Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Grandmaster Flash Talks New Book 'Birth of a Culture', History of Hip Hop, Quick Mix Theory, Al + more

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INTERVIEW: Grandmaster Flash Talks New Book 'Birth of a Culture', History of Hip Hop, Quick Mix Theory, Al + more · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hold up.
• 0:01
  Speaker 2: Every day I wake up.
• 0:03
  Speaker 3: Wake your ass up.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The Breakfast Club.
• 0:05
  Speaker 3: You all finished or you all done?
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Morning, everybody.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: It's DJ Envy, Just Hilarious, Charlamagne Tha God. We are
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: The Breakfast Club. Lonely Rose is here as well. We
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: got a special guest in the building.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Yes, indeed.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: The OG, Grandmaster Flash.
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: Grandmaster Flash.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: What's going on?
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: How you doing?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: What's going on, crew? It's a bunch of y'all, huh?
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I'm like, wow.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: We're doing okay.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we all right.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: How you feeling, first and foremost?
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: I'm... I'm a little tired. I've been running, doing all
• 0:32
  Speaker 4: the promo for the book and the whole thing. But
• 0:33
  Speaker 4: it's great that I've gotten a chance to, you know,
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: talk about it from my perspective as a scientist and mathematician.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: So it was pretty cool.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: New book, Birth of the Culture. And congratulations. You're receiving
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Congratulations.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: You are also receiving a star on the Hall of Fame.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: What do you think, man?
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: I think it's, I mean, it's a great honor, you know?
• 0:55
  Speaker 5: And it seems like it's one of those things that
• 0:57
  Speaker 5: people see and they feel, I feel like they're more
• 0:59
  Speaker 5: happy for you than you are.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: You're like, oh, wow.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I was kind of shocked when I heard it. Me too.
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: And to get it for, you know, the Quick Mix Theory,
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: I'm like, does that organization kind of watch for those
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: kind of things?
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. All good, though.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: But somebody had to nominate you.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Somebody nominates you.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: And clearly, I mean, you nominate Grandma after Flash. I mean,
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: that's a no-brainer, right? Absolutely.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's, I still was in shock though. I was like, okay,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: this is, this is pretty cool, but, uh, good to
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: see you again. And it's always a pleasure. Good to
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: see you on the crew.
• 1:32
  Speaker 5: Hey, are you still in shock?
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: You kind of seem like, kind of in shock. Um,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: like this is pretty cool or I don't know what.
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was like, you know, rock and roll hall
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: of fame. Same thing. It was like, Hmm. Okay. Uh,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: This is pretty cool.
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: I didn't know they was going to bring us in there,
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: but they brought us in there.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Congratulations. Thank you.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: What do you think about hip-hop now, a culture that
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: you helped create? What's your thoughts on everything that you've
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: seen from starting what you started from the streets?
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: Well, what I would like to see is, quite frankly,
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: see more diversity in the subject matters and.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Even in the track. What you mean?
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: You know, so, like... When it first came out, it
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: became big business. I call it the musical thumbprint. The
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: tracks all had their own sound and the subject matters.
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: Like you could tell a Dre sound or a Teddy
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: Riley sound or a DJ Premier sound. Things are beginning
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: to sound a little bit.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: The same.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: The same.
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: I'd like to see that diversity again. But other than that,
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: I mean, I'm glad it got here because if it didn't,
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: I don't know what else I'd.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Be doing for sure. So on that side... It's all good.
• 2:45
  Speaker 5: I find it interesting that you named the book Birth
• 2:47
  Speaker 5: of a Culture instead of Birth of Hip Hop.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: Like, what's the difference to you?
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: I think it's almost the same thing, but the culture
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: kind of includes everything.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Birth of.
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: Fabric, birth of everything we did that, you know, encapsulated
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: Hip Hop is why I said culture. Other than just,
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: you know, the four elements, it's bigger than that. That's
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: why I named it that, you know?
