The New Yorker Radio Hour - Grandmaster Flash on “Birth of a Culture”

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

Grandmaster Flash has been an innovator in the art of d.j.’ing since he was practically a child growing up in the Bronx. As a young man named Joseph Saddler, he spent his days trying to figure out how to make the drum breaks in his favorite songs last longer and longer. Now in his late sixties, Flash remains as devoted to the art of the turntable as ever. In a new memoir, “Birth of a Culture,” he looks at hip-hop’s earliest days, as the music made its way from outdoor parties to huge venues like the Audubon Ballroom. He tells David Remnick how his creative innovations were born of an obsession with electronics, and why he views his group’s biggest hit, “The Message,” as the beginning of the end of a glorious moment in hip-hop culture. Further reading: “Grandmaster Flash’s Remix of Hip-Hop History,” by Vinson Cunningham New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Hip-hop aficionados love to debate the state of the genre and which current stars are really more pop than rap. But there's no question, none at all, that Grand Master Flash is a true pioneer. He's been an innovator in the art of DJing since he was practically a child. And now, as a senior citizen, Grand Master Flash,

Master Flash remains as devoted to his turntable heroics as ever. He tours the globe. He spreads the gospel of hip-hop everywhere, and he tells stories about the origins of a music genre that has come to dominate the airwaves and has forever influenced American culture. In a new memoir, Birth of a Culture, Grand Master Flash takes us behind the scenes of hip-hop's earliest days, from the Bronx to the downtown discos and parties in dank, basements. I sat down this week with Grandmaster Flash, who was born Joseph Sadler in the Bronx,

to talk about his new book and his beginnings. My mother always taught me to ask people what I should call them. Flash. Just Flash. Flash, yeah. Flash is fine. Because you got the greatest name ever. Thank you so much. To be known as Grandmaster and Flash.

Thank you. We're just going to go by Flash. Okay. So let me ask you, Flash. You grew up and you were fascinated by these things, but before that, you were fascinated by the electronics in your house. Yes. At the same time, you're listening to your father's records. My father had a routine. What was he doing for the living? He used to work for the 34th Street, the track repair, for the subways, for New York City subways. Down at Penn Station. Right, at Penn Station, correct. So when he would come home, David,

he would go into his closet and he opened his door, and he would get these square things, and they would have pictures of like trains or animals or people or flowers or I don't know and I'm like where is he going with this square thing he's headed over to the brown box that lives in a living room David and he would take out this black thing and it's all very mysterious to you guys very mysterious like and he's taking it and he's putting this in the brown this brown box.

And you're in the Bronx? In the Bronx, yes. Brasneck Projects in the Bronx. And how old are you at this time? Oh, single digits. Nine, ten. You know, and I'm watching. So he goes over to this brown box and he takes this black thing.

He puts it on this silver stick and he presses his button and then this thing goes up. The black disc goes down. The arm goes on to the black disc and sound comes out of the brown. Fox. David. Magic. My dad is a magician. He's the best in the world.

I'm like, holy, holy, how did he do that? Yeah. You know, and then, David, another fascination happened with me. Anything that turned on, lights on, and it was... Electronics. And all these things fascinated me, the table radio, the stereo, the television. So now I'm getting a butter knife and I'm unscrewing the back of everything possible

because now I'm trying to figure out why do these things light up? You know, my sister's hair dryer, the table radio, the stereo liver room, the TV in the living room, and then eventually my family said, listen, you have to stop doing this. I was tearing up so much stuff in the house.

I was tearing up so much. So when did you make the connection the connection between one fascination and other, between music, your father's record collection, and doing something about it, that meaning electronics, and even the notion of being a DJ. When does that kick in?

It kicks in because in the middle 70s, disco was big. Huge. It was the Godzilla of music. Did you like it? The music itself? I didn't like the music, But what fascinated me, David, was the way they would sort of pair two records together and blend.

