A biography for Grandmaster Flashhasn’t been written yet.
“Normal kids in their teens want to go and date girls and do mischievous things, your hormones are jumping around, but I stayed in my bedroom in search of something.”
“Hip Hop has become real constrained. The creative juices and creative flows have been diminished.”
“All you have to know is mathematically how many times to scratch it and when to let it go - when certain things will enhance the record you're listening to.”
“I was a quiet, nerdy kid living in the Bronx. I spent most of my teens in my room, taking apart electrical items to figure out how they worked before putting them back together, and listening to the music my four older sisters and parents played.”
“I went to junkyards, abandoned car lots. I asked supermarkets for the big jugs they put pig guts in, to make cabinets for my bass speakers.”
“For anybody to say well this is not Hip Hop and that's not Hip Hop, that is not the way the formula was laid down. It was for the people who were going to continue take anything musically and string it along.”
“If there is a record I don't have, I haven't heard it yet. My collection is always growing, but I can't really play it anywhere - no promoter is willing to pay for my crates of vinyl to fly with me, so I have a team of people to digitise it all.”
“The type of mixing that was out then was blending from one record to the next or waiting for the record to go off and wait for the jock to put the needle back on.”
“I don't want to be classified as an old-skool DJ or new-skool DJ. I want to be classified as an all-skool DJ who plays it all. I also want to learn to DJ house music in my own fashion.”
“As an individual I was known as the DJ or the mixer.”
“Before this DJ thing, I was hopelessly taking things apart to try to figure out how they worked. I'd go mess around with burned-out cars, with my mom's stereo - I was public enemy #1 in my house for that. So my mom noticed that I was interested in this and decided to send me to school so I'd know what I was doing.”
“We can come from our own particular point of view and lay it down. We should not be throwing verbal rocks at each other. We're all responsible to continue the growth of Hip Hop.”
“Hmmmm... It's fun being in front of people, playing shows and all. But hotels? Being away from home? That's different.”
“Conquer your neighbourhood, conquer your city, conquer your country, and then go after the rest of the world. That's my mantra.”
“I needed a way to have the platter continuously spinning while I'm moving the record back and forth. I went to a fabric store. When I touched this hairy stuff - felt - I found it. I rubbed spray starch on both sides and ironed it until it became a stiff wafer. After that, I was able to stop time.”
“Do not let any record company disturb your creative flow. You are not writing for the record company. You're writing for the public.”
“What has happened is that to some degree they have taken an attitude where they don't listen to demos of diverse subject matters. They're looking for demos like the record the guy on the left just did.”
“We can even sing off key, but if it's produced properly it can be a hit.”
“Disco was brand new then and there were a few jocks that had monstrous sound systems but they wouldn't dare play this kind of music. They would never play a record where only two minutes of the song was all it was worth. They wouldn't buy those types of records.”
“I named myself Flash many years ago, as I loved the cartoon. Then my own fans said that I should call myself 'Grandmaster,' because of the way I operate turntables. I put the two together and that was it.”