See under: Mixmaster Mike. The greatest I have ever seen live.

DJ 101 from J.PERIOD:

To be a great “selector” is the MOST IMPORTANT part of being a good DJ: knowing what song to play and when to play it. In this way, the art of the “mix” comes second. First, you need to know the right tunes to play to get the party live, or to suit the situation. THEN you worry about how to combine them, or transition from one to the other. Long before I ever learned how to mix or scratch records, I was always a good selector – I knew the right song to play at the right time – and that made me a good DJ before I even stepped to a set of turntables.

The first time I really heard of Grandmaster Flash was with “The Message” http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x18lrg_grandmaster-flash-the-message_music#.UezQuBa4L8s

When you saw his name out front you thought he was rapping, but then here comes Melle Mel, who was also a huge inspiration to me. He dressed like a crazy punk rock star, with the fur jacket, leather hat, and metal studs all over… but he was also the first MC I ever heard whose lyrics were righteous and had substance. I used to hand-write those lyrics to show my Dad to convince him that hip hop was an art form of great value. True story.

If you ever want to hear Melle Mel in rare form – PREACHING! – listen to him rap about society and life and justice and injustice in the second verse of “Beat Street Breakdown.”

Note that in the video below, the “rapper” is the actor in the movie, while the voice you hear is Melle Mel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrfO6kW8EIs

Later, DJs like Q-Bert and Mixmaster Mike would take this ping pong to a whole new level, and beat-juggling was born: taking fragments of the song and cutting and mixing to create an entirely new loop, or juggling half beats and quarter beats and catching them to tweak the juggling to a half time tempo. In college I used to go watch the Invizbl Skratch Picklz at the Justice League in San Francisco, just completely tearing it up, juggling, hamster scratching beyond belief, mixing in vocal samples and sound bytes. Cut Chemist always killed at that and had the best sound bytes and samples. He is another one who definitely inspired me and created part of the foundation for my own style as a DJ.

The “breakdown” was also know as the “break”–the section of the song that set the dancefloor on fire, prompting dancers to save their best moves for the break. Hence the term: “break-dancers”. If you cop a “b-boy” stance in 2013, you should know that “b-boy” comes from “break boy”…

Joseph Saddler AKA the legendary DJ Grandmaster Flash!

I first discovered the sample for this track in a record store in Brazil and was hypnotized by it. I called the beat itself “The Traveller” just because of the vagabond gypsy vibe of the sound and when I gave it to Kweli, he built on that vibe and ended up writing his lyrics the that theme.

I can take credit for “producing” this, but only in the sense of bringing the idea to life. The beat itself is produced by DJ Premier. I am, however, one of only about 3 people in the world who hold the instrumental–ask any DJ and they will verify that this instrumental does not exist! I’ll save the story of how I got it for another day… What I can take credit for is all the cuts and scratches, and making sure that the person I let rhyme on the beat is one of the few MC’s on the planet worthy of touching it… the legendary Black Thought.