The old song disappears and the new song arrives. So your book is so much about the connections that you draw as a kid and how you create yourself as well. You're creating a new musical form. So how did you take what you were hearing in disco and do something new? I went back to move on up. My Curtis Mayfiel. That drum beat must have been about two minutes long. So when I was starting to listen to the records that my sisters were playing on the stereo,

I'm like, why is this drum break so short? And I have to tell you, David, okay, let me play this pop record, let me play this, let me play this motown record, let me play this record, let me play this record, let me play that record. It turned out a lot of these drum breaks were like four bars, eight bars long. Right. That made me so angry, broken. hearted, why aren't these drum breaks as long as move on up by Curtis Mayfield? And you wanted them to be longer for dance reasons?

Because what I noticed that when I was watching the house parties that was happening in the house and at home, when the drum break came, the back sides would move more. I'm like, so in my mind, David, I'm saying that's the best part of the record. So that's what I started listening to Slime and Family Stone, James Brown, T&T. So what did you do about it? I said to myself, I have to figure out how I can make this drum break longer,

but without the person that's dancing know that I'm extending it. So you've got a record that you brought in. I want a record in. Explain what you have here. So I have a record. Not everybody's watching on YouTube. Right, right, right. Yeah.

So now what I had to do is, I had to do the unspeakable again. It brings me back to dad again. Yeah, you had to screw around the record. If I'm going to concentrate on just the drum solo of a pop record, a rock, a jazz, a blues, funk, a disco, and R&B, an alternative, a Caribbean, all that. And I have to be able to see it in dark places. And that's when I decided to do the unspeakable, right? So you got a box of crayon. The kind that you would get in the third grade.

Yes. Crayolas. Right. And you've got a record here. What record do we have here? This is called Get Up and Dance by Freedom. Right. And this whole record is incredible, but the drum break is just totally out of here.

It's so, so amazing. So what I would do is I would mark the area with a bright colored crayon, sometimes white, sometimes yellow, and sometimes orange. So what I would do is I would mark it, and then I would take a, uh, uh, uh, a, uh, a, uh, a, a, a bright color of. soft cloth, and I would kind of get rid of as much of the grain as the crayon as possible. And this part was called the circular. We're seeing a record that looks like a geometry experiment that's got a line around the circumference here of where you want it. And then radiating out from the center is a piece of what looks like masking tape. Yes, and crayon.

Okay, doesn't the needle get a little angry when it hits any of the stuff? Well, the break lives where it lives. So for me, I only need it from here to there. I see. So if I had two copies of this, I can keep cutting and pasting that one particular area. Now I can do what I heard from Curtis Mayfield move on up. And I would have two copies of this, and I would have two guys with two piles of records. So which, it's like records are flying off and on, off and on, off and on, off and on, off and on.

So being a DJ was like an intellectual sport, but it was also a physical one, too. I think I based what I did, which is a quick mix theory on math and kinetics. You know, I mean, for me... When did this happen? How old were you when this was happening? This is 12, 13. I'm trying to figure this out. Is there anybody else around town doing it?

No, this has never been done before. Because everybody else that was playing the record, they were playing the record in a traditional fashion, and they were not putting their hands on the record. So you're Thomas Edison, where this is concerned. That's what you want to call me. You wanted to invent something that wasn't in the world. I wasn't trying to invent anything. I just wanted the doggone break to be longer. There's no...

Aren't you glad you were born then because if you were born now, there'd be nothing to it. Yeah, you could do it now. Like, the way DJ mixes and turntable units are made now, David, it's pretty much... Because I've got to tell you,

and we're the same age. When I watch DJs now, and they're flailing around and they're doing this, I'm thinking to myself, what are you doing? Aren't you just coming in or with a recording that's pre-recorded and done, and done already, and it's kind of easy to do.

