Grandmaster Flash & Furious Five elected to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

By: Yves Erwin Salomon

Hip hop legends Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five were elected into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday, January 8th. The Ronettes, Van Halen, R.E.M., and Patti Smith will also be inducted as part of the class of 2007 on March 12th at the annual ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.

Grandmaster Flash explained how the group has impacted rapper and deejays. He said: "What you're looking at is like two templates that intertwined to become the ground breaking force of hip-hop. Let me explain. Whenever you see two or more emcees split a sentence up back and forth as if one person was saying it, it's called switch overs. That set the whole tone to how emcees would rap."

Flash added: "If you see anybody doing any type of trickery on the turntables, cutting, scratching, whatever you want to call it, I'm the first deejay that created that."