music now do it so so now people don't
realize it. But like the producer.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
Drey Premiere Pete Rock Battle Cat, Like I could go
on and on and on this sampling thing.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
This is how the sampling thing tied in h to
the DJ. Let's take this sample.
Speaker 11 (31:42):
Name.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
But this song is called Sweet Green Teals by Seals
and CROs All. This is the extra but mm hmm,
bust around, put my hands master, see.
Speaker 12 (32:00):
Wow, wow, wow, right, care for y'all, Jesus, that was
the bullshit. Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
We didn't let it go there.
Speaker 5 (32:15):
So now, using a quick mixed theory with the producers,
there's the two new machines that come into play, the
computer and the sampler. So it would take that same
let's say quantity of information, put it onto a floppy disk,
put it into the computer and the sampler, and hit
(32:37):
the spacebart until the computer loop. This it's the same
thing that I was doing circularly, but now it was
with the new technology.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
So let's go lit mode.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
So if you just why if you're listening, he's bringing
it back and forth without a loop sampler. He's doing
it from his hands in a way that you can't
even tell he's doing it.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
So if you want a dance floor, you will never
know what I was doing correct. And this is a
difference between us need to tone arm with DJs that
come from our same community and train wrecking. First is
the quick mixterior where the arm is ninety nine point
nine percent useless.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Let's go to while he's doing to the Next thing
I always want to tell people too, is now DJ's
having a lot simpler because they have serato, so you
could actually see.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
The keys of where you can do it.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Back then he would actually have to memorize where it
was on the wax, or he would have to put
a piece of cassette taped they on the crayon, on
the crayon and draw it on the record to know
where he would have to go back to.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Now I see what the DJ used to sweat so
much in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
God rest his soul, Christopher, what's my wrap ups? And
I was with DJ.
Speaker 10 (34:34):
Wow, Now if you're listening, he's bringing it back using
the quick mixed theory.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
The d jing is no sample, it's just him Wow,
let's go a little deeper.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
Wow. Oh, and a lot of these samples. So when
people say to me, will flash through a hip hop set,
I'm playing white music, I'm playing black music, I'm playing
for our music and playing American music pop, rock, jazz, blues, funk,
just gonna earn people because this is what we had
before it became modern.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Correct, this is all we had. So let me ask
you a question, why you're doing this?
Speaker 2 (35:18):
So a lot of these loops that you're going back
and forth with that you were playing at the clubs,
These are loops that you would be doing at a
party that I'm sure one of these producers heard you
do it and say, oh, I'm a sample lest to
make it the record probably gotcha, probably because there's no way.
And now I can hear somebody hearing that Bust of
Rhymes record without a DJ playing and be like that's
going to be a smash, Like that had to be.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
I heard this, and this is why the DJ is
so important, Like I just don't understand.
Speaker 5 (35:45):
Rap, real question, these are the things will people need
(36:06):
to really understand?
Speaker 1 (36:12):
What is so important about the producer and a DJ.
You people that press people.
Speaker 5 (36:21):
You're not talking about this. You're not coming to ask
me anything you asked me.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
I'll tell you. Oh you just blaze reduce the ship
out of this record. Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (36:44):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
And this is just like a this is a nobody.
Speaker 5 (36:49):
This record was probably been double leg but it takes
the genius of reproducer to know what this is.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
And this is what the record really sounds like. We
didn't give a funk about that part, right there, ladies, And.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
This is what this is what this is what you
call digging in the crase, This is what I called it.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
I'm texting all the young DJs that work here, like
y'all should really be in here with this grandmathter flash lesson.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
I told you that. I'm texting like you should really
be here.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
I told you so, I'm fan. Let's let let's take
a little deeper. Let's place your sick individual man, your
mind is crazy. Please, I gotta I gotta ask you,
what is it?
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Nothing flash? We're gonna see this just like this.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
I gotta Okay, Yes, why why don't you know when
I when I was battling DJ and doing that, I
would turn the teams the turntables the long way so
I wouldn't hit it when I was scratching. Why do
you keep you as the regular way because most TJ
turned it the long way.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
That's the way when I was creating this.
Speaker 5 (37:58):
This is the way I learned it because I watch
the disco DJs and they will always forward. It's just
that when I watch the DJs that were in our
young community, they will forward too. But it was just
somewhat of a nightmare. So now I want to go
analogue with no help, no net. And this is where
(38:20):
you have to learn how to drive. If you didn't
know how to drive.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
This is a straight analog, no laptop, no nothing.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Your four arms will be strong because you had to
carry crates to the club.
Speaker 5 (38:34):
So the mark when I did this to records, record
connoisseurs DJs that were usually the the tone arm style,
hated my guts, like, who do you think you are
(38:55):
putting your fingertips all over.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
The records?
Speaker 5 (39:02):
Now what I'm gonna do is and I got a
shortage to you, envy nom. I was telling you four
boys forward, yes, and then when I went four four
revolutions back, I wasn't in the wrong place.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
I walked away for like a month because I was stuck.
Why is it if four bars are going forward, why
can't I go four bars?
Speaker 5 (39:28):
Count the clockwise And it was in my face thoty
three and a third the third counter constitute for the
additional two extra ones.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
I have to go back to re arrive to the
top of the break.
Speaker 5 (39:42):
So I used I use.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
The tone to just count how many times.
Speaker 5 (39:47):
This line passes the tone arm and I knew I
would be back at the top of the break. And
this is to seemless loop that the producers adopted to
put into the computer. This sister quick mixed theory. That
is purist.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
That's the thirty three and the third. That's why you
call himself dead. I'm sure DJ thirty three and the third.
I don't hear the quban who thought got thirty three
and the third?
Speaker 1 (40:10):
That's crazy?
Speaker 4 (40:11):
Why he's setting that up?
Speaker 1 (40:11):
You got it?
Speaker 4 (40:12):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (40:14):
No, I don't hear it. Turn up a little bit.
Maybe the levels on there, okay? Is it good in
the ground, humming a little bit of ground and some
of it. Let's check that ground real.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
You don't know how to do that? No more?
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Of course, I do. You might believe you might have
to lick the back and I need a one good
time to toue true.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Oh he I'm a DJ flash don't know let him man,
don't man, mister you I'm gonna t.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
I'm gonna test your heart before you get out of here.
I want to see if you still know how to
do that.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
I started, I started.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
Don't get nervous.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
I wanted to know how to do this in the crib. Okay,
he's gonna, he's gonna now. Yeah, sometimes we hook up
and the grounds are not right or the r c
A is a little off. Yeah, did you lick the ship?
See that? You gotta look the back of it for
the connection to be good. So I want to look.
You know, I don't want to do that. You know,
we ain't. We ain't doing that.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
You know most DJs licked their fingers and touch the
back of it. It's like blowing the cartridge on the
Nintendo game.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
You think you gotta do it looking and blowing.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Shut up? Yeah we were good now, Okay, it works.
See okay, so guys, you sleep the seamless loop still
got a little ham on the right side.
Speaker 5 (41:24):
I'm gonna play a couple of records, ladies and gentlemen,
And this is the quick mixtre be at its deepest.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Four boss forward six counterclockwise. Let's go one to count.
Speaker 6 (41:46):
One two three, four five six check throw one two
three four five check throw Wow.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
And this works.
Speaker 5 (42:06):
Pop, rock, jazz, blues folks. Once I figured out that third,
we call this hip hop. They called it rock, and
their family, we call this hip hop. Come up next,
(42:26):
get ready to be count.
