Grandmaster Flowers: Hip-Hop Originator

"I went bombing hard, taking spray paint out of metal and wood shop in High school and doing my thing thing on trains near my school that went all over Brooklyn and Manhattan, and cats would see it and it kind of increased my status as the one that was putting the clicks name out there. At the same time while all that was going on, disco parties and jams were happening in the streets. The era of the Disco D.J’s was happening. Guys like DJ Grand Master Flowers, Plumber, Maboya and Pete D.J. Jones were legends at that time. So we would hear these names and I was too young to go to those parties, but I had older relatives that went. I saw the flyers and I heard their names.

I would also see some of these cats names tagged up on walls. Like Flowers and his man Dice. I began to put two and two together that this graffiti thing is some real hot shit. Cats from Brooklyn had their names all over, like all the popular intersections and places where people were going, whether its downtown Brooklyn, Fulton street, Albee square Mall, Flatbush avenue, in all the popular train stations I would see these cats names. I said this is something I really wanted to be heavily involved with. But at the same time I was at these parties in the parks with these d.j.s and they would bring their equipment out in the summer time to places like Reese Beach in the 70’s, and then I got to see Pete d.j. Jones and the rest. They were like Gods in the community, Rock Stars. They inspired other guys to get DJ sets. Frankie D, Master D and other started to get popular in Bed-Stuy. These guys would do the Disco thing, but occasionally they began to try to scratch records a little bit, and play music that I never heard any where before."

a documentary narrated by Chuck D went up on youtube in 2014: https://youtu.be/1G13bR0B0-8

a year or two ago i bought a bunch of his 45s from a guy who was friends with him. they all have handwritten DJ FLOWERS written on the labels. #history