#grandmaster flash

[undergroundrockpress]

Debbie Harry, Fab 5 Freddy, Joseph Saddler aka Grandmaster Flash, Tracy Wormworth, and Chris Stein, 1981.

Photo by Janette Beckman.

[joeinct]

Tina Weymouth and Grandmaster Flash, NYC, Photo by Laura Levine, 1981

[todayinhiphophistory]

Today in Hip Hop History:

Grandmaster Flash was born January 1, 1958

[otis-hill]

[oldmanpeace]

Grandmaster Flash and Tina Weymouth of the Talking Heads, 1982.

[lisamarie-vee]

[tygerland]

Tina Weymouth & Grandmaster Flash - NYC, 1981 - by Laura Levine.

[davidhudson]

Happy 66th, Joseph Saddler aka Grandmaster Flash.

With Debbie Harry, Fab 5 Freddy (Fred Brathwaite), a friend, and Chris Stein. 1981 photo by Charlie Ahearn.

[kemetic-dreams]

Mainstream breakthrough

Flavor Flav of Public Enemy performing in 1991

In 1990, Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet was a significant success with music critics and consumers. The album played a key role in hip hop's mainstream emergence in 1990, dubbed by Billboard editor Paul Grein as "the year that rap exploded". In a 1990 article on its commercial breakthrough, Janice C. Thompson of Time wrote that hip hop "has grown into the most exciting development in American pop music in more than a decade." Thompson noted the impact of Public Enemy's 1989 single "Fight the Power", rapper Tone Lōc's single Wild Thing being the best-selling single of 1989, and that at the time of her article, nearly a third of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 were hip hop songs. In a similar 1990 article, Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times put hip hop music's commercial emergence into perspective:

It was 10 years ago that the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" became the first rap single to enter the national Top 20. Who ever figured then that the music would even be around in 1990, much less produce attractions that would command as much pop attention as Public Enemy and N.W.A? "Rapper's Delight" was a novelty record that was considered by much of the pop community simply as a lightweight offshoot of disco—and that image stuck for years. Occasional records—including Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" in 1982 and Run-DMC's "It's Like That" in 1984—won critical approval, but rap, mostly, was dismissed as a passing fancy—too repetitious, too one dimensional. Yet rap didn't go away, and an explosion of energy and imagination in the late 1980s leaves rap today as arguably the most vital new street-oriented sound in pop since the birth of rock in the 1950s.

[strathshepard]

[chaoticdesertdweller]

Debbie Harry, Fab 5 Freddy, Grandmaster Flash, Tracy Wormworth, and Chris Stein, 1981. Photo by Charlie Ahearn.

[todayinhiphophistory]

Today in Hip Hop History:

Grandmaster Flash was born January 1, 1958

[soupy-sez]

CB4 (1993)

[timmurleyart]

Hollis crew. 📻👟💵☝🏽🎤

[lisamarie-vee]

[burnandshiverconsulting]

Timeless Cool