Speaker 6 (42:31):
One two three, four five six check throw one two three,
four five six check.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Throw.
Speaker 5 (42:50):
The four six thing works on any race, creed color groove.
Speaker 13 (42:59):
Wow, what two three, four five six.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
Then find sure.
Speaker 11 (43:16):
One two three, four five six check one two three,
four five six check.
Speaker 5 (43:34):
The four six thing works on any type of record
with the view. But then sometimes there's an exception to
the rule. Maybe it's only two bars, and if it's
two bars, now we'll go through four bars fifth counterclockwise.
(43:55):
Now it's two bars. Now it's three counterclockwise to make
a full loop.
Speaker 14 (44:07):
One two three check, go one two three check go
one two three check go.
Speaker 4 (44:22):
And this guy's playing right. I'm lost.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
I get it, But that's the question.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Four balls forward right, Yeah, but it's not really four
balls because it's thirty three and the third So that
extra third that that makes makes up for the six
when you bring it back, right, do the math?
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Gotcha? Wow? So so what you think? This is what
stuck me? This is why I got stuck?
Speaker 15 (44:53):
One mm hmmm, two three four one q worrie war.
I'm in the wrong place. I'm in the wrong place.
I walked away from this steam. I'm like, damn, what
(45:14):
is wrong? And I was staring at it all the time.
God is good the magic.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Why don't you think DJs follow that?
Speaker 4 (45:22):
Right?
Speaker 1 (45:22):
And I'm gonna ask you why, right, because I touch
your equipment.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
For if you still know how to use it?
Speaker 2 (45:28):
If you for most DJs, right, what what they used
to do is.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
So when you do that right now, what they would
have to do.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Is you have to go go until you don't hear
it anymore?
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Right, but see, but but sometimes it breaks in the
middle though, right.
Speaker 5 (45:47):
But you know, if you don't get bad science to
this and I didn't go into that is you have
to know how it sounds going backwards.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
My Good Times is a perfect example. It goes like
you go do good time, no, no, no, no, you hear good.
Speaker 5 (46:05):
Good backwards, and then you know you're at the top
of the gut of good times.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Like you gotta learn records how they sound backwards.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
But that's the advanced form of it, and I'm trying
to keep it very basic and I love it.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
I love it because more DJs would really understand it.
So this right here, right, this part right here right
when I used to see you do I'm side right
when you're where you.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Crabbing right or slashing right? Where did that come from?
That came from the hand mechanics of the quick mixedterary.
Because here's how I see it. Whether you are.
Speaker 5 (46:41):
Cutting or seamless looping or rubbing the record back and
forth with the fader open scratching, or if you are crabbing,
all it is is just an advanced form of opening
and closing the panometer, which is the cross fader.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Correct And why did you why did you create that?
I mean, it's amazing sound. I did it when I
used to battle. But what made you say this is
a sound I'm creating with the with the sounds, you know,
I mean, that.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Was okay, you know, but when I heard it, Jeff
scratched fasted Newmark talk about yeah, one of the best.
They like I am the eventa of the hand mechanics.
Speaker 5 (47:23):
But all it is, if you think about it, is
just a matter of when you open and close the
fada and what you're doing with the vinyl. So now,
so when you are crabbing, you're moving a vinyl a
little faster, but you're opening and closing the panama the quicker.
But it's all the hand mechanics. The hand mechanics is
mind and the levels. Like you Si did this, this
(47:45):
kid by the name of Cubert, Like Cubert, he's not
even he's not even human.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
And and and uh, jeff, y'all would make y'all could
make people dance by bringing the record backwards and crabbing.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
And it was.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in
Cubert definitely. And the bad thing about Cubert is you
really didn't see Cubert.
Speaker 5 (48:03):
You just heard his tapes, right, So incredible as your
question shout out to my to my My first successful
student gram was the theater.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
How do you how do you correlate counting the bars
on the turntable the MC's counting bars in the booth.
Speaker 5 (48:18):
It's the same thing. Okay, it's it's actually the same thing.
It's just that when they're speaking, they're counting their verbal bars.
I'm counting musical balls. And what's paramount, Shaw is I
have to keep it steady. So I can't not while
they're saying they're right, I gotta keep it really steady.
(48:42):
And this is what the seamless loop is. So the
seamless loop is what he called cutting. And the thing
that what he.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
Bugs you with people is they say, I want you
to scratch.
Speaker 5 (48:51):
This is scratching is just one of the elements more
like cutting.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
It's like, actually, a scratch becomes very import.
Speaker 5 (49:00):
And when you're scratching against the music that's already playing,
or if you're crabbing against the music that's already playing,
you know what I'm saying, Or you're transforming. So these
are the things, guys that I really have to go
to the universities. Absolutely, go to the y m c
A's and and and will you show people that this
thing called hip hop didn't just and then just fall
(49:23):
out of a tree, Shaw.
Speaker 4 (49:24):
It just did it. You did a birth of a
birth of the culture masterclass at the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
Right, Yes, that.
Speaker 5 (49:31):
I got two encores. It was absolutely was absolutely wonderful.
So now I'm going to be doing birth of a
Culture lectures and in the corporate world, but I'm gonna
do some public ones too because people need to understand.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
Much respect to the first party, but there was much
more to get us here.
Speaker 5 (49:54):
And that's where people need to understand that this thing
took engineering, mathematics, ingenuity and taking this item and squeezing
it with that item to make this all work. Because
I come from a time when it was none.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
It was none of this.
Speaker 5 (50:13):
Absolutely you know what I'm saying, and that there is
what I would wish the press would come ask us, come, come,
ask us, So who.
Speaker 4 (50:19):
Made all of the money off of all of these
things that you created for all of them?
Speaker 1 (50:23):
Did? Wow?
Speaker 8 (50:24):
I'm talking about like what's far as trademarks, copyrights? Like
who all of them accept me? But you know something,
who asked me this question? What I had to do
all over again? I do it all over again, of
course way because I love what I do.
Speaker 5 (50:37):
I'm like, this thing has got me in more trouble
with my significant other, my children. You know, I I'm
not proud that I had to leave my children so
much to tour until leave to get away. But other
than that, like I'm madly in love with this and
(50:58):
that's it's just that right now out during this this
this pivotal time for this thing disappears on the twelfth
of August.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
I gotta get where I gotta get and I gotta.
Speaker 5 (51:10):
Teach these young journalists and the people that do these
kind of things, like the babies, like listen, this is
this is what it was.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
What about what about a book? I know you got
the Adventures of Grand Master Flast, but what about a book.
I'm gonna do another one with detail.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
A lot of this, and because see the thing is
an I fall victim to it too. It's like you
learn something. And a lot of times we're so microwave happy,
like we want it fast and we want to do
it now that we don't necessarily learn the history of
where it came from, you know, which is sad. But
in my defense, back then we didn't have there was
no internet. There was no way to learn, you know
what I mean unless I was in the bronx or
(51:46):
in the park. You know, as a kid, I couldn't learn.
But now with this society, there's ways that you can
actually learn where this came from a where it's like
the fact that you invented the slip mat, you know,
even though you don't get props for it or money
for it. But that's amazing and I think people should
understand that because all DJs use a slip mat that
used turn the table, you know what I mean, And
some of those things I think that should be understood.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
You know.
