Toppa Top 10: Caribbean Hip-Hop Pioneers

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September 20, 2011

3. Grandmaster Flash

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Yup, all three figures in the “trinity of hip-hop music,” as writer Jeff Chang described Herc, Bam and Flash in his book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, are Caribbean. The man who pioneered the backspin, popularized scratching, first incorporated a drum machine into hip-hop and generally turned the turntables into an instrument (and founded hip-hop’s first supergroup in the Furious Five), Joseph “Grandmaster Flash” Saddler grew up in the Bronx, but he was born in Bridgetown, Barbados.