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.