Speaker 5 (52:08):
For me, a lot of people say, well, you're not
getting no money for it, you know, And this is
how I see it, Guys. People happily celebrate the birthday. Correct,
I'm gonna give a damn about that. When God takes
me my death day, what am I gonna leave for
(52:31):
the babies to take it to the next level. My
death day is more important than my birthday. And my
birthday is on the most famous day of the year,
which is January first. Wow, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
So before I'm out of here, I gotta make sure
that the producer.
Speaker 5 (52:47):
And the DJ is respected because if you think about this,
if I was the engine and the producers were a
fuel the cannon be it's made very very easy for
the rapper to sit in it and blast off, and
(53:08):
that needs to be talked about where this thing came from,
how did it come about?
Speaker 1 (53:13):
We need to talk about this.
Speaker 5 (53:15):
And this is a black art form and and I'm
hoping that this isn't another form like jazz. I go
through one thing and all of a sudden it goes left.
As long as I'm living that that ain't gonna happen here.
And I thank you guys for allowing me to be here.
Speaker 4 (53:30):
Man, I do got one more question.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
Karras once said that he refused to be a part
of the Grammy's Fifty Years of Hip Hop Special because
it took so long for the Grammys they acknowledge hip hop.
Speaker 4 (53:40):
What do you think about that? And did you get
the call?
Speaker 1 (53:42):
I got the call? Yeah, I got the call quite
a few times. I know, Harvey Mason Jr.
Speaker 5 (53:47):
You know, personally, I respect a man's point of view
if that's their point of view, you know.
Speaker 1 (53:54):
But I think for me, I need to be on
as many.
Speaker 5 (53:58):
Big media to situations that's possible because I'm really like
the last of my kind that's speaking, and after me,
there's probably no one.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
So I thank you guys here, thank you, I thank
you for answering.
Speaker 5 (54:14):
My d M absolutely come on and we here and
it's always a pleasure man, always a pleasure master. Gentlemen,
thank you, and I'll we do these lectures, these corporate lectures,
birth of a coach of lectures. Look for me and
I'm gonna do two free ones, one of the Bronx
and one of Manhattan, probably during Black History Months in February.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
Okay, grand Master Flash, grand Master Flash, ladies and gentlemen,
make sure you're following them on on Instagram, all socials.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
At DJ Flash Forever, on all socials at DJ Flash Forever.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
And you just turn around. I just want to read
the back of your hoodie man.
Speaker 2 (54:50):
Yeah, because the HOODIEES monumental says, the first DJ to
make the turntable an instrument, first DJ to have a rapper,
first DJ to be in the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame, first DJ to be on s Rex SAM,
first DJ to get a Grammy, first DJ to get
a Polar Prize, Grandmaster in the.
Speaker 3 (55:05):
First DJ to give a history lesson about DJ and
on the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
That's right, Grandmaster Flash, ladies and gentlemen, it's the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 1 (55:12):
Good Morning waits up in the morning.
Speaker 4 (55:15):
The Breakfast Club
Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Morning everybody, it's the j n V. Charlamagne to God,
we are the Breakfast Club. You got a special guest
in the building.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Come on, man, one of the architects of this thing
we call hip hop. Man, one of the people who
helped later foundation for this thing we called hip hop.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
We wouldn't have jobs if it wasn't for this brother.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Right, wouldn't be a DJ, if it wasn't for this brother,
and most people out there, most DJs out there wouldn't
be DJs. If it wasn't No, all DJs wouldn't be
it wasn't for this brother, Ladies and gentlemen, grand Master Flash, welcome, thank.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
You, good morning, black Man, thank you, thank you for
having me Man.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
I appreciate it. Come on, man, happy to have you.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Absolutely appreciate this man.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
You know, we celebrated the fifty years of hip hop,
you know, this year, and Nby and I was on
the radio having a conversation and it just felt like,
you know, the architects, like that era of the eighties,
you know, wasn't getting honored properly, and none of us
to hear if that, if that foundation isn't late you
said the eighties seven, the seventies. Yeah, the seventies from
the beginning, and the eighties I feel like weren't getting
(01:00):
on it, you know, properly. How do you feel about that,
Grand Master Flash?
Speaker 5 (01:04):
And that's one of the reasons why I feel that
it's paramount that I do lectures. I do corporate towards
the lectures, and I've been doing them for private people,
but now I kind of want to do this for
the public so they could understand that this thing didn't
just fall out of a tree. It didn't just go
from the seventies to where we are. You know, there
(01:25):
was four DJs that did this. Coolhork was on the west,
AB was Bronx River, African DJ Breakout was the north.
I was the east, and pretty much this is how
it really started. And you got to realize this, ladies
and gentlemen, we did this with no Internet, no social media,
(01:48):
no apps, no.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Quick hardware where it would just work a lot of
these things.
Speaker 5 (01:55):
As I was telling you, Envy, I had to do
this with nothing going into the backyards and you know,
getting old receivers and old turntables and stuff and kind
of like jury rigging my sound system.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
For people listening when he says the West to South
to nor if he's not talking about West Coast, he's
talking about New York. The Bronx, the Bronx, Bronx. I
wanted to clear it up. And also, you know I
was talking to of course grandmass Flash behind the scenes.
A lot of he didn't know, you know, where we
had the ability to go to these stores and buy equipment.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
He had to actually make it.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
So his first sound system actually came from old cars
in the junk yard. He would pull the speakers out
of the cars in the junk yard and make sound
systems to play at parks and parties and wherever wherever
it was. So you had to actually know electronics. And
it just wasn't just about DJing, right, So what what
got you into wanting to be a DJ? I know
you were telling me the story behind the scenes that
(02:44):
you know, you were just intrigued by electronics in your
house when your mother and father plugged something in and
you wanted to understand how it works. So you would
start effing up the crib pretty much to figure it out.
Speaker 5 (02:53):
Yeah, and when I was a toddler, everything in that
house that was electrical. I was intrigued, Oh how did
that happen? So I used to unscrew the backs of
the stereo in the living room. My sister's hair dries
the table radio, all these things. And also what got
me into this when I was a toddler. My dad
(03:14):
was a collector of records. And I'm on this respectable airwaves.
So I will just say when I got caught touching
his vinyl as a toddler, he used to heavily repermnd me.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Right, I can say that. And what I used to
do was a kid, I.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
Waited for him to go to work, and when the
door slammed, I went back in that closet and the
rule was, you know, don't touch the brown box in
the living room.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
And I used to watch Dad when he came home
from work how he operated it.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
So I figured out how to get into this closet
where his stuff was, and I would take this square
thing that had a black disc and he would put
it in this brown and sound would come out of it.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
That was probably my first love.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
But then moving forward, guys, when I heard a drum
break from one of the most important black artists of
that time, his name was Curtis Mayfield.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Move on up that break and then you and I
can relate here. That break was.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
About i'd say about five minutes of just the drums.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And I thought all records was like that.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
So when I started collecting my records, the drum break
was like five ten seconds. So what also got me
into the DJing is I used to watch the disco
DJs like my Boyer Flowers, Pete Jones, and I noticed
that their transitions were glass smooth. But then my boys
(04:58):
knocked on my door at my mom's house and said,
we want to take you to this other side of
town to watch these other DJs. And respectfully, I was wondering,
why is it that everything that he was doing was
a train wreck. He was playing the incredible music, had
(05:19):
the incredible sound system, but why was.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
He playing like that?
