I don't know what I am doing with Face Book!! Love, Grandmaster Flash

September 11, 2014 4:57 PM

Love, Grampa and GrandmaSTER FLASH: Grandmothers accidentally tagging Grandmaster Flash on Facebook.
posted by not_on_display (45 comments total)

via me, Jesus Saves
posted by jessamyn at 5:02 PM on September 11, 2014 [14 favorites]

These made me giggle uncontrollably. Outstanding.
posted by kinnakeet at 5:02 PM on September 11, 2014

I'm both whiter and blander than Wonder Bread, so I was a bit fuzzy on who Grandmaster Flash is. To the Wikipede!

Joseph Saddler (born January 1, 1958), better known as Grandmaster Flash, is an American hip hop recording artist and DJ—one of the pioneers of hip-hop...

Huh. So, Flash himself is now 56 years old....
posted by JHarris at 5:09 PM on September 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

On the one hand, I get really annoyed whenever Facebook tries to do stuff like this to me. On the other hand this is adorable.

I just wonder what Grandmaster Flash's Facebook timeline looks like.
posted by ckape at 5:09 PM on September 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

(Ooh Whiiiiite hairs) Vision poor for drivin'
(Blowin’ through red lights) and all the while I didn't brake.
posted by Angleton at 5:11 PM on September 11, 2014 [15 favorites]

JHarris: "Huh. So, Flash himself is now 56 years old"

I think that's astonishingly young, really, and says something about how young a genre hip-hop is. How many "pioneers of <musical genre>" can you think of who are younger?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 5:16 PM on September 11, 2014 [10 favorites]

Grandmaster Flash is actually an amazing hiphop pioneer who is still pretty busy being awesome, so digging these out of his facebook page actually took some work.
posted by jessamyn at 5:16 PM on September 11, 2014 [9 favorites]

THIS IS AMAZING. It's so perfect. So many things going wrong at the same time. Well, one, but that it ends up Grandmaster Flash in double awesome.
posted by GuyZero at 5:16 PM on September 11, 2014

I'd like to imagine that these posts really did come from Grandmaster Flash, since they make him seem so kind and thoughtful. Would I like Grandmaster Flash to ask me how I am and tell me not to cuss so much and offer to mail me my neck pillow?

Yes. Yes I would.

Besides, it could be worse.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 5:19 PM on September 11, 2014 [10 favorites]

I'm a little confused. So Grandma signs her message as "Grandma" but Facebook somehow autocorrects it to "Grandmaster Flash"? Or asks Grandma if she wants to tag her post with Grandmaster Flash?
posted by honestcoyote at 5:27 PM on September 11, 2014 [3 favorites]

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computer
posted by dhens at 5:27 PM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

So Grandma signs her message as "Grandma" but Facebook somehow autocorrects it to "Grandmaster Flash"?

Yes, it's a super-annoying "feature" of Facebook in that it will now "suggest" pages/profiles to tag (which will often autocomplete upon hitting Enter). I have had to go back and retype things three or four times because of this behavior.
posted by dhens at 5:29 PM on September 11, 2014 [8 favorites]

I can't breathe. (I only know who Grandmaster Flash is because Encarta Encyclopaedia had a 20 second clip of one of his songs.)
posted by Partario at 5:37 PM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Grandmaster Flash is actually a pretty good name for "older relative who is like, but isn't actually, my grandparent." It's more fun than "This is my, um, mom's husband."
posted by blnkfrnk at 5:38 PM on September 11, 2014 [7 favorites]

man i was lolling before i even clicked
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:39 PM on September 11, 2014 [3 favorites]

Grandfather, grandmother, grandmaster. Works for me.
posted by GrammarMoses at 5:40 PM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

I did ~professional social media~ back when people still were amazed at large organizations being able to respond to their posts. I'm glad that, at least for some, that magic is still alive.
posted by NoraReed at 5:44 PM on September 11, 2014

MetaFilter: where do i go to get friend
posted by Wolfdog at 5:53 PM on September 11, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'm both whiter and blander than Wonder Bread, so I was a bit fuzzy on who Grandmaster Flash is. To the Wikipede!

Joseph Saddler (born January 1, 1958), better known as Grandmaster Flash, is an American hip hop recording artist and DJ—one of the pioneers of hip-hop...

Huh. So, Flash himself is now 56 years old....

