ON THE RECORD

AS A MUSIC-OBSESSED teen growing up in the Bronx in the 1970s, Joseph Saddler noticed that every party song had one drum break or keyboard solo that made dancers go wild. What if you could string those fragments together to create a nonstop frenzy?

So Saddler, an electronics student at Samuel Gompers Vocational High School, set about transforming the humble turntable into an instrument. 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. 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.

Now Flash