Speaker 5 (05:23):
You know, because the rules are the laws, and you know,
especially if you got people on the dance floor, the
idea is to keep everybody in unison correct. They should
not be trying to find it beat as you transition.
So from that point on, it's when I came up
with the quick mixed theory. You know what mix theory
from a mathematical perspective. I took sonics and through it
(05:47):
out the window. Because if I play a song, I
hear it a certain way. If I put the headphone
on your ear, you hear it a certain way, and shah,
you hear a certain way. So I said to myself,
I'm going to take that out of the equation and
I'm gonna just collect records from all genres pop, rock, jazz, blues, funk, disco,
R and B foreign American and just listen to the
(06:10):
drum break. And I found that, unlike Curtis Mayfield, these
drum breaks on these other records always always short. That
made me quite angry. I was disappointed. So in Mom's house,
I came up with a hand mechanic fingertips to vinyl
(06:35):
fingertips to cross Vader DJ style that is used by
every hip hop DJ on planet Earth. And I figured
out the way of counting the bars as the vinyl
went forward, and how many times I would have to
rewind it back to get back to the top of
the break and take that ten second break and make
(06:58):
it seamlessly ten minutes. So if you on the floor
and I'm playing a Michael Jackson drummer break. I'm playing
that for ten minutes and I'm gonna flip to a
London break or a drumming break or or whatever break.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
And this became the way.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
And then what happened was these incredible people called hip
hop producers took this style of the seamless loop and
I'm gonna show you that on the wheels to steal and.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Understand Me'm saying your quick mixed theory turn turned into
what people called sampling basically correct.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
That's so that's exactly what you bring it back from
the beginning. But one thing you learn from this interview
with grand Master Flash is he's not just a musician
when it comes to turntables.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
He's actually no disrespect.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
He's a nerd and geek, like he wants to understand
the mechanics of it. Most people just want to understand
the success of it and be successful and be a
big name. But he under actually understands the mechanics of music,
DJ and trans positioning records, record players, mixes, just and
this is just having a thirty second conversation with Have
I figured out.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
What I found so interressing about this? In the last
five minutes you explained where DJing started yep, and where
hip hop production start correct, So people will call you
an architect and say you're wanted the founding fathers of
hip hop.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
That is why, absolutely thank you. And I gotta tell
you it's like.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
I've been listening to a lot of depressing the promotion,
you know, from last summer to now, and this particular
area of who, what, where and why is not talked about.
Why aren't we talking about what Bam did? And quite frankly,
the gang thing was really bad back then Shaw and
(08:47):
if he didn't calm that down, they would have not
been to a block parties, you know what I'm saying.
And then as DJ breakout in the North, he came
up with a sound system where he used garbage cans
as his base. Bottoms Who Hurt had an amazing sound system.
I had the shittiest sound system, but I had a
hand technique that people wanted to see, you know. So
(09:08):
it's just these kind of things where I go around
doing these corporate tours.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
It's called the birth of a culture.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
Corporate tourist, and I've been doing a lot of these
things privately, but I think that now I have to
go to the universities to the YMCAs and do this public.
I'm gonna do two major lectures, one in Manhattan and
one of the Bronx where it's gonna be free, and
I want people to really mechanically understand how I came
up with this quick mixed theory and how it connects
(09:34):
to where we are right now. You know, I'm gonna
keep it real with you. I didn't create hip hop.
I didn't coin the word. I created the tools that
allowed hip hop to transcend from where it was to
where it is. And with how these tools, like the beatbox,
the turntables, the quick mixed theory, the extending of a
(09:57):
bed of music so a human being can speak, going
so that the rapper could be born. These are the
things that I did, and these are the things that
the world is not talking about.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
I mean that's especially this year because the focus is
on the artist, but it should be a lot more
focused on the DJ.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And the producer.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
All I was gonna ask, you know, how do you
feel when you look at something that you created, right?
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And you created out of love?
Speaker 5 (10:23):
Right?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
What you said just now? You didn't say it was money.
You didn't say I did this because I wanted money,
you said, I enjoyed it. I love listening to music,
I love playing in the park. And then you see
in this the commercial success of hip hop.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
I sent Charlamagne something this morning about Charris One saying
why he didn't want to perform at the Grammys. He
felt like the Grammy's never respected hip hop. So why
come now, how do you feel when you see the
commercial success of hip hop and all these brothers and
sisters making money, and all these companies making money off
of hip hop, but some of the founders are not
making the money that's deserved because if it wasn't for
you guys, nobody wouldn't be able to make that money.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
That's a twofold answer.
Speaker 5 (11:02):
Just think and be this thing that I did could
have missed, And if this all would have missed, I
wouldn't be here talking to you right now. So that's
one side of it.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
It exploded.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
But there are like, there are some companies out there
giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars. I've seen this
on the internet just recently. But they are those men
that are in a hood that didn't have the commercial success.
Nobody's saying, hey, here's five hundred thousand dollars for you
(11:42):
or one hundred thousand dollars. They're not saying that, Like
there are those who lost their life that are not
even here to even enjoy this, and they have families,
you know. So for me, I have to until God
takes me. I have to go around and mechanically break
this thing down. I think that people should interview the
(12:07):
producers like that. Just that boggles my mind because they're
the ones that really.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Know how the record is made.
Speaker 5 (12:16):
They're the one that stays in the studios for two
and three days to make sure the record goes from
start to finish before the masters is handed in, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So for me and people should know more about Coohirk
and their team. They should know who Coke the Rocket is.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
Like they're going around saying he was a rapper, he
said DJ I used to watch him, you know. And
in this Timmy tim And is the original Clark Ken.
You know, people should know who breakout team is Barren
you know, and Bam Body and Jazzy J and Grand
Master Flashing Graham was your Theaterore. Like all these people
(12:52):
and all these names, you don't hear nothing, yes, right,
talk to about them when people are putting out this press,
they're not even coming to ask, well, Flash, what do
you think? And respectfully, I'm gonna say this. For you
to really first hand know what this is, you have
(13:15):
to be at least sixty years old. And I'll be
kind and say fifty eight fifty seven. That means you
had a first hand eyeshot of seeing us do this.
If you are thirty or you're a forty and you
were saying that you are a hip hop extraordinary person,
(13:37):
nine times out of ten, if you ain't talking to Flash,
you ain't talking to HRK, you ain't talking to BAM,
you got secondhand information, and you gotta realize you're feeding
the babies like incomplete information.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
And this is one of the reasons why.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
Because I tour one hundred and fifty countries a year,
so financially I'm good, I'm cutting all that in half
because I gotta go to these universities. I got to
go to these YMCAs and I gotta teach these babies
of where this thing comes from. Because what saddeness mean
is this. If you are from a black family, you
know who Miles Davis is. If you're from a white family,
(14:16):
you know who the Rolling Stones is. Why is this
so much of a blur of who, what and why
we're and how when it comes to hip hop?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Why is that?
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I think we gotta be the generation to do that
because to your point, if you're sixty years old, now
you're probably a grandfather, grandmother.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Our grandparents weren't listening to.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Hip hop, you know, Okay, but now when we got
grandparents and grandfathers, grandparents who were listening to hip hop,
and then parents who grew up in hip hop, they
can tell their kids eight, this is where it started, right.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Because, like you said, most if you if you're in
the age of forty to fifty, a lot of them,
hip hop started with right. I remember, that's where it
started from. Because even me, like, you know, my parents
weren't in a hip hop but I was. But the
first record I ever bought was Run.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
My dad was seventy something. He didn't he didn't like
hip hop at the time. He wanted he was like,
you need to listen to James Brown, Temptation, the original rapper.