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: People talk about the birth of hip-hop, like everybody got
• 3:17
  Speaker 5: together and decided to create something.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: But they don't realize y'all was competing.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It wasn't no kumbaya by no means. Right, right, right.
• 3:29
  Speaker 5: How much of it was actually born out of competition
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: and ego?
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: I think it was more or less the four of
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: us had our territories. You know, Herc had the West.
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: You know, Bam had Bronx River. You know, Breakout had
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: the north and I had the east. So it was
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: a thing where you wanted to keep your flock coming
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: to you. That's why, like the shopping for the records
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: and finding that beat that nobody else ain't got was
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: like paramount. You know, to keep your flock coming here
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: and not going astray, so to speak. You know, so
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: that's where the competition was. Other than that, we were
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: pretty respectful of each other. You know, Herc didn't always
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: love me, but I still love him. He was always
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: mad at me.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: Were y'all sharing information or were y'all hiding it from me?
• 4:13
  Speaker 6: Hiding.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Hiding. Strictly hiding, of course.
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: You know, we would hide the records, you know, even
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: to the point where when we went shopping for records,
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: if I found something that was the bomb, you know,
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: like when you buy the records, you break the street rack, they.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Say you bought it.
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: Sometimes you go shopping and you buy two records that
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: have something on it and the shit is whack. Mm-hmm.
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: So what I would use to do is the whack joints,
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: I had like a crate in my bedroom, and I
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: would soak the heat and the whack ones in the
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: bathtub and soak the labels off.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: And switch them. So out of respect.
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: Like when a DJ would come visit, you would allow
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: him behind the ropes. You wouldn't have him stay in
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: the crowd.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: Can't see my heat, though. And I know you ain't
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: going to ask me, but you'll never find what my
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: heat was. So when you look at the records, it's
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: a totally different record.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: And they go by it and they're pissed off at you. Ooh.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I'd be the DJ. He understands that. So those things
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: was pretty important. Yeah.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: I was going to ask, you know, do you feel
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: like people don't respect the hip hop culture enough? Meaning
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: knowing the homer, knowing... the four founders, how it started
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: and all that. Do you think it's just a game
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: where people just jump in and just eat off of it,
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: instead of knowing who Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: and knowing where the elements of hip-hop created?
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: I think it is critically important the founders or people
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: that were around the founders educate these young people that
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: this thing didn't just fall off a tree and happen.
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: This thing took a lot of perseverance and a lot
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: of just you know, studying. Me, I did it from
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: a mathematical and science perspective.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Like, we were.
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: Intelligent people that just was doing something, going outside to play.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Mom would say, go outside, go play. This is what
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I was doing. You know, so people need to know.
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: And the thing is, I wrote this book because chronologically.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: People should also know where this.
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: Thing started and why it is that it has a
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: continuity of on why it transcended to where we are
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: right now. So when you read the book, you're gonna
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: read the once upon a time, but it's going to
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: connect to where we are right now. And then other
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: than that, I felt it critically important. Like me, I
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: don't think that one person was a creator of this culture.
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: There's just no way possible because there's four elements. I
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: did two of the three, Herc did one, Bam did one,
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: Bam and Breakout did one. So for me, I think
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: it was important for me to say, all right, I'm
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: going to write this book and I'm going to break
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: precedent on how it's written, meaning that I'm going to
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: go find me as many people as I can find
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: to contribute their story to this so that people can
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: see where it started and where it ended. Like I
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: got LL Cool J in there, I got DJ Premier
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: in there, I got... ice cube in there. I got
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: iced tea in there. I got Queen Latifah in there.
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: And what I did is I asked each one of
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: these people, why did you want to jump in? Like,
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: why did you want to be a part of this?
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: What were you thinking?
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: And talking to Rakim about his writing process. What is
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: he thinking?
