Grandmaster Flash at Epic Studios

We've been treated to many great names from hip hop in Norwich the last few years, from The Ultramagnetic MC's to Chali 2na. Tonight, the man who started it all, Grandmaster Flash is in town. The night seems to be virtually sold out; there's some familiar faces from the local scene through the years and a lot of people who look like they're well up for a good old Thursday night boogie. I particularly enjoyed the chap in the crowd who wore headphones throughout the night. Not really sure he felt the benefit to be honest.   

Chrome, local hip hop DJ and rapper extraordinaire is the first to get the heads nodding tonight. DJ Format's up next, beat matching and scratching with a box of funk and soul 7"s keeping it entirely old school. The Grandmaster appears onstage and starts his hour and half set with Something in the Air Tonight. It sets the tone for the evening, which is, in his words, "a party, not a show, with the best tracks from all genres from the past 50 years". There's definitely a party atmosphere, with everyone dancing in the great large space that Epic provides, and there is lots of singing along. Flash doesn't play any track for longer than a minute, so in a set of an hour and half that's a hella lot of songs. I'm just going to list some for you, so you can get a sense of what he did. Most of the tracks were speeded up, and layered with phat hip hop beats, but subtly so, just to boost them a bit. What was clever was his ability to choose tracks, of all genres, from through the years which have a good beat or spoke to him in some way, and to put them up against each other. It's kind of the way I used to DJ; if you play songs you absolutely LOVE, then most other people will love them too. It was certainly more interesting than a straight hip hop set, although I did hear some people were disappointed that he didn't play more of his own tracks or more of a straight hip hop set. He uses the Serano system, where you do scratch with records in the traditional sense, but you only have 2 actual records which are programmed through a laptop with all the songs you want to use. Anyway...