You know, he didn't know nothing about hip hop. He
didn't want to hear none of that.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
You know. Well, I think for me and this is
such a wonderful time period. But just think of it
like this here, and you know, sometimes this makes me
want to cry. Sometimes is come August, like the mayor
gave me August fourth and cool Hurgust August eleventh, Come
August twelfth, there's going to be a brand new trend.
(15:34):
So we have to get it right now as a
black art form that is core, that has done so
much for so many people. Of course, we have.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
To get it right between now and August.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
Eleventh, or it's going to go down in history incomplete
or incorrect. And that scares the crap out of me.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
So it's safe to say you don't believe the DJ
he gets to respect they should when it comes to
their contraby.
Speaker 5 (16:02):
Absolutely not, because especially the hip hop DJ that understands
the quick mixed story and the mechanics which I will
show you, because that led to the sampling and that
led to these records being made, and that's what we're celebrating.
So we're celebrating the entire cake. But let's go back
and celebrate the celebrate the the uh, the eggs and
(16:23):
the flour and the water and the vanilla, how the
cake was made.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
The process, the process.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Let's celebrate that.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Let's see some of the process.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Let's do that.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
Yeah, actually speak louder than what?
Speaker 5 (16:35):
Now?
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Could I could? I go right there? All right, we
need a pen. I need one of these pens. So
in the shop. I want to tell you envy. Yes, sir,
I appreciate you. Man. You said something a couple of
minutes ago that you thought I would be insulted.
Speaker 5 (16:49):
I grew up as a geek. I was not hip.
I was afraid to wrap the chicks. I stayed in
my house, grabbingunk from the junkyard and trying to piece
together somewhat of a sound system. And then I came
up with a mathematical equation to what is hip hop?
(17:14):
And I called it black math. Okay, quick mix theory.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
Black math.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
It was impossible for me to write a sonic equation
because a sonic equation would then fall under kinetics, and
then it would have been really deep for me to
write this, So I wrote it from a mathematical perspective.
The brain captures a melody in four bars, and that's
(17:43):
why I called it the.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Quick mixed theory black math.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
Every DJ uses the hand mechanics of this DJ technique.
This got me in so much trouble because I was
putting crayons on the record, putting in my hand on
the records. Connoisseurs wanted to nail me, disrespect me. They
(18:13):
really hated me, shah because they would put the record
inside of a little white paper and put it inside
and use the velvet brush to clean it off, and
they would carefully put it inside the jacket.
Speaker 6 (18:28):
Me.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Fuck that. So I got a lot of flack for
doing this. So now there's vinyl one. I'm a horrible drawer.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
So good, we get it.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
We get it and mix in the middle, vinyl two
mm hmm, vinyl two. So this one. The crowds listening
to this.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
Going clockwise, and this is the one that has to
go counterclockwise. And this particular style of DJing and every
hip hop DJ has adopted makes the tone arm ninety
nine zero point nine percent.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Useless. But I would watch those DJs that did this
heavy on the tone arm, and.
Speaker 5 (19:28):
Every time they would transition, it was a train way
four bars.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Forward. It's equal to six counterclockwise revolutions equals full loop extraction.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
Every DJ and every hip hop producer that that made
sample music use this. This theory and me and Envy
we were talking earlier and he was he said something
to me, some people never seen turntables.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
That's right, that's real.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
I've got so much to do. I've got so many
places to go shah, so many people. Because I don't
know if Breakout's going to get an interview off cool
Herk or Coke, it's going to get an interview or bam.
So right now it's pretty much on me. So the
race is on into August.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
So now with this process for people that don't know
that's not a DJ, is what you're basically saying is
back in the day, you came up with this formula
because there was no instrumental so you had to create
your own right or.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
The drum break or the drum break short.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
You had to make it longer so people can actually dance,
and the transition will be like how transitions should be.
So what you hear now when somebody, especially New York
where most DJs slam music, meaning you'll go from a
fast record one hundred tempo to a seventy tempo with
no transition and you slam it. So this was a
creation where people wouldn't stop dancing and the party would
(21:11):
go thoroughly through and people wouldn't even miss a step right,
which a DJ is supposed to do right. And with
this meaning forward four balls forward, six balls backward, you'd
go six balls backward to go back another four balls
to bring this side, bring the left side six balls.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
For the four and six.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
That was the inversion of four to six factor is
what I called it. And I say four plus six
it is ten. So if there was a rapper in
front of me and he needed a quiet area of
the record where the singer wasn't singing, and it was
the least people playing with the drummer, and I'm going
(21:50):
to play a few of those things.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
It shows that, it shows people see it.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Can you answer one questions? You know?
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Of course, you know they talk about gramdmass flashing the
Furious five, you know, produced the message, but they.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Said first DJ to get a Grammy, by the way,
but that.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Yes, But I've read some things where they said you
had nothing to do with the production of it.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
Okay, I had something to do with all of it,
because that company chased me to get my group serious,
the whole group. There was the club I played called
disco Fever and I brought hip hop to this club,
(22:28):
and Sally Abatello gave me. I wanted a Saturday. He
gave me a Tuesday, of course, so most clubs do.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
They gave me.
Speaker 5 (22:36):
I called it Terrible Tuesday off Night, right, But in
about two months time, I was live on that Saturday.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Thank you, sal You know.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
So for me, the message, probably I had least to
do with, but I had most to do with it
because it was my group. And I'm sure they used
your technique, right, they do they use They used my
technique to make all their records. The Message was an
original record, but they knew when they had the Sugar
(23:08):
Hill Gang, they heard of us.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
In the streets.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
The streets was already ringing Grandmaster Flash and the Phurious Five.
So she used to come to Terrible Tuesdays every Tuesday,
just to see how it was, how it was going down.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
So who is she, Sylvia Robins?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
You know? So on Hill. Did I have anything to
do with that record? Minimal?
Speaker 5 (23:34):
But I had everything to do with it because she
needed to have us.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
So here we are.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
I want to have one more question for you, get
on the turntables. How do you feel about DJs today
with the auto mixing buttons and the different programs that
make it easy.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
I'm using right now, right, and you know what it is.
I put it this way.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
I'm a scientist first, I'm a geek first, so I've
been pushing an envelope for fifty two years, so I
respect anybody that's doing it, but follow the laws of
the art transition. I think the things that drive me
crazy when I go out, which is every now and
then envs.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
You know, I'm.
Speaker 5 (24:15):
Listening to the DJ and it's the train wreck thing.
You know that there really drives me crazy. A lot
of today's music is really one tempo bass, so it's
easy to go from one to the other. So how
you crashing this record into this record with us back?
We had to use the pitch quite a bit to
(24:38):
make this record beat match with lost record. Of course,
these records here are almost coming out of the oven.
They're all the same temple almost. So I don't understand
why is it that these people who play today don't
beat match that?
Speaker 1 (24:53):
There?
Speaker 5 (24:54):
Makes me totally crazy, and it goes against the laws
of what we learned.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Let's see what see some transitions.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Matt's do it if you can.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
The first thing I guess if you can what you
talked about the first how you would make your own
instrumental backing.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Let me play the first record.