Yeah, he's been around a really, really long time and is a huge influence in music, so being whiter than bread isn't really an excuse for not knowing who Grandmaster Flash is.
posted by sweetkid at 6:25 PM on September 11, 2014 [5 favorites]

Grandmaster Flash is actually an amazing hiphop pioneer who is still pretty busy being awesome, so digging these out of his facebook page actually took some work."

Having met him, he's also kind of a dick so I like to imagine it's him having to sort all these references out of his activity feed.
posted by klangklangston at 6:31 PM on September 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

Grandmaster Flash - The Message

If you don't know Grandmaster Flash, this is a great place to start. For a while in 1982, this song was everywhere and was possibly the first rap song many people heard.

I think it was the first one for me. Being in sixth grade and singing "Don't push me cause I'm close to the edge..." on the playground. Can still remember almost all the words 32 years later. Yay nostalgia.
posted by honestcoyote at 6:35 PM on September 11, 2014 [6 favorites]

Well, I'm not really a music kind of guy anyway. Nothing against Mr. Flash, mind you, it's just not my sphere. (I suspect it's not that of many of these grandpeople either.)
posted by JHarris at 6:41 PM on September 11, 2014

The account is obviously fake, but this post is a gem.
posted by daninnj at 7:10 PM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Huh. So, Flash himself is now 56 years old....

That's grandparent age, and it amuses me further there could be legit FB posts from him to his grandkids saying "Love, Grandma and Grandmaster Flash"
posted by I am the Walrus at 7:11 PM on September 11, 2014 [6 favorites]

On the plus side, this must be really convenient when Grandmaster Flash wants to message his grand kids on Facebook.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:12 PM on September 11, 2014 [3 favorites]

Oh jinx
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:13 PM on September 11, 2014

It does tickle me though to know that there's probably a lot of blue haired old ladies from Kansas who have now seen the video for The Message.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:16 PM on September 11, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think it was the first one for me. Being in sixth grade and singing "Don't push me cause I'm close to the edge..." on the playground. Can still remember almost all the words 32 years later. Yay nostalgia.

The most amazing verse of, well anything really, starts with "A child is born with no state of mind..."
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:21 PM on September 11, 2014

I hear he can slice so precise it's almost funny, and he makes better love than a mint makes money.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 7:23 PM on September 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is even better than the Taiwanese semi-legit cassette I used to own whose liner notes referred to him as "Grandmother Flash."
posted by anthom at 7:30 PM on September 11, 2014 [8 favorites]

For more Grandmaster Flash background, check out this great Terry Gross interview from 2002. My favorite is the part near the end where he rolls out his crazy new invention at a block party -- a way to DJ using the same record on two turntables, where you don't play the whole song, you just seamlessly play the best part over and over. Except no one at the party is getting into it, until he discovers another hiphop staple: "It turned out that vocal entertainment was needed to accompany this new form of DJing ..."
posted by jhc at 7:59 PM on September 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

About "The Message," though - not only is Grandmaster Flash not the featured rapper - that's Melle Mel, Flash was the DJ in the group - but he had nothing at all to do with the making of that particular record.
posted by atoxyl at 8:01 PM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ed Piskor's Hip Hop Family Tree (music history comic) is running on The Nib (a subsite I LOVE for smart comicstuff), and, coincidentally, today's episode is "Grandmaster Flash's First Record".

also check out The Nib for "Impossible City: The Afterlife of an Army Base", "Captain Kirk vs. The Internet", and "My Meeting With Congressmen John Lewis (Awkward)" (with the classic quote "I went to Martin Luthor King Jr. Junior High School")
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:13 PM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Grandmaster Flash posted about a half hour ago: "It's true I get a lot of posts from Grandmas. Hilarious now I know why --- Respect Grandma and Grandpa. P.S. This is Hip Hop!"

I love the thought of a Facebook overrun by Grandmasters Flash.
posted by Existential Dread at 8:39 PM on September 11, 2014 [10 favorites]

klangklangston - so you met Flash. How long did you talk to him, was it alone? Was it in a professional interview setting? Was he busy? Was he not expecting to talk to people when he was doing other things? What's the circumstance?

A lot of people love me. I can also be quite a dick. It's really contingent on set and setting, and I kinda reckon it's probably the same for someone like Flash. Now - if you said that about someone like, oh, Dick Cheney, then, yeah... But Flash? Not saying he isn't, but as a general rule, I find it hard to believe. I'm also not finding much in the way of google telling me that a lot of people have an opinion of him being a dick (usually, if someone's a certified straight up dick, they'll have some sort of notoriety, especially if they're famous, right?) I tried "Asshole" "dick" "personality" etc... Not much popping up.