Back when you were doing this, there was, there's all kinds of arts and arts and crafts and physical aspect to this, and the precision of just manipulating the record, it's not easy. I had to figure out, and I almost walked away from this whole thing, maybe a year and a half in,

because I said to myself, if the drum break is only four bars, right? then I should be able to go counterclockwise four bars and re-arrived to the top of the break but David it didn't happen I was in a wrong place and then I was very very frustrated and then I looked at

I looked at the vinyl and it said 33 and a third right so I'm saying to myself so if it's 33 and a third That means I have to go back further to get back to the top of the break so that I can do this seamlessly. So I came up with a math theory.

So if I were to use another one bites and does, four bars. One, two, three, do, do, do, dun, three, two, four, four bars. 33 and a third. So I decided to rewind their record back six times, and let me see where I end up at. I ended up at the top of the break. I put on a rock record, duplicate copies. What are you playing?

What rock and rock? I'm playing Billy Squire. I'm playing Queen. I'm playing James Brown. I'm playing Rufus Thomas. So once I figured out, four bars forward is equal to six counterclockwise, which is full loop extraction.

Now I could take any record that has four bars and the break is short, I can keep the drum break, the series of drum brakes going for hours. So what I did was... And the asses are moving on the dance floor. Ooh, did you just say the bad word? Oh, sorry, yeah.

So now what helped me realize in this, Dave, I was weaving a backing track. My biggest problem, when I was doing it alone, people wouldn't dance. They would just stand there and stare at me. I found out the beast. So sad. I'm like, why aren't you dancing?

I'm playing the best part of this rock song. I'm playing the best part of this blues song, this funk song. Like, I want you guys to be losing your mind. And I said to myself, I have to add something to this. So I said to myself, what if I took a microphone, while I'm doing this,

let me put a microphone on the other side of the table to see if there's a human being that could speak to this new style of me weaving the series of drum brakes, rock breaks, jazz breaks, blues breaks, but they're all on time to the beat. And there was this one guy by the name of Keith Wiggins. He's passed away a long time. His name was Cowboy.

He started saying, do this and do that and do this and do that, which took the attention off of me. Give me an example of what Keith Wiggins would do. Throw your hands in the air. And we even like your tone care. Somebody say, oh, somebody's scream. So now he's got them occupied. Now I can go full throttle.

So, what, Flash, what year are we in when this is happening? This is 72, 73. So this is well, well before hip-hop. This is, because hip-hop didn't have a name then. Right. Not yet. It was the age of the DJs. And the big DJs of this time was myself, Africa Bamato,

Cool Herk, DJ breakout. And we all had our own particular areas of the Bronx. Were you competitive or friendly? I think that we, maybe we, We weren't friendly. But did you know that you were starting something new, or that it might, that it was going to, I mean, forget about that it would become an international phenomenon and become popular music itself.

Did you have any idea that it would emerge from the Bronx? No, no, no, no, no, no. It's just something you did for your friends. It was like, Mom would say, go outside and play. So we would go to the neighborhood park, and we would grab a couple of shopping carts from the supermarket and put my little makeshift piece of crap sound system. go to the nearest park. And when does it expand beyond that?

It expands beyond that because now you have the cornerstone of the DJs in the Bronx and it goes to Manhattan and then it goes to Brooklyn and then it goes to Queens and it goes to Long Island. And then we DJs were playing all the venues and after a while we were able to get the, you know, when the kids graduate, so the schools was calling us to play their prom. The prom. Exactly. So Ray Chandler, my manager at that time, says, Flash, I want to take you someplace.

Because you've played every place. We've conquered them all. I want to take it to this other place. So I'm being cocky about it. He says, it's in Manhattan, 166 Street and Audubon Avenue. It's in Harlem. I'm like, okay, let's go. I said, so where's the building there?

He says, we're walking alongside of it. And I got to tell you, David, this block, It must have been a five-minute, seven-minute walk. This is the Audubon Ballroom? This is it. Where Malcolm X was killed. Yes. So I go up these three pairs of steps, and I get to the top of the building, and I see the fire, you know, the fire capacity sign, and it says 3,000 people.