Speaker 5 (25:12):
That got Because some people think that there was another
DJ that inspired me. I came from a totally different perspective,
scientific and mathematical. So I came from nothing with my
stylech nobody put me on. I ended this record was
(25:40):
the grand recond record. Why I wanted to DJ Curtis
Mayfield nineteen.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Seventy, How old are you twelve? Going to the thirteen? Wow,
I'm sixty six?
Speaker 4 (25:57):
Now let's.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Break is still going? The break is still going.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Five minutes right?
Speaker 1 (26:09):
This record was so for life for me. I was
why is that? Why is everything else so short?
Speaker 5 (26:22):
And when I started playing other genres of record, because
I was raised in a home where it appearing on
which sister was on the stereo, I would hear motown, disco, funk, jazz, blues,
R and B.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Like I grew up where music had no color.
Speaker 5 (26:38):
A dope jam could be a white jam or black jam,
of foreign jam and American jam. So so Charlotte Magne,
I said, I was gonna I needed your help, right,
So can you come over here please, shaw. Try to
scratch this record, try right right right.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
So he's a DJ allegedly, I don't know if can
do this.
Speaker 7 (27:00):
So so listen now, yeah, try to try and try
to try to try to try to bring the back
the record back, just just but be gentle, be gentle
with your fingers and try to just.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
Go right back.
Speaker 5 (27:17):
Practice trying to go back, trying to go count the Topwise,
he's too hard.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Right now, now, try to try to go back. Heavy.
Speaker 5 (27:29):
No, he's a heavy. It's a heavy, okay, gonta stop.
So my mother was a seamstress, right, so I was
lucky to touch polyester, rayon, con silk, leather swayed.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Well, So you created the.
Speaker 8 (27:55):
Slip man, yes, I oh my goodness, you created the
slip man too.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
So let me tell you what. Let me break it.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
I'm gonna pop the collar for you. So when you
buy the turntables, it comes with a rubber piece. Right,
the rubber piece you cannot DJ with, so all d
days have to toss it. So you had a slip mat.
We didn't know where a slip mat was. So back
then the record came in in a plastic package. We
would open up the plastic package and make our own
slip mat.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
The slip matters on this one.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
But that was grand Master Flashes idea. I just told
you so.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
You got right there, flas Flash.
Speaker 5 (28:30):
I ran it to that.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Problem, right.
Speaker 9 (28:34):
I grabbed an album and I ran to the nearest
material store and I touched rayon silk or cotton, polyester, leather.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Felt. Now, the problem with felt.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
Is when you put it on your when when you
buy a portion of it.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yep, it's limp whom my mother was it looking?
Speaker 5 (29:00):
And first I would cut it out besides of an album, right,
And I would when my mother was a look, And
I went up in the closet in her cabin in
the kitchen and I got spray starch and I made.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
It so that it was stiff. But I called it
a wafer.
Speaker 5 (29:17):
And the reason why I called it a wafers because
during the Easter, Mom would dress us up to go
to the church and the neighbor's church, and you know
that little white that that white thing they give you
during the East. I called it a wafer. And it went
from what that is.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
To this damn you didn't get to trademark any.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Jesus Christ. A minute, wait, a minute.
Speaker 5 (29:42):
It doesn't end there because I still got some resistance
on a certain table.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
With just this.
Speaker 5 (29:47):
So when Mom would make baked chocolate chip cookies, she
would use this paper that felt like.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
Oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
So now I put the.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
The plastic the wax on the platter, and I put
this on top of that. So now the platter moved
comfortably clockwise while I can go pound o' clockwise.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Of the quick knicks theory. See, these are the things I.
Speaker 5 (30:22):
Need to teach people about that this thing, they'd just
fall out of a tree.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
And look at some of this press today they're like,
all right, hip hop.
Speaker 5 (30:31):
Is fifty and there was this party at Boom.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Is that it kipping a whole process.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
But it's skipping the whole process, but it's gipping the
whole process of people who actually put in the energy
and work. So for me, I had no idea. Right,
you just follow all the DJs and other DJs.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
What they do.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
They open up the thing, they get rid of that
rubber piece, they cut the plastic, and that's how you DJ.
But if it wasn't for Flash's mind of thinking this way,
most DJs wouldn't have that.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Now come here, now, now put your hand on the gently.
Speaker 10 (31:03):
See now it's the movie.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah yeah, oh my gosh. And that's the problem. Every
d everybody thinks that that's the problem. So let's play
some music now do it so so now people don't
realize it. But like the producer.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
Drey Premiere Pete Rock Battle Cat, Like I could go
on and on and on this sampling thing.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
This is how the sampling thing tied in h to
the DJ. Let's take this sample.
Speaker 11 (31:42):
Name.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
But this song is called Sweet Green Teals by Seals
and CROs All. This is the extra but mm hmm,
bust around, put my hands master, see.
Speaker 12 (32:00):
Wow, wow, wow, right, care for y'all, Jesus, that was
the bullshit. Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
We didn't let it go there.
Speaker 5 (32:15):
So now, using a quick mixed theory with the producers,
there's the two new machines that come into play, the
computer and the sampler. So it would take that same
let's say quantity of information, put it onto a floppy disk,
put it into the computer and the sampler, and hit
(32:37):
the spacebart until the computer loop. This it's the same
thing that I was doing circularly, but now it was
with the new technology.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
So let's go lit mode.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
So if you just why if you're listening, he's bringing
it back and forth without a loop sampler. He's doing
it from his hands in a way that you can't
even tell he's doing it.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
So if you want a dance floor, you will never
know what I was doing correct. And this is a
difference between us need to tone arm with DJs that
come from our same community and train wrecking. First is
the quick mixterior where the arm is ninety nine point
nine percent useless.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Let's go to while he's doing to the Next thing
I always want to tell people too, is now DJ's
having a lot simpler because they have serato, so you
could actually see.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
The keys of where you can do it.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Back then he would actually have to memorize where it
was on the wax, or he would have to put
a piece of cassette taped they on the crayon, on
the crayon and draw it on the record to know
where he would have to go back to.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Now I see what the DJ used to sweat so
much in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
God rest his soul, Christopher, what's my wrap ups? And
I was with DJ.
Speaker 10 (34:34):
Wow, Now if you're listening, he's bringing it back using
the quick mixed theory.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
The d jing is no sample, it's just him Wow,
let's go a little deeper.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
Wow. Oh, and a lot of these samples. So when
people say to me, will flash through a hip hop set,
I'm playing white music, I'm playing black music, I'm playing
for our music and playing American music pop, rock, jazz, blues, funk,
just gonna earn people because this is what we had
before it became modern.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Correct, this is all we had. So let me ask
you a question, why you're doing this?
Speaker 2 (35:18):
So a lot of these loops that you're going back
and forth with that you were playing at the clubs,
These are loops that you would be doing at a
party that I'm sure one of these producers heard you
do it and say, oh, I'm a sample lest to
make it the record probably gotcha, probably because there's no way.
And now I can hear somebody hearing that Bust of
Rhymes record without a DJ playing and be like that's
going to be a smash, Like that had to be.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
I heard this, and this is why the DJ is
so important, Like I just don't understand.
Speaker 5 (35:45):
Rap, real question, these are the things will people need
(36:06):
to really understand?
Speaker 1 (36:12):
What is so important about the producer and a DJ.
You people that press people.
