Right Now
They Market Hip Hop as a thug thing, like
"Yeeuh, I'll bust a cap and push keys and me and my Lex and my Tec-9..."
and so you know, all the Bboys were left out
The heads would not understand if I told them the importance of breakin' culturally
It is over their head
No doubt, cuz you got a lot of new kids in here
they don't know nothing about old school, or they claim to be old school, they be frontin'
You know what I mean?
I can't really say I invented it, because it was a couple of us that really invented it
Um, in School
In 7th Grade
And because it's a, it's a real artful way to live through the bad times of it
It's almost like a bible, you know what I mean man, eventually you gotta go back to the original scripture
and the original language it was written in
and, we, I think that everybody in the East and the West coast needs to redefine our dance
and then take control of it again.
And the intensity of Bboying, and then just the intensity of our situation in the ghetto...
All of that, piled into one, when you look at Bboying, it makes sense
It's like, "Okay, I can see where this is coming from." It's a lot deeper than just "Well this is fun and I think I'll...
It may start out as that
And getting notice for the culture of it, not cuz its a street dance and its always going to stay in the streets
I think people need this, there's no way you can not need this in society right now.
Coming from the ghetto, where everyone thinks its so negative, and we're doing something positive
You know what i'm saying? How can that not become big, or how can that not become respected in society?
We did the first show that set the foundation of what has become an industry now and we ain't gettin no love...
Why is that?
We were known as Bboys
Bboying is like the ultimate body manifestation of Hip Hop
Not only do you have your feet moving and your hands moving, you are using every single part of your body
Your head, your neck, your intellect and also your character
It's like a charge that I get, it's kind of equivalent to the excitement you get from watching..
a basketball player coming down and he's about to do an incredible move, and you just "ahhhh"
It's like you create this tension and you release it, and visually its exciting
It's an incredible dance, I mean, who in a million years would have thought like wow, spinning on your head..
Or you know, doing windmills, having your feet kick up and propel
Who would have thought that a person can spin on one hand?
It's not a trend, you cannot say it's a trend anymore, it's a legitimate artform.
You can't just do it 2 hours a day, and "Okay I'll do it when I go to a jam.."
We used to eat, piss, shit, drink and think bboying.
Whenever you heard Sex Machine, Just Begun, Apache...
For any real Bboy they will feel it in their body and it would just make you dance
Even if you really didn't feel like dancing
To me it's about music, it's about what music does to people
Music is what makes me develop my styles and my moves
The record that comes on makes me feel a certain way and that's the way I feel when I dance
Breakdance is always..it's like... It's Hip Hop. Straight up.
Hip Hop is the name of our creative intelligence
Hip Hop is a culture that started in the Boogie Down Bronx
Hip Hop is the different elements dealing with music,
Rap
Graffiti Art
Bboys, what you call "Break boys"
Or Bgirls, what you call "Break girls"
and also dealing with Culture
And a whole movement dealing with: Knowledge, Wisdom and Understanding as well as
Peace, Unity, Love and Fun..
Hip Hop is beautiful to me because it always challenges America's notion of what they believe
young disenfranchised people to be
Like these people, us, who are supposed to be like the bottom of society, not knowing anything..
Not have like one good idea
Come up with like, Breaking...
I think it really started out of a few brothers or sisters that just didn't care what people thought
You know, just responded to these breaks
Kids with no money, living in the ghetto, living in an urban environment, living in the projects
Creating a multibillion dollar industry
Hip Hop is progressed from when it was just Bboys and Bgirls and DJs and Rappers
To now an international phenomenon
All these other Rap artists started coming around, started making money
And i'm thinking, "Wait a minute, what about Kool Herc?"
He was the one who started this whole thing
Kool Herc is God Father of Hip Hop when we say "Of Hip Hop" we mean the whole rim of things
Cuz he did Graffiti..
He did, he brought the music and his crew did the dancing
So when they say he's the God Father of Hip Hop, they actually mean he's the God Father of Hip Hop
"He definitely is"
When Kool Herc gave a party, everybody be there
And if you search the history, anybody we know as like the first big DJ was Kool Herc
You know, we used to all go to Herc's Parties, we used to dance to Herc's parties
When I was 5 or 6 years old I used to listen to Herc play
He used to play at Sedgwick Ave. in the Bronx
I lived in 1600 Sedgwick Ave. in the Bronx, the building right next door
But I couldn't ever go, but I would always just keep in the back of my mind
this obscure kind of scene that I wanted to be involved in, wanted to be down with
He was starting Hip Hop
We thought of Herc every fucking where we went, Herc was the man!
Cuz Herc had the shit!
