"With this CD technology, you can just remix a record right there on the spot"
About this Quote
The excitement in Jam Master Jay's line isn't really about a shiny new format; it's about control. "Right there on the spot" carries the DJ's old fantasy of instant responsiveness - taking what the room gives you and flipping it in real time - and it reframes a supposedly consumer tech upgrade (the CD) as a weapon for makers. He hears portability and flexibility, not audiophile purity. That's a musician talking like an engineer: the point isn't the object, it's the workflow.
The intent is practical and slightly evangelistic. Jay is selling a future where the barrier between listening and creating gets thinner. Hip-hop was built on turning playback devices into instruments - two turntables as a drum kit, the mixer as a scalpel. CD technology, in this moment, promises speed: cleaner cueing, quicker access, less physical fragility than vinyl, new ways to chop and loop. The subtext is that innovation doesn't politely arrive; artists hijack it.
Context matters: Jay comes from an era when sampling culture was getting both technologically supercharged and legally policed. As clearance costs rose and lawsuits chilled experimentation, "remix...on the spot" also reads as a bid for immediacy and autonomy - the thrill of mutation before anyone can gatekeep it. It's a small sentence that sketches a big shift: the DJ moving from curator to live editor, and the music industry inching toward the laptop age without quite realizing who's going to run it.
The intent is practical and slightly evangelistic. Jay is selling a future where the barrier between listening and creating gets thinner. Hip-hop was built on turning playback devices into instruments - two turntables as a drum kit, the mixer as a scalpel. CD technology, in this moment, promises speed: cleaner cueing, quicker access, less physical fragility than vinyl, new ways to chop and loop. The subtext is that innovation doesn't politely arrive; artists hijack it.
Context matters: Jay comes from an era when sampling culture was getting both technologically supercharged and legally policed. As clearance costs rose and lawsuits chilled experimentation, "remix...on the spot" also reads as a bid for immediacy and autonomy - the thrill of mutation before anyone can gatekeep it. It's a small sentence that sketches a big shift: the DJ moving from curator to live editor, and the music industry inching toward the laptop age without quite realizing who's going to run it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|
More Quotes by Jam
Add to List
