@fashioningtheself: Textile literacy was essential to the early history of hip-hop. Grandmaster Flash used felt and wax paper as DIY tools to create a custom slipmat for his turntables. Standard turntables generated too much friction for him to move a record smoothly by hand while extending drum breaks. Drawing on his familiarity with fabrics through his mother’s work as a seamstress, he found that felt allowed the record to glide, while a layer of wax paper underneath reduced the remaining resistance. The platter could keep spinning as he held or manipulated the record. Flash notes that he still uses these same materials today and could not perform without them.

Fashioning the Self

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Monday 28 September 2026 12:23:07 GMT