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You Say It's Your Birthday: Grandmaster Flash

Celebrating the new year as well as his 39th birthday today is hip-hop

pioneer Joseph Saddler, better known to rap fans as Grandmaster Flash. As

one of hip-hop's first DJs, Flash essentially invented many of the

scratching, cutting and mixing techniques that are now common in the

hip-hop world. He began his career as a hip-hop DJ at age 18 by playing

at parties in Bronx, N.Y. In order to keep the crowd dancing between

songs, Flash

developed a method of segueing between beats that became known as

"cutting." He became

known for inventing many methods of manipulating a turntable, making sounds

that

the original recording artists never intended. He began working with

rappers in 1977,

first supplying beats for Kurtis Blow and then for the Furious Five.

Flash and the Furious Five were a huge hit in New York, but it was not

until the

success of the Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" in 1978 that Grandmaster

Flash and the Furious Five realized they could pump their beats and rhymes

to a wider audience.

The group released a series of singles in the late '70s and early '80s,

including 1980's "Freedom" and 1981's "Birthday Party." It was 1981's

"The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel," however,

that really displayed Flash's cutting talents for the first time, melding

Blondie's

"Rapture," Queen's "Another One Bites the

Dust" and Chic's "Good Times." 1982's The Message spawned the

famous title-track, a portrayal of ghetto life that was quite controversial

at the time.

The group's last hit single was 1983's "White Lines," a very early warning

about the dangers of cocaine

and crack that no one seemed to heed until the end of the decade.

Flash split with the group for much of the mid-1980s but reunited with them

at the end of the decade. Widely respected in hip-hop circles,

Flash continues to spin with and without the Furious Five to this day.

Other birthdays: Morgan Fisher (Mott the Hoople), 47.

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