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: Because he's considered one of the greatest doing this. And
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: I sat down with Q-Tip and how did y'all meet?
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: They met in some of the strangest places. So some
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: of these stories are very, very interesting. Me and Hank
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: Shockley had a sample yelling conversation. It was absolutely scholastic
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: and wonderful. So for me, I had to go out
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: and get other people to make this whole thing complete.
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: So you basically feel like hip-hop's history has been told incorrectly.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I think it has to be, gaps have to be
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: filled in.
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: You know, because we can't get angry, at least me,
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: I can't get angry at anybody that wants to say
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: that they understand the history of hip-hop if they're 30.
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: I can't get mad at them because they weren't born then.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: Why are you going to be mad at them? Because
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: they're doing the best they can. So for me, I
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: want to sit down with all the people that really
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: love this and have these podcasts and things and say,
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: that part right there, this is what happened here. That
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: part right there, this person did that. This part right
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: here is critically important. That's why I wrote the book
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: the way that I wrote it, so that all these
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: young people could come to me and ask me. I'd
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: rather them come to me and say, well, Flash, what
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: happened right here, as opposed to like, I hear the
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: interview and I'm saying, oh, somebody skipped the floor here. No,
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: somebody didn't go into the basement. You know, it's really,
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: really important. You can't get mad at these people. And
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: I think it's our responsibility. It's our responsibility to tell
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: these young people what this is like so that when
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: they regurgitate it and they tell it to their fans,
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: it's correct.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, well, I kind of disagree. I think you
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: can get upset and I'll tell you why, right? I
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: understand the story, right? The story is what the story is.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: When I look at, the MTV Awards this year, the
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Video Music Awards, and I see them highlight Madonna, right?
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: And Madonna's, what, 68 years old? Mm-hmm.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: 70.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: 70 years old. And I see them highlight the way
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: that she is, and that's new fans, young fans, old fans,
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: and they just highlight and love her for what she
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: has done for the culture.
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: I always think to myself, would they allow that for
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: a Karis one? Give them the same love like that?
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Or like a.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: You know or a Run DMC uh LL or you
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: know a Rock Cam I'm gonna answer your question yes
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: we gotta start doing that with ourselves.
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: Like I don't mind saying this DJ is incredible or
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: this rapper is this and that we don't do enough
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: of that amongst ourselves very true If we don't do
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: it enough amongst ourselves, how is outsiders gonna come in
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: and say, well, this is what it is?
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Because you can best believe.
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: In Madonna's family, all the other stars are bigging her up.
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: And it's just, nobody wants to say, this person did
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: something really good. I like this, I like that. He's dope,
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: he's that. So we gotta start with ourselves.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: First.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm thinking.
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: I agree with you wholeheartedly. That's why I don't have
• 10:42
  Speaker 5: no problem celebrating people.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. We would clown certain
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: artists back in the day.
• 10:47
  Speaker 5: Because, you know, some of the older artists, when they
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: lose a step, you know, you make jokes about it.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: But it's like, yeah, but let's not forget who they were. Right.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Let's not forget the foundation
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: they laid.
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: I totally agree. So for me, I sit back and
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: I watch. There's so much controversy in our community of
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: hip hop. as opposed to bigging up people. It's just
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: not enough of that. And you could best believe, Envy,
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: if we do that, then we'll get that Madonna thing
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: you're talking about.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because even like Madonna will play on the pop stations,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: old or new, it doesn't matter. They just say music
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: is music, right?
• 11:25
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: But, you know, a lot of times we won't do
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: the same. Yeah.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: But why won't we, though? Why won't we? And he's
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: a DJ on the radio.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Not even me.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: I play everybody.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: I especially played with the people that I grew up on,
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: but the programmers around the country won't play. Let's say
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: we had the same conversation with Kirk Franklin, right? Kirk
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Franklin just released a record. It's a gospel record.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: But he sampled They Know from Shorty Low, right?
