Artist: Grandmaster Flex
Genre(s):
Other
Discography:
Phat Bob
Year: 2004
Tracks: 4
DJ Grandmaster Flash and his grouping the Furious Five were hip-hop's sterling innovators, transcending the genre's party-music origins to explore the full telescope of its lyrical and transonic horizons. Flash was born Joseph Saddler in Barbados on January 1, 1958; he began spinning records as stripling growing up in the Bronx, playing live at area dances and obstruct parties. By age 19, piece attending technical schoolhouse courses in electronics during the day, he was also spinning on the local disco music circuit; over time, he developed a serial of groundbreaking ceremony techniques including "newspaper clipping" (moving betwixt tracks precisely on the work over), "back-spinning" (manually turning records to retell brief snippets of effectual), and "phasing" (manipulating lazy Susan speeds) -- in short, creating the canonical vocabulary which DJs continue to follow fifty-fifty today.
New York minute did non start collaborating with rappers until around 1977, offset teaming with the legendary Kurtis Blow. He so began working with the Furious Five -- rappers Melle Mel (Melvin Glover), Cowboy (Keith Wiggins), Kid Creole (Nathaniel Glover), Mr. Ness aka Scorpio (Eddie Morris), and Rahiem (Cat Williams); the grouping quickly became legendary throughout New York City, attracting notice non alone for Flash's peerless skills as a DJ merely also for the Five's masterful rapping, most famous for their signature trading and blending of lyrics. Despite their local popularity, they did non record until afterward the Sugarhill Gang's nail "Rapper's Delight" proven the beingness of a market place for hip-hop releases; afterward releasing "We Rap More Mellow" as the Younger Generation, Flash and the Five recorded "Superappin'" for the Enjoy label owned by R&B fable Bobby Robinson. They so switched to Sugar Hill, owned by Sylvia Robinson (no relation), later she promised them an chance to rap music over a stream DJ favourite, "Catch Up and Dance" by Freedom (the thought had in all likelihood been in the beginning conceived by Crash Crew for their single "High Powered Rap").
That record, 1980's "Freedom," the group's Sugar Hill debut, reached the Top 20 on national R&B charts on its way to merchandising over 50,000 copies; its follow-up, "Birthday Party," was besides a hit. 1981's "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel" was the group's number one unfeignedly landmark recording, introducing Flash's "cutting" techniques to make a stunning sound montage from snippets of songs by Chic, Blondie, and Queen. Flash and the Five's next effort, 1982's "The Message," was even more than revelatory -- for the first time, hip-hop became a vehicle non but for crowing and jactitation simply for searching social commentary, with Melle Mel delivering a acrid rap music detailing the low realities of life in the ghetto. The record was a major critical arrive at, and it was an tremendous step in solidification rap music as an important and enduring course of musical expression.
Following 1983's anti-cocaine polemist "White River Lines," dealings betwixt Flash and Melle Mel turned vile, and the rapper presently left the group, forming a new building block as well dubbed the Furious Five. After a series of Grandmaster Flash solo albums including 1985's They Said It Couldn't Be Done, 1986's The Source, and 1987's Da Bop Boom Bang, he reformed the original Furious Five card for a charity concert at Madison Square Garden; shortly later, the reconstituted chemical group recorded a new LP, 1988's On the Strength, which earned a tepid response from fans and critics alike. Another reunion followed in 1994, when Flash and the Five linked a rap software program spell too including Kurtis Blow and Run-D.M.C. A year afterwards, Flash and Melle Mel as well appeared on Duran Duran's comprehend of "Patrick Victor Martindale White Lines." Except for a few compilations during the late '90s, Flash was relatively hushed until 2002, when a couple of amalgamate albums appeared: The Official Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on Strut and Of the essence Mix: Classic Edition on ffrr.
