Raised in the Bronx, New York, Grandmaster Flash was one of the seminal DJs at
the birth of hip hop, noted for pioneering a number of turntable techniques
including scratching, phrasing and back spinning. The Sugarhill Gang may have
given hip hop its first hit when Rapper's Delight came out in 1979, but it was
Flash and his crew the Furious Five who gave the genre a political conscience
with dark tales of ghetto life on the 1982 single The Message. Responsible for
moving the genre away from good-time party anthems and paving the way for Public
Enemy, gangsta rap and generations o...