Speaker 5 (36:21):
You're not talking about this. You're not coming to ask
me anything you asked me.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
I'll tell you. Oh you just blaze reduce the ship
out of this record. Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (36:44):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
And this is just like a this is a nobody.
Speaker 5 (36:49):
This record was probably been double leg but it takes
the genius of reproducer to know what this is.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
And this is what the record really sounds like. We
didn't give a funk about that part, right there, ladies, And.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
This is what this is what this is what you
call digging in the crase, This is what I called it.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
I'm texting all the young DJs that work here, like
y'all should really be in here with this grandmathter flash lesson.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
I told you that. I'm texting like you should really
be here.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
I told you so, I'm fan. Let's let let's take
a little deeper. Let's place your sick individual man, your
mind is crazy. Please, I gotta I gotta ask you,
what is it?
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Nothing flash? We're gonna see this just like this.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
I gotta Okay, Yes, why why don't you know when
I when I was battling DJ and doing that, I
would turn the teams the turntables the long way so
I wouldn't hit it when I was scratching. Why do
you keep you as the regular way because most TJ
turned it the long way.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
That's the way when I was creating this.
Speaker 5 (37:58):
This is the way I learned it because I watch
the disco DJs and they will always forward. It's just
that when I watch the DJs that were in our
young community, they will forward too. But it was just
somewhat of a nightmare. So now I want to go
analogue with no help, no net. And this is where
(38:20):
you have to learn how to drive. If you didn't
know how to drive.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
This is a straight analog, no laptop, no nothing.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Your four arms will be strong because you had to
carry crates to the club.
Speaker 5 (38:34):
So the mark when I did this to records, record
connoisseurs DJs that were usually the the tone arm style,
hated my guts, like, who do you think you are
(38:55):
putting your fingertips all over.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
The records?
Speaker 5 (39:02):
Now what I'm gonna do is and I got a
shortage to you, envy nom. I was telling you four
boys forward, yes, and then when I went four four
revolutions back, I wasn't in the wrong place.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
I walked away for like a month because I was stuck.
Why is it if four bars are going forward, why
can't I go four bars?
Speaker 5 (39:28):
Count the clockwise And it was in my face thoty
three and a third the third counter constitute for the
additional two extra ones.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
I have to go back to re arrive to the
top of the break.
Speaker 5 (39:42):
So I used I use.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
The tone to just count how many times.
Speaker 5 (39:47):
This line passes the tone arm and I knew I
would be back at the top of the break. And
this is to seemless loop that the producers adopted to
put into the computer. This sister quick mixed theory. That
is purist.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
That's the thirty three and the third. That's why you
call himself dead. I'm sure DJ thirty three and the third.
I don't hear the quban who thought got thirty three
and the third?
Speaker 1 (40:10):
That's crazy?
Speaker 4 (40:11):
Why he's setting that up?
Speaker 1 (40:11):
You got it?
Speaker 4 (40:12):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (40:14):
No, I don't hear it. Turn up a little bit.
Maybe the levels on there, okay? Is it good in
the ground, humming a little bit of ground and some
of it. Let's check that ground real.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
You don't know how to do that? No more?
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Of course, I do. You might believe you might have
to lick the back and I need a one good
time to toue true.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Oh he I'm a DJ flash don't know let him man,
don't man, mister you I'm gonna t.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
I'm gonna test your heart before you get out of here.
I want to see if you still know how to
do that.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
I started, I started.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
Don't get nervous.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
I wanted to know how to do this in the crib. Okay,
he's gonna, he's gonna now. Yeah, sometimes we hook up
and the grounds are not right or the r c
A is a little off. Yeah, did you lick the ship?
See that? You gotta look the back of it for
the connection to be good. So I want to look.
You know, I don't want to do that. You know,
we ain't. We ain't doing that.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
You know most DJs licked their fingers and touch the
back of it. It's like blowing the cartridge on the
Nintendo game.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
You think you gotta do it looking and blowing.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Shut up? Yeah we were good now, Okay, it works.
See okay, so guys, you sleep the seamless loop still
got a little ham on the right side.
Speaker 5 (41:24):
I'm gonna play a couple of records, ladies and gentlemen,
And this is the quick mixtre be at its deepest.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Four boss forward six counterclockwise. Let's go one to count.
Speaker 6 (41:46):
One two three, four five six check throw one two
three four five check throw Wow.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
And this works.
Speaker 5 (42:06):
Pop, rock, jazz, blues folks. Once I figured out that third,
we call this hip hop. They called it rock, and
their family, we call this hip hop. Come up next,
(42:26):
get ready to be count.
Speaker 6 (42:31):
One two three, four five six check throw one two three,
four five six check.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Throw.
Speaker 5 (42:50):
The four six thing works on any race, creed color groove.
Speaker 13 (42:59):
Wow, what two three, four five six.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
Then find sure.
Speaker 11 (43:16):
One two three, four five six check one two three,
four five six check.
Speaker 5 (43:34):
The four six thing works on any type of record
with the view. But then sometimes there's an exception to
the rule. Maybe it's only two bars, and if it's
two bars, now we'll go through four bars fifth counterclockwise.
(43:55):
Now it's two bars. Now it's three counterclockwise to make
a full loop.
Speaker 14 (44:07):
One two three check, go one two three check go
one two three check go.
Speaker 4 (44:22):
And this guy's playing right. I'm lost.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
I get it, But that's the question.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Four balls forward right, Yeah, but it's not really four
balls because it's thirty three and the third So that
extra third that that makes makes up for the six
when you bring it back, right, do the math?
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Gotcha? Wow? So so what you think? This is what
stuck me? This is why I got stuck?
Speaker 15 (44:53):
One mm hmmm, two three four one q worrie war.
I'm in the wrong place. I'm in the wrong place.
I walked away from this steam. I'm like, damn, what
(45:14):
is wrong? And I was staring at it all the time.
God is good the magic.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Why don't you think DJs follow that?
Speaker 4 (45:22):
Right?
Speaker 1 (45:22):
And I'm gonna ask you why, right, because I touch
your equipment.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
For if you still know how to use it?
Speaker 2 (45:28):
If you for most DJs, right, what what they used
to do is.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
So when you do that right now, what they would
have to do.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Is you have to go go until you don't hear
it anymore?
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Right, but see, but but sometimes it breaks in the
middle though, right.
Speaker 5 (45:47):
But you know, if you don't get bad science to
this and I didn't go into that is you have
to know how it sounds going backwards.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
My Good Times is a perfect example. It goes like
you go do good time, no, no, no, no, you hear good.
Speaker 5 (46:05):
Good backwards, and then you know you're at the top
of the gut of good times.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Like you gotta learn records how they sound backwards.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
But that's the advanced form of it, and I'm trying
to keep it very basic and I love it.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
I love it because more DJs would really understand it.
So this right here, right, this part right here right
when I used to see you do I'm side right
when you're where you.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Crabbing right or slashing right? Where did that come from?
That came from the hand mechanics of the quick mixedterary.
Because here's how I see it. Whether you are.
Speaker 5 (46:41):
Cutting or seamless looping or rubbing the record back and
forth with the fader open scratching, or if you are crabbing,
all it is is just an advanced form of opening
and closing the panometer, which is the cross fader.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Correct And why did you why did you create that?
I mean, it's amazing sound. I did it when I
used to battle. But what made you say this is
a sound I'm creating with the with the sounds, you know,
I mean, that.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Was okay, you know, but when I heard it, Jeff
scratched fasted Newmark talk about yeah, one of the best.