And I walk in this place, and I look at this place, the fear that I had to play this place. was scary. This was in May. He says, Flash will do it September. Give me this whole summer to pass out flies and they get the word around.

And David, that probably was the saddest summer for me because all I can do is think about this place just not being filled. What's the year? Flash. This is 76. And then the day comes. We bring in the sound system that was half made by me and half

made by the Jamaican crew that made sound systems. And we do the sound check at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. We hear like a pow! The transformer of the main amplifier, it blows out. So now we have to rush the amplifier to Cunninghill Road where the engineer who built the amplifier is and plead with him to stop what you are doing. You need to repair this amplifier.

Once we told him what we was doing, a couple of hours went by, we got to amplify back. I was really immortal fear this day at about 6 o'clock, so I leave after the sound check, jump in a taxi, and I go home. He says, Flash, come back later because you guys are headlining. You're going to go on last. So I get back at about 8.30, 9 o'clock in them. The taxi's having a problem because between 160,000. 66 and Audubon Avenue in 163rd, there's traffic jams.

I'm like, wow, something must be happening here. And as the taxi approaches the Audubon, the lines are wrapped around the corner. People see me. They start screaming. My security has to rush me in. We broke a record. we had 3,500 people in the place. And at that point, you're taking Take Me to the Mardi Gras at this point?

Oh, I'm playing Mardi Gras, Apache, I'm playing, I'm playing all the... All right, tell me about Take Me to the Mardi Gras. Take me to the Mardi Gras. When I went record shopping, it's very, very important. I might leave the house at about 9, 10 o'clock in the morning, jump on the subway, go downtown, and go to the record stores. I didn't like the idea of music being in charts. There's no such thing as just a white song or a black song or a foreign song or American song. Like some of the most incredible songs could be a white drum break.

It could be an Italian drum break. It could be a California drum break. So for me, going into the bins was like a crapshoot. Sometimes the album cover has to talk to me. So for me, I remember. being in the jazz bin, and I pulled this record up, and it has a picture of a gold hand, and the gold hand is holding an apple.

I'm like, this is not making sense to me. This is not making sense to me. So I put it back down and go back and go in the other bins, you know, all the different genres of bins, but I would come back to this bin, David, And I'm saying if I buy this record, I have to buy two copies. And once you break the shrink wrap, you own it.

I took that record home. And I played it. I'm like, oh, I have one here. And when you say, I have one here, what are you hearing? I'm hearing that I have a, I have a, I have a, I have a hit drum break that I can play for my flock. But the thing was, either I was going to scratch out the label. Right.

Because there was this invisible thing of the code of respect when other DJs came to visit your party. Well, I was going to ask you this. Do you ever get in legal trouble at this point? In other words, any of the recording artists think, hey, wait, you're using my... Yeah, but I'm doing this in venues. I'm doing this in venues. I'm doing this. doing this in the streets. I'm doing this at block parties.

Right. So this is before the money starts to show up. Way, way, way before the money. This is way before the money. Got it. You know, so, so like say, if a DJ, if one of us was off, we would go see what the other DJs doing. So out of respect,

we went and had that DJ out in the crowd. He would come under the ropes and he could just hang out near the DJ booth. So what I used to do, if whenever I found a drum break, that was amazing. I would take the ones that missed,

I called them stiffs, and I would put them in a crate. So what I would do is I would take both copies of Bob James and then two duplicates that I found nothing, and I would soak them in the bathtub. Right?

This label would come up and I would switch the labels. But Dave, I had to do this. Because if he asked me what it was, I would have to respect. tell him, but I really didn't want to tell him and I didn't want to disrespect, code to the streets.