Finally - is that true, atoxyl? Grandmaster didn't even do "The Message" (in fact, the whole album?) Wiki says that it was a Studio/Session songwriter and Melle Mel that wrote it. Looking into it further the link says the studio guy presented it to Sylvia Robinson who presented it to the Five and none wanted to touch it, but Melle Mel thought he had some stuff to work with, but it was in a different song as well on a different labels so she had to get the rights to that line or something? The article doesn't explicitly deny that Flash performed the track, just states who wrote it originally.

Secondly - you say "record"... Do you mean the single? Not the album? Because that would be really fucking ridiculous to have Flash, known as one of the greatest DJs of all time, not performing on one of the most classic albums that bears his name. For a single I suppose I can see that, but even that I have a hard time believing.

Can you please provide source for that claim, atoxyl?
posted by symbioid at 11:22 PM on September 11, 2014

It was in a professional interview setting, though I was just there to take pictures. It was probably an hour or so, and he didn't want to be there at all. He was upset that the receptionist didn't recognize him, didn't have anything good to say about any of the Fabulous Five, was dismissive toward people who did recognize him, and seemed to simultaneously want people to make a bigger deal out of him being there while also not making as much of a big deal about it.

I don't think he's Hitler, I do think that he's a music legend who's also enough of a dick that a mild facebook annoyance is a decent punishment.

"Because that would be really fucking ridiculous to have Flash, known as one of the greatest DJs of all time, not performing on one of the most classic albums that bears his name. For a single I suppose I can see that, but even that I have a hard time believing."

He didn't perform all that much on recorded stuff with them, though. He wasn't a studio guy — DJs were very much a live thing. The music was played by studio dudes and he didn't write or perform the lyrics. He wasn't an Afrika Bambaata, he wasn't a Jam Master Jay.
posted by klangklangston at 11:55 PM on September 11, 2014

I meant "The Message" only - I said "record" because I don't know what he did when they performed it. I don't think it's disputed that Melle Mel was the only person from the Furious Five who had anything to do with the version of the song everybody knows. I didn't mean to suggest that Grandmaster Flash was not an important talent and I don't know that intentionally took credit. Mel was the main MC and deserves to be better known for it but this was before anybody knew the MC was the star, arguably. It's just ironic that the song everybody knows him for isn't his.
posted by atoxyl at 1:09 AM on September 12, 2014

uh. So, Flash himself is now 56 years old....

Which is why we must now refer to him as Grampaster Flash.
posted by Grangousier at 2:21 AM on September 12, 2014 [3 favorites]

Bucket hats. Track suits. Clean and polished comfortable sneakers. Tacky gold jewelry, and too much of it. Rolling in the Caddy down in Miami. Hip-Hop artists secretly want to be suburban grandmothers, don't they?
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:43 AM on September 12, 2014 [3 favorites]

"Mel was the main MC and deserves to be better known for it but this was before anybody knew the MC was the star, arguably."

And Grandmaster Flash suing Sugar Hill over royalties for The Message is what led to "Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five," their split from Flash.
posted by klangklangston at 8:50 AM on September 12, 2014

I guess "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It) was also also just Melle Mel and Sylvia Robinson. I never knew for sure if it was Flash or the label responsible for pulling this shit but now I'm leaning toward... both, probably.

Oh and sorry I still forgot the album was called "The Message" too. I meant the song.
posted by atoxyl at 10:33 AM on September 12, 2014

"White Lines" was released as Grandmaster + Melle Mel to imply that Grandmaster Flash was on the record when he wasn't. Sugar Hill was all kinds of shady in how they treated artists.
posted by klangklangston at 10:39 AM on September 12, 2014

I'm pretty sure "Message II (Survival)" is also post-Grandmaster-Flash Melle Mel. Both "Message" songs are so devastating -- good examples of early social-injustice-themed (also depressing) hip hop songs.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 11:22 AM on September 12, 2014

Oh god I have a hideous cough and a stitch in my side that feels like I ruptured my gallbladder
This is not what I needed today, cannot breathe, might actually die
AUGHjkfbxncmvb
posted by jake at 12:24 PM on September 12, 2014

If you want a Flash intro, I'd go with 'Adventures on the Wheels of Steel.'
posted by box at 2:00 PM on September 12, 2014 [2 favorites]