We asked Alan Light, a founding editor of Vibe and former editor-in-chief of Spin magazine, to run a mic check with the Grandmaster.Īlan Light: So how did you and Baz Luhrmann connect? The series, which launches in mid-August, was created by movie director Baz Luhrmann and includes actor Mamoudou Athie as the youthful Flash. Now Flash is revisiting those seminal days as an associate producer on The Get Down, a new Netflix drama set in ’70s-era New York. He and his now-estranged crew, the Furious Five (which he won’t discuss due to a legal dispute), shared in some of the genre’s earliest hits, such as “Freedom,” “New York New York,” and “The Message.” In 2007, they were the first hip-hop artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Using a jerry-rigged cross fader and two platters side by side, DJ Grandmaster Flash, as Saddler rechristened himself, helped lay the foundation for the emerging “hip-hop” style. So Saddler, an electronics student at Samuel Gompers Vocational High School, set about transforming the humble turntable into an instrument.
I didn’t know the name Baz Luhrmann, but I read his film credits and was like, ‘Oh shit!'”