So he's sitting there that DJ who's off, he's going like that. And I'm sure he went downtown and he bought those records. He probably had 50 sandwiches saying, Flash. I couldn't find that break. I'm speaking with Grandmaster Flash.

More in a moment. We're going to listen to one of your early recordings showcasing what a solo DJ can do with a pair of turntables in a Here's a bit of the adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the wheels of steel. Let's play that.

You say... Mm-hmm. You say... You say... One for the trouble. Two for the time. Come on, girls. Let's rock.

Three turntables. Oh, okay. Flash is fast. Flash is fast. Flash is fast. Flash is cool. Francoas de Francois. Changing a record.

Change in a record. One for the trouble. Two for the time. On girls, let's have that. It's all right. Check the record off. Next racquet. The next record, ready.

Do you remember every move in your body? How many years ago was that? When the dinosaurs was walking around freely. Or when we were young or whatever. Yes. So do you remember every move with your hand? Because I had to. because I was using three turntables

so now a lot of what I do is numerically like there's certain lines on the turntable where I can say this one's at four and a quarter this one's at three and a half I had to remember these things because now I'm dealing with three turntables while I'm doing this

Now don't you ever screw up while you're doing this? Yes I do. I'll bet. I'm not live though not live. Never? No Now if you ask someone now these days to name some hip-hop story I think a lot of people would start listing rappers, but the genre really began. With DJs.

With DJs. Creating tracks, creating beats. What was the role of the MC in those early days? Okay, so four elements. Breakdancer, graffiti artist, DJ, rapper. The rapper came years later. Their last. Their last.

their primary role as they get the crowd going while the DJ does what he does. I would say that they were. Do you think that the DJs and what your contribution was is getting, you know, the bottom end of the stick in terms of the prestige?

I think of the four elements, Dave, we probably were at the bottom of the prestige. But I think my thing is I've always been pretty prominent. It's because I went from the streets and then I went around the world. Sure. You know, but DJ on a whole

does not get the respect that it should get because if the DJ didn't do this first, the rapper would not have a backing track to speak on. When we think about this, maybe this is a white thing, you think about Studio 54, but you had a disco fever on 167th in Jerome, now far from the stadium. How was that different from Studio 54?

I've got to tell you, sounds like a lot more fun. I think I was in 54, and that was a heavy disco thing. Did you feel at home there, too? I felt at home when they finally allowed me to play, because all my off days, I was saying to myself, David, I want to play for a hard bottom crowd, guys that wear blazers and this kind of thing

so I had to go around to different clubs and ask for a job and some of these places I went to my friends were the DJ so I'm saying tell the boss you know they let me on it's like no flash

did they tell me that you rubbed the record and you put this crayons and you they didn't want any part of that they didn't want any part of that. I'm like,

so I went over to a club called 371 where it was hard bottom. You know, girls were in dresses and high heels. I went to club 371. I had my sneakers and my, maybe my hoodie and my cap on. They said, you know, we don't care who you are. Go away, come back and you dress like you're an adult.

You know, so I had to put on hard bottoms, you know, a blazer, take my hat off, and there was a guy by name of Reggie Wells. As a Reggie, do you think that is possible? Can I get on for a few minutes? And I, he says, all right, I'm going to let you get on on some of my time because I guess apparently there were DJs

that had their particular hour or their shift. He says, I'm going to let you get on some of my shift. And I went in there and I played freedom and I played Apache, but I played this all in my shift. fashion, I bought my, I bought my, I called them wafers and I put these on the platter. So these are these kind of felt things that you put under the record. Right. With, this looks like the kind of paper you use for cookings, right?

This is just plain wax paper. Right, because when you first buy the turntable, Dave, comes on the rubber. If I tried to go counterclockwise, it's impossible. Right. Right. So it caused friction. Right. So I said to myself, my mother's a seamstress, and I was very familiar with polyester, rayon, silk, leather, suede, cotton, denim.

