Review: Grandmaster Flash (@DJFlash4eva) Live @BBowlLondon !

Few people deserve the title ‘Legend’ quite as much as Grand­mas­ter Flash.  As a record­ing artist and espe­cially as a DJ, his con­tri­bu­tion to hip-hop and it’s cul­ture are unpar­alleled.  Flash is, for example cred­ited with invent­ing and devel­op­ing the Back­spin tech­nique, Punch Phras­ing and Scratch­ing, three tech­niques that are still prev­elant in hip-hop today.  The man is noth­ing short of a pion­eer­ing geni­us and that is why, when I Am Hip Hop heard he was play­ing in Lon­don, we knew we had to be there.

Flash hit the stage on time, which is always a bonus, and played a 2‑hour set that really was some­thing else.

It was clear that Grand­mas­ter Flash doesn’t feel defined by or con­fined to the genre he helped form.  His set encom­passed so many styles that it would be almost impossible to name them all, the set played like sound call of the greats, play­ing some of the greatest rep­res­ent­a­tions of each, from hip-hop, soul, doo-wop and r&b through to rock’n’roll, pop, hard rock and indie, to name just a few.

In spite of the vari­ety, Grand­mas­ter Flash, blen­ded and mixed mas­ter­fully, provid­ing a per­fect flow, tak­ing the crowd on a seam­less audio jour­ney.  Also act­ing as his own mic man, he hyped the crowd expertly, adding to the excite­ment of cer­tain drops.  

A par­tic­u­larly icon­ic moment was served when Flash cut up Run-DMC’s ‘Peter Piper’, cre­at­ing a time machine that took us all back to 80’s New York and the pin­nacle of old skool hip hop, for those of us that weren’t there, this is prob­ably the closest we could ever dream of com­ing.

The dance­floor remained packed out for the whole 2‑hour set, it was a party that none of us wanted to end.  Next time Grand­mas­ter Flash is in town, you really should check him out, a true embod­i­ment of hip hop and what it’s all about.

By Micky Roots

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Micky Roots

Micky roots is one of the edit­ors of I am hip hop magazine, a pure hip hop head and visu­al artist he brings his strong know­ledge of hip hop, social con­scious­ness & polit­ic­al con­cern to No Bounds.

Latest posts by Micky Roots (see all)

• REVIEW | ‘SUNDAY DIN­NER ON A MONDAY’ — SPEECH DEBELLE’S POWER­FUL MES­SAGE THROUGH RAP MAS­TERY — June 19, 2023
• Review: Grand­mas­ter Flash (@DJFlash4eva) Live @BBowlLondon ! — Janu­ary 13, 2016
• The Essex Dream… An Inter­view With Cally (@kickitwidcally) — Novem­ber 20, 2015

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