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, okay.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: The record is just an amazing record. Features, Glorilla. It's
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: just a good record. They said, oh, it's a gospel record.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: We play it every morning here. It's a good record.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: It's a hip-hop sounding record. There's no difference.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: So it's a record that should be able to play
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: everywhere is what you're saying. Absolutely.
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. And the thing about hip-hop, how it was constructed,
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: we musically sampled everything. And lyrically, we allowed you to
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: talk about anything.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: Correct.
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: So why is it, if the formula is being used,
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: why can't this particular composition.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Play over there or play over there or play over there?
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: That's why I'm still here. And I thank God that
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: I'm still here, you know, because I want to try
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: to just add my piece into this and hopefully that
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: will strike a note with the people that's coming after
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: me to say, right, we need to fix this.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: We need to do this.
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: We need to try to do it this way, that way.
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: You know, the controversial thing, we don't need to do that.
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: We don't have to fight for that anymore because hip-hop
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: is gigantic.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: On the come up. This was difficult.
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: When a culture gets as big as hip-hop has gotten,
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: who gets to write the history of it?
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: Is it the people who lived it? Is it The journalists.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Who gets to live it? The way I wrote it.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: Who gets to write it, I mean. Who gets to
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: write it?
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: I think the way I did it, it's like I
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: took it as far as I could took it, then
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: I passed the ball. And then passed it. Somebody passed
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: it to Q-tip. Somebody passed it to LL. Somebody passed
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: it to Premier. Somebody passed it to me. Passed it
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: to Ice-T. All these people are in my book. Because
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: I said to myself, there's no way in hell I'm
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: going to sit here and say that I created all
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: the factors of hip-hop.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: No.
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: I did things that helped contribute to it, that helped
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: transcend it here with the things that I did. But
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: it's not just no one person. And I think that's
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: where we kind of screwed it up there by saying
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: one person did all of this. And I was saying
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: for a very long time.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: We can't do that.
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: It shouldn't be that way. So I don't know whether we,
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: do we rewrite it or do we tweak it? Like,
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: what do we do?
• 14:12
  Speaker 6: Outside of the one person conversation, what other hip hop
• 14:15
  Speaker 6: history facts does your book kind of debunk or provide
• 14:18
  Speaker 6: more context to that we would talk about differently.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: After we read it?
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Wax paper. Spray starch. Felt.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: To making a hip hop?
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: I'm going to say something here. My contributions to this culture,
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: four bars forward equals six counterclockwise revolutions, which equals to
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: full loop. The DJ's responsible for the backbeat, the instrumental
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: that allowed the rapper to have a beat to speak on.
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: The seamless loop allows a producer to go into a
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: studio with a fragment from an existing composition called a
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: sample and take it from the streets to big business.
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: This is my contributions to the culture. It's called the
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: quick mix theory. So for me, I'm only one part
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: of this. You know, and I use math and science,
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: counting the bars and the whole thing. But this is
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: just one piece. There's other people that added another piece
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: and then another piece and another piece. And that causes that.
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: And then it goes to the next era and somebody
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: else adds another piece. And it has to be that way.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: And then we have to show more love for people.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: All right, you added that piece. Big up. That's the
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: way it should be. We got a lot of correction
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: to do. You know?
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Well, break down the stuff you pulled out your bag
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: that people that might not know about.
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Let me break it down. Let me get my bag.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Hold on.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: You got crayons in there, too.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do. I'm going to show you.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: I'm going to show you.
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: Right now.
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: So.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: On the turntable, right?
• 16:14
  Speaker 6: Envy.
• 16:14
  Speaker 5: Yes, sir.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Lock into me.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: I'm locked in.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: So we can show.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: You can teach him how to DJ.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: He's a DJ.
• 16:19
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Grandma Splash.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: Go ahead.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: You know this piece.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Rubber mat comes with a turntable when you buy a turntable.
