The place? Downtown NYC's newest venue, Le Poisson Rouge. The party? Courtesy of GBH. The reason? The Midnight Juggernauts were playing, Bumblebeez were dj'ing, and there were rumblings that Grandmaster Flash would be in the house. Ergo: BEST NITE EVER Part 1 of 3
GRANDMASTER FLASH ///
WORDS: TUCKER HUGHES ///
PHOTOS: ABBEY BRADEN ///
As the forefather of hip hop how do you feel about hip hop culture today?
Like any particular culture its just music, its just wonderful which is how I always wanted it to be.
How do you imagine hip hop would be without the techniques you introduced, what would hip hop be like without Grandmaster Flash?
Well I think there wouldn't be any musical beds for the musicians to talk to over. Because I had to go into the record and extract that and find that one part and extend that and do things with it. I don't know! I guess maybe MC's would be rapping over choruses and rapping over people singing. That might be a little weird. You know with an intro, a verse and a chorus as opposed to taking a break and making that the song, the mainstay. I don't know that, might be a little weird.
What are your most surprising influences outside of hip hop?
There is this guy who made this song um... Stravinsky! He made this song called Rites of Spring. His shit is just so incredible like how he can make a song go from happy and lovely to dark and gory. How he does that transition, I'm still trying to study how he does that. So right now I'm listening to Stravinsky.
So we have the exclusive, the new Grandmaster Flash project will be classical.
Yeah man maybe! [Laughs]
How are you trying to continue to evolve the sound of hip hop?
I just opened up a production company which does remixes called Adrenaline. Like for example when I got the Into the Galaxy mix by the (Midnight) Juggernauts I looked at it like a really up tempo pop sort of record. So I had to figure out how could I take this record, keep its integrity, but make it different. So that kind of thinking, I've been doing that for decades. It's just a metamorphizing of pop, rock, jazz, blues, funk, r&b, punk and some disco. I use the same theories all the time.
You've played for Queen Elizabeth, what was that like?
I was asked to do the closing of the Common Wealth games. I would think they would like hire their own but, what the hell, so I was like how many people are gonna be listening to me? They said a million people will be watching you on tv and there will be thirty five thousand fans in the stands rocking with you. So that was very amazing.
What is the weirdest or toughest audience you have ever had?
The weirdest audiences I ever have, but I take as a challenge, are the ones that don't speak English. When I DJ I talk to you, see where you are, see what your feeling. But when you don't fucking know what I'm talking about I have to figure out how to connect with your mind and overcome that. I guess throughout the course of the show I figure out a way to just sort of universalise what it is I'm trying to do. So that's probably the weirdest thing, when they can't understand the language, that's the roughest part.
What was your favorite gig?
When I first put my hand on the vinyl and started breaking and clutching and taking control of the vinyl that was probably my biggest performance of all. I never realized that doing that would change the way DJing would be forever. That was my biggest feat ever.
