How did Grandmaster Flash develop the needle-dropping technique?

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hip-hop American rap group Public Enemy, 1988.

Grandmaster Flash developed the needle-dropping technique to prolong short drum breaks in dance records, a crucial innovation in the evolution of hip-hop deejaying.1

To execute this technique, he utilized two copies of the same record simultaneously. While one record played, he would manually move the needle on the second turntable back to the beginning of the break. By alternating between the two, he created a continuous loop of the percussive break, which encouraged improvisational dancing. This skill, along with others like "scratching"—where the record is slid back and forth under the needle—helped define the technical foundation of the genre.1