They like I am the eventa of the hand mechanics.
Speaker 5 (47:23):
But all it is, if you think about it, is
just a matter of when you open and close the
fada and what you're doing with the vinyl. So now,
so when you are crabbing, you're moving a vinyl a
little faster, but you're opening and closing the panama the quicker.
But it's all the hand mechanics. The hand mechanics is
mind and the levels. Like you Si did this, this
(47:45):
kid by the name of Cubert, Like Cubert, he's not
even he's not even human.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
And and and uh, jeff, y'all would make y'all could
make people dance by bringing the record backwards and crabbing.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
And it was.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in
Cubert definitely. And the bad thing about Cubert is you
really didn't see Cubert.
Speaker 5 (48:03):
You just heard his tapes, right, So incredible as your
question shout out to my to my My first successful
student gram was the theater.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
How do you how do you correlate counting the bars
on the turntable the MC's counting bars in the booth.
Speaker 5 (48:18):
It's the same thing. Okay, it's it's actually the same thing.
It's just that when they're speaking, they're counting their verbal bars.
I'm counting musical balls. And what's paramount, Shaw is I
have to keep it steady. So I can't not while
they're saying they're right, I gotta keep it really steady.
(48:42):
And this is what the seamless loop is. So the
seamless loop is what he called cutting. And the thing
that what he.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
Bugs you with people is they say, I want you
to scratch.
Speaker 5 (48:51):
This is scratching is just one of the elements more
like cutting.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
It's like, actually, a scratch becomes very import.
Speaker 5 (49:00):
And when you're scratching against the music that's already playing,
or if you're crabbing against the music that's already playing,
you know what I'm saying, Or you're transforming. So these
are the things, guys that I really have to go
to the universities. Absolutely, go to the y m c
A's and and and will you show people that this
thing called hip hop didn't just and then just fall
(49:23):
out of a tree, Shaw.
Speaker 4 (49:24):
It just did it. You did a birth of a
birth of the culture masterclass at the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
Right, Yes, that.
Speaker 5 (49:31):
I got two encores. It was absolutely was absolutely wonderful.
So now I'm going to be doing birth of a
Culture lectures and in the corporate world, but I'm gonna
do some public ones too because people need to understand.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
Much respect to the first party, but there was much
more to get us here.
Speaker 5 (49:54):
And that's where people need to understand that this thing
took engineering, mathematics, ingenuity and taking this item and squeezing
it with that item to make this all work. Because
I come from a time when it was none.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
It was none of this.
Speaker 5 (50:13):
Absolutely you know what I'm saying, and that there is
what I would wish the press would come ask us, come, come,
ask us, So who.
Speaker 4 (50:19):
Made all of the money off of all of these
things that you created for all of them?
Speaker 1 (50:23):
Did? Wow?
Speaker 8 (50:24):
I'm talking about like what's far as trademarks, copyrights? Like
who all of them accept me? But you know something,
who asked me this question? What I had to do
all over again? I do it all over again, of
course way because I love what I do.
Speaker 5 (50:37):
I'm like, this thing has got me in more trouble
with my significant other, my children. You know, I I'm
not proud that I had to leave my children so
much to tour until leave to get away. But other
than that, like I'm madly in love with this and
(50:58):
that's it's just that right now out during this this
this pivotal time for this thing disappears on the twelfth
of August.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
I gotta get where I gotta get and I gotta.
Speaker 5 (51:10):
Teach these young journalists and the people that do these
kind of things, like the babies, like listen, this is
this is what it was.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
What about what about a book? I know you got
the Adventures of Grand Master Flast, but what about a book.
I'm gonna do another one with detail.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
A lot of this, and because see the thing is
an I fall victim to it too. It's like you
learn something. And a lot of times we're so microwave happy,
like we want it fast and we want to do
it now that we don't necessarily learn the history of
where it came from, you know, which is sad. But
in my defense, back then we didn't have there was
no internet. There was no way to learn, you know
what I mean unless I was in the bronx or
(51:46):
in the park. You know, as a kid, I couldn't learn.
But now with this society, there's ways that you can
actually learn where this came from a where it's like
the fact that you invented the slip mat, you know,
even though you don't get props for it or money
for it. But that's amazing and I think people should
understand that because all DJs use a slip mat that
used turn the table, you know what I mean, And
some of those things I think that should be understood.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
You know.
Speaker 5 (52:08):
For me, a lot of people say, well, you're not
getting no money for it, you know, And this is
how I see it, Guys. People happily celebrate the birthday. Correct,
I'm gonna give a damn about that. When God takes
me my death day, what am I gonna leave for
(52:31):
the babies to take it to the next level. My
death day is more important than my birthday. And my
birthday is on the most famous day of the year,
which is January first. Wow, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
So before I'm out of here, I gotta make sure
that the producer.
Speaker 5 (52:47):
And the DJ is respected because if you think about this,
if I was the engine and the producers were a
fuel the cannon be it's made very very easy for
the rapper to sit in it and blast off, and
(53:08):
that needs to be talked about where this thing came from,
how did it come about?
Speaker 1 (53:13):
We need to talk about this.
Speaker 5 (53:15):
And this is a black art form and and I'm
hoping that this isn't another form like jazz. I go
through one thing and all of a sudden it goes left.
As long as I'm living that that ain't gonna happen here.
And I thank you guys for allowing me to be here.
Speaker 4 (53:30):
Man, I do got one more question.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
Karras once said that he refused to be a part
of the Grammy's Fifty Years of Hip Hop Special because
it took so long for the Grammys they acknowledge hip hop.
Speaker 4 (53:40):
What do you think about that? And did you get
the call?
Speaker 1 (53:42):
I got the call? Yeah, I got the call quite
a few times. I know, Harvey Mason Jr.
Speaker 5 (53:47):
You know, personally, I respect a man's point of view
if that's their point of view, you know.
Speaker 1 (53:54):
But I think for me, I need to be on
as many.
Speaker 5 (53:58):
Big media to situations that's possible because I'm really like
the last of my kind that's speaking, and after me,
there's probably no one.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
So I thank you guys here, thank you, I thank
you for answering.
Speaker 5 (54:14):
My d M absolutely come on and we here and
it's always a pleasure man, always a pleasure master. Gentlemen,
thank you, and I'll we do these lectures, these corporate lectures,
birth of a coach of lectures. Look for me and
I'm gonna do two free ones, one of the Bronx
and one of Manhattan, probably during Black History Months in February.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
Okay, grand Master Flash, grand Master Flash, ladies and gentlemen,
make sure you're following them on on Instagram, all socials.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
At DJ Flash Forever, on all socials at DJ Flash Forever.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
And you just turn around. I just want to read
the back of your hoodie man.
Speaker 2 (54:50):
Yeah, because the HOODIEES monumental says, the first DJ to
make the turntable an instrument, first DJ to have a rapper,
first DJ to be in the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame, first DJ to be on s Rex SAM,
first DJ to get a Grammy, first DJ to get
a Polar Prize, Grandmaster in the.
Speaker 3 (55:05):
First DJ to give a history lesson about DJ and
on the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
That's right, Grandmaster Flash, ladies and gentlemen, it's the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 1 (55:12):
Good Morning waits up in the morning.
Speaker 4 (55:15):
The Breakfast Club
The Breakfast Club News
Hosts And Creators
Charlamagne Tha God
DJ Envy
Jess Hilarious
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com