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: It is impossible to go back and forward or counterclockwise.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: With a scrub, yeah, with a rubber mat. Junk.
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: My mother was a seamstress. I learned to understand materials, polyester, rayon, silk, felt, cotton, felt.
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: I put this on the platter.
• 16:51
  Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: There was still resistance with the platter moving forward. I
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: needed one more piece of material. Mom and my sisters
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: used to bake with this paper that felt like it had.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Oil on it. So I would put this on the
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: platter and put this on that.
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: So that when I went counterclockwise or backwards and forward,
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: the platter would go forward I could move the platter.
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: This style has not changed in 50 plus years. It's
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: my invention. And I call it the quick mix theory.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: Every DJ on planet Earth does this.
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: Of course.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: The crazy thing is when I started DJing, the records
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: would come with that plastic.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: I never knew that.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so when you would buy a record, the record
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: would be in the plastic.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: So we would.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: open up the record, take the plastic, make it into
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: a circle, and that's what we would use to cut.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: The felt, by the time I was DJing, you could
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: buy the stuff already, so I didn't have to cut it.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: My other question to you before we get to the starch,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: did you ever regret or be upset that you created
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: a lot of this stuff and I don't think you
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: seen what you should have seen for it? So it's
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: kind of like you look at these huge artists, whether
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: they're Travis Scott, Hov, or whatever, and they're making a
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: billion dollar business, right? But you started it from your basement,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: from grind, and you don't necessarily get what you should
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: from it. Whether, even if it's, you know, I always
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: think that, you know, hip-hop should have created, the label
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: should have created a healthcare fund, or a retirement fund
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: for artists and DJs like yourself who did this out
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: of blood, sweat, and tears and not out of money.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: So now when you get to the age you are,
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: where a lot of these artists are at the time,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: they might not have money to pay for health care.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: They might not have money to pay for retirement. Did
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: you ever get upset or, I don't want to say
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: regret it, but feel a way about that?
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: I live by moments, y'all.
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: And when I first started to do this from a
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: scientific and mathematical point of view, All I knew is
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: that I had to figure out a way to take
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: the drum solo from all these different genres of music
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: and figure out a way to make a musical bed.
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: Never in my wildest dreams, I didn't think if I
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: put a microphone on the other side of the table
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: and asked a person to speak in rhythm to my rhythm,
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: never in my wildest dreams. Never in my wildest dreams
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: did I think I would get a manually operated drum box,
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: call it the beat box, and it.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Causes human beatboxes.
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: Never in my wildest dream did I ever think that
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: I would create an area where it's just one guy
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: going constantly and that will be named a sample. All
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: I can say is this. God had his way of
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: what it was that I needed to do. And all
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: I can say at this present moment, I'm financially okay.
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: I travel the world still. I do feel for those
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: that came from my era and time, which you're saying
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: that some people aren't as fortunate. But I'm sitting here
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: with you guys here, and I thank God I can.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Sit here and talk to you all.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Talk to you all about it.
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: But to really answer your question, you know, I think
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: probably a long time ago, my attorney said to me,
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: when I finally understood that I had to have an attorney,
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: he says there's two ways to that you could look
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: at it flash. You could be angry, or you could
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: look at it as bragging rights, or just look at
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: it that you shared something that exploded around the world
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: and accept that. And that's pretty much acceptance. Can't go
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: back in time and go do anything. You know, it's
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: what it is.
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: And what problem exactly were you trying to solve with
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: the quick mix theory?
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: I was trying to solve, when I first heard the music,
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: when the drum beat played, the backsides would move more.
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: So there was this one record when I was a
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: kid that used to happen in my house by Curtis Mayfield,
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: Move On Up. The drum beat is like two minutes long, right? So,
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: I'm watching the house parties in the crib and I'm like, oh,
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: so the drum beat is the best part of this,
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: of the record. So now, every record I'm looking at Envy,
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: I'm like trying to see why is it, is the
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: damn drum beats so short? I personally feel like I
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: had gotten a calling At your teenage age, you will
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: not be allowed to go to the basketball court and
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: play games and chase the girls and smoke cigarettes and drink.