And I remember running to the newest fabric store, and I go in, I'm going through all the aisles, and I'm feeling all the materials, and I go like this. I see, felt. And I felt very familiar with felt this because in grade school, we would make letters. and use Elmo's glue and cut them out and we would get like stars, you know. So I was very familiar with this, and I remember taking that and putting this on the platter

and then putting the record on top of the felt, but there still was a degree of resistance because I could see that the platter could not move comfortably clockwise. So I said, Mom makes chocolate chip cookies and it's stuff that my sisters in them cook with. And I remember

cutting this out to size of the record. So I put that on the platter, and I put this one of the felt. It felled over the wax paper, and then the record. And then you got the platter was happily moving forward, and I can do all these things. And you still

use those materials today? Yeah, still. I still use it. I said, there's no way in hell. I can go on stage around them. I still use these. Tell me a little bit about another early recording of yours that was huge. The message. It's like a jungle sometimes. It makes me wonder how I keep from going under.

It's like a jungle sometimes. It makes me wonder how I keep from going under. And this is a pretty political song in some ways. It comes from the heart. I'm not a rapper, though, so I can't want to go too deep into what this song meant politically. But it means something to you. You play a big role in it. I think that the rappers played a big role in this song here.

And I think what happened with the... song, it's a gift, and I want to say a curse, it's because... What is that? Grand Master Flash in the Furies 5, we had a formula, like the Chicago Bulls formula, and I say

this is because... Please tell me, you're Michael Jordan in this metaphor, right? I'm the coach. So, it's like... You're Phil Jackson? So, like, when I was playing the music, I know how Mel's going to speak, so I

know how to play. I know how Creos going to speak. I know how. And this is all happening. And they had a way of breaking up words, any mini, many more. To see that,

you're looking at a person that would normally be saying the full sentence and five guys are saying it and they say this very quickly. So to look at this from a visual perspective, that made us, along with my style of DJ,

that made us kings. The era of this song right here broke that formula up. So that was the curse. Hmm. Big song. Huge song. I personally think that artists have egos.

And something that was so incredibly powerful for what we did was dismantled. Hedeman. Because now five guys are not speaking. It's just one rapper on that song. It's not five. You missed that. I missed that. And I don't miss it for me.

It's because I'm not a rapper, but I missed that formula. And I just... Why did it go away? I would say politics, and I'm going to go there. What do you mean? Politics. That's as far as I'm going to go. What does that mean?

Politics within that group, or politics around the whole... Politics around the music business. I say. You don't want to go further than that? I don't think I want to go further than that. No, you got my interest. You know, I just, it just made me cry that this formula of six people who who act like one was destroyed.

And sometimes you go into a situation where our company, they say, well, we don't want that. We want just that part. But I'm saying, that's not how you came to find us in the street. and you want just that one part. But I'm telling the executives and the producers that's not who we are. So they was like, no, this is the way we want to do this particular record

and that there... That's what happens. That would happen. So let's just say the music business, Dave. Flash, it's now 2026. Yeah. What kind of gigs are you playing? You're at your stage of your life

where you're writing memoirs, you're in documentaries, hip-hop is a matter of historical established fact. And you had a huge founding role in it, but you're still playing? I'm doing my book run, you know,

just books on the next couple of weeks and then I leave for tour. Vienna, London, Germany, Serbia. I can't remember all of them. All over the place.

So I gotta tell you, Dave, you're just going with what you're saying, just, this thing has had as ups and downs, but I must tell you, it's just, it's been interesting.

And to go on stage, I can't play a song until people stop screaming first, and then I start to play, and then I DJ and I play in front of thousands of people. It's just been great things after great things, Dave.

I mean, long may you run. Grandmaster Flash, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. It's been great. Great, man. Thank you. Grandmaster Flash. His new book is called Birth of a Culture. I'm David Remnick. That's our program for today. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell.

This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer, with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Elliot Wright, and Alejandra Deckett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.