The classic song that got Dr Dre into hip-hop at 14 years old
Dr Dre is undoubtedly one of hip-hop’s all-time most influential figures, but he, too, has his icons. He was a teenager as the old-school era of hip-hop reached its height, and he was hugely inspired by what he heard emerging from it.
There was one song in particular that convinced the young Dre that he needed to get involved with this hip-hop thing. As he explained during an interview with Vibe in 2010, it was a track that he first heard around the age of 14 — and it “made me want to DJ. It made me want to know what hip-hop was.”
The song was ‘The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel,’ released in 1981 via Sugar Hill Records. A popular single in its day, it ultimately went on to change the nature of hip-hop forever.
The song is a live DJ mix performed by Grandmaster Flash, in which he exhibits his skills on the decks in what were profoundly fresh and innovative ways for the time. Working across three turntables, Flash crossfaded, cut, rubbed, scratched and otherwise opened up a whole range of possibilities for DJs to play with.
Flash recorded his song in one go, refusing to make any edits after the fact. Whenever he made a mistake, he refused to carry on and instead started from the beginning again. This meant it took anywhere between 10 and 15 takes to get it right, but, eventually, he got there.
A long list of songs were sampled on his mix, some of which are huge hits in their own right. Chic’s ‘Good Times,’ Blondie’s ‘Rapture,’ and Queen’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ are the most well-known, but a great many other tracks were sampled, including some early hip-hop numbers from Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash himself.
Despite Flash’s initial reservations that the song would only appeal to other DJs, it proved to be something of a sensation. It only reached number 55 on Billboard’s R&B chart, but the critics loved it and aspiring DJs all took note of the possibilities it revealed. A 14-year-old Dre was among them.
“That was the song that did it,” he said. “I immediately went home and called some friends and we were taking apart one of my friend’s mother’s stereo sets… We figured out how to make a mixer from the balance button and got it cracking — started making tapes.”
Pretty soon after those early experiments, Dre’s mother got him a proper mixer for Christmas and he was, in his words, “off and running from there.” His path to hip-hop greatness had opened up ahead of him, with the legacy of ‘The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel’ guiding his way.