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: You are going to figure out a way to make
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: this situation where a human being could speak on a
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: beat that you provide from two turntables. And this quick
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: mixed theory took me three years. I watched the disco
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: DJs play. And their style was flawless. I'm like, they're
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: going from one record to the other, right? But our
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: runway is dumb short. So I was trying to use
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: the tone on with two copies of the record, but
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: the beat was crashing. And so I said to myself,
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: what if I can go counterclockwise where I would re-arrive
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: at the top of the break, with duplicate copies that
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: stay in that one particular area. And then that's where
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: the problems came in.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: This. The cartridge. The needle.
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: So now I had to do reverse engineering. And thank goodness,
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: when my family sent me to Samuel Gompers Vocational and
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: Technical High School, I could do reverse engineering. And I
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: studied people like Edison, Marconi, Tesla. And I understood what
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: was alternating current versus alternating. direct current, I understood what
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: was solid state versus vacuum tubes. Once I started to
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: understand all these things, I was able to put all this,
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: you know, put all this together. So this all helped
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: me to become what I became. And to go back
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: to this prior question, I share something with the world.
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: This shit could have missed, man. The world could have
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: just said, ew, this shit is whack. But it was, ooh,
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: what is this? It's that little crack of daylight.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: What is this? It's how all of this survived.
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: So this quick mix theory thing, Charlamagne is the pillars
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: of what the beat stands on. And the DJ plays
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: an incredibly important role why hip-hop is here.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: You talk about the message, right?
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: One of the greatest records in hip-hop history, but I
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: recently saw you say that it marked the end of
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: an era of what you consider a glorious period of hip-hop.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: Why did you feel like that?
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: I didn't say, well, I felt that like Grandmaster flashed
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: it for his five. One DJ, five rappers. I felt
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: like all five of them should have been on this record.
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: They had this formula called switchovers, where they could make
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: one line sound like one. They can go, like they
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: could do that on all the records. And that was
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: our way, Charlamagne. And when that record, when the record
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: company said, we only want one of the five, that
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: was the end of an era. That was the end
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: of an era where it was multiple rappers on the
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: stage at the same time.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: That was, there should have been more of that because
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: that's how it was back in the 70s and 80s.
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: Everybody was a group. And a lot of today's fans
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: don't see that. It's probably singular.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: Lauren was just saying that the other day. We see
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: less and less groups.
• 25:36
  Speaker 6: I was saying, we have the Migos, but before that,
• 25:40
  Speaker 6: who was closest to them in generation that they can
• 25:43
  Speaker 6: be compared to? Because everybody else is like older, larger groups.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 25:49
  Speaker 6: And I was asking, will we ever see that again
• 25:50
  Speaker 6: as successful as they were?
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll definitely see that, but it's just going to
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: be far and few.
• 25:54
  Speaker 6: I don't know.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you will.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Because they're going ebbs and flows. You
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: had the Migos, you had OutKast, you had Mobb Deep,
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: but you had UGK. You'll see that again.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think it's magical to see that when
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: they were performing live, to watch them pass the words around.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: It's something to see, you know, so. Absolutely. Absolutely.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: So what do you want people to get from this book,
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Grandmaster Flash? What do you want them to understand from
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: this book, from.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: You, The Birth of a Culture?
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: If you come from a jazz family, mom and dad
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: or your uncle will drill in your head Miles Davis.
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: If you come from a rock group, if you come
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: from a rock family, mom and dad will drill in
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: your head Rolling Stones.
• 26:42
  Speaker 5: That's right.
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: If you come from a pop family, Mom and Dad
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: were drilling your head, Elvis Presley or whatever.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Elvis Presley, Madonna.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Or whatever, exactly.
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: I want people to understand that this thing was a
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: slow progression and this thing wasn't oops or by accident.
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: This was seeds planted, grew, and it moved on to
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: the next era. to the next era, and to the
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: next era. So I want people to understand that this
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: thing was not just something that was thrown together. This
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: is something that should be taken very seriously from the
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: first group to where we are right now.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: How do you watch something.
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: You helped create evolve into versions of itself that you
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: didn't necessarily understand or even like?
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: So how do I say the question again?
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: How do you watch something you helped create?
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: I watch it. I go, Hmm.
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: And I, I say, uh, like a lot of times,
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: you know what I do? Charlemagne every now and then
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: I do vinyl sets or vinyl so that people could
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: understand what it is. And I'm not knocking modern tech technology.
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: It actually helped me from stop having to lift crates.
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: So it's a wonderful thing, you know, but every now
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: and then, like, um, I play on Twitch every now
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: and then when I'm home and I go on and
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: I explain to them that the modern technology of equipment
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: assists you a lot, but we can go back to
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: a time where you had to find the part of
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: the song where it is. So for me, when I
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: see new DJs doing things with new technology, I smile,
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: you know, because I can look at the equipment and say,
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: I could say to them, that line right there on
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: the vinyl, I call it the Intersector. I did that
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: 50 years ago. I see it on equipment. You know,
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: so all this stuff makes me smile because once again,
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: all this stuff, all these things that I did, this
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: shit could have missed.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: Does technology help people become more creative or does it
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: kill the creativity?
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: Oh, it's a little bit of both. I think it's
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: more creative. I had to hire like five or six
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: people with crates when I was booked. Now, I could
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: just put 100,000 songs in a hard drive, you know,
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: and let's go.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: So that's the gift.
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: I think the curse is, I think sometimes modern technology
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: helps you too much. Even with this AI thing, you know,
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: I'm just beginning to learn that. You could talk into
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: the app and say, make this sound like James Brown.
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: How you do that. And I've listened to some of
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: these songs. Not to go off chapter, but this AI thing,
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: I think it's great, but I think it should be
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: a hybrid of human and.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: and A.I.
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: Together, because to me, what makes a great song, like
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: James Brown's songs are not on the grid. The horns
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: are a millisecond behind and the bass is, you know,
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: booty might have missed a note or whatever, but when
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: you listening to it, you hear the human, you hear the.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Swag in it. When I hear A.I.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Song- Bootsy Collins.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Bootsy, yeah. So when I hear an A.I. song, it's perfect.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: I don't.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: I got you.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: Nothing's ever perfect. I got what you're saying.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: I got you.
• 30:44
  Speaker 5: It's too perfect for you.
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's too perfect to take you there.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: Through the motions.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: It's more like it's right there.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: It's like, ah.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: Too polished.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: It's too polished. You know, and I'm not knocking it. No,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: you're right. You know, it's just, it is too, too perfect.
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: And if you love the AI artist, let's say he
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: made an album full of those. He's never, he's, he's
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: never coming to the garden.
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: I was going to say, how do you tour that?
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: How do you invite people out to see that?
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: She's never, she or he is never going on tour. Never.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: That's real. So for me, AI has its place. I
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: think it's cool.
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: I just think that it needs the human element, I think,
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: is paramount to have.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: I think it is.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: That's great.
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: Well, listen, man, I'm glad that hip-hop has grown to
• 31:32
  Speaker 5: where you can have.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: A book out called Birth of a Culture.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: A star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you, man.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: You deserve it all, Grandmaster Flash.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Thank you, man. Thank you.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: Appreciate you for joining us this morning. Make sure you
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: go out and get the book.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: Thank you for always teaching, too, man. Absolutely.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Birth of a Culture. Get it now. Grandmaster Flash, thank you, brother.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: OG, we appreciate you. It's The Breakfast Club.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: Good morning.