Cuz Herc had the atmosphere of, I mean, really there was nothing like a Kool Herc Party
We heard the music from way down the block
And you know, Herc had the big speakers..
We walked down the block, the closer we got, the louder the bass got
and all we could hear was this tall light skinned guy going "This is DJ Kool Herc and you always come back for more"
Half the party was inside and half was outside
That's how packed it got, until one summer I gave the first block party right here between the buildings
And I told them where my career was heading, where the clientel was heading we couldn't come back here
That was it.
That was the birth of Hip Hop man
Herc used to play a part of a record that had a "break down" in it
and that's why they call the records Break Beats now
It was the part of any record that had a "break down" where all the music dropped out and it was just the beat
And these beats were so hype and so frantic that..
when the music dropped out it was just the beat everybody would go off
And I noticed people who would just wait 'till those particular part of the record
And I started buying two records, I started prolonging records, the breaks.
For instance, James Brown, coming to "Clap your hands, stomp your feet, Clap your Hands, Stomp your feet"
I get another one to extend that part, "Clap your hands, Clap Clap your hands"
We used to always always always, when we were in the circle, wait for the break of the record
That was it. We would get down to the break of the record.
I called that particular part of the music, the merry-go-round.
Because I'd be taking the merry-go-round back and forth, giving you no slack
The break of the record, B. Break. We are the B. Boys.
The word Bboy orginated from Kool Herc
Bboy should really have stood for Bronx
Or really, Breaking Boys because you know when people be breaking at parties you know you're starting trouble
Bboys and Bgirls, Break, Beat, Break Boys, Break Girls
I could tell you straight up..
Breakin' comes from the street terminology
When people used to say "Why you breaking on me, why my moms breaking on me
Why you acting crazy, it really just meant doing shit above normal
The DJs used to cut breaks
And the Bboys would break to what? The Breaks.
So well you know, its just common sense man
You know when somebody get mad, yo hes breaking, stop breaking man
And when Kool Herc says it, its official.
Bboy, boys that break, it didn't come from breaks on the record
It comes from, "this man broke"
He went to a breaking point
You know what i'm saying? So we just used that exaggeration of that term
to the dancing, the Bboys, the Break Boys
Breaking goes back as far as I know, talking to, founders of the dance
No later than '73
And these are breakers who used to break mainly on top
It was like a whole new movement, just like a spontaneous thing that just happened at the parties
Certain styles of dances came out that you knew was the new dance, and did it.
But with breaking, burning and going off
Other people that liked it would adapt it and that became like that agenda
You knew how to do it you just come in, you know, do your little posturing and posing
And you know, and then you go down
And then like if you doing a good move people would gather around
So that you got a little circle, and somebody might get in there and challenge you
All back here was lit up
Lit up with music, and this is where a lot of them started dancing at
Put a speaker right out here..
And everybody having fun
All out, all out crazy stuff
Cuz you see all the shit come together
Then you got people like the Nigga Twinz, all of a sudden they're going down to the floor
He was one of the brothers that used to be down with Kool Herc
And he had like, a little spin move, where he would like
Do that little spin move
And that was actually the first time I've ever seen somebody, you know, go down on the floor
We saw people dancing and we wanted to dance
You know, and it's just that our style of dancing was not like anybody else's
The funny thing was that the Nigga Twinz used to always have straws in their mouths
The Nigga Twinz used to come in with cigars and trench coats
And they used to come in and split the place up
And act like Groucho Marx
And they just walking with the cigars and then meet up in the middle
When we used to go down on the floor
We didn't get dirty
And we didn't dance on linoleum
And we didn't dance on cardboards, we danced on the cement
Them was the real Bboys back in the days, you know what I'm saying?
The original Top Rock is in the Top Rock that they do now
They go like this
That was the original Top Rock
It wasn't like this, you know what I mean?
And there was the Indian Step that goes like this
Our Up Rock was straight up Bboy Up Rock
Like, yeah Like, yeah
Straight up, straight up Bboy
Bboying on the floor didn't come out until like maybe the ending of '74, '75
When people started actually started going down
And breaking on the floor
I don't know who did it, eventually somebody went down and stayed down
Uprocking, I brung it to the floor
You know? That's why I was so good cuz I was
From there on it just kept going and kept going through
Until someone brung it out of the Bronx River, and before you know it there was Zulu Kings
Word up!
It was really a combination of sweeps
CCs, which is the side to side movements when you are facing the front
And steps like the Russian
Which looked exactly like a Russian where you crossed your arms and kicked to the front
The steps were a lot more basic and it looked a lot more...
If there's a Bboy out there that I would compare Old Style to, the real Old Style
It's Frosty Freeze
When you see Frosty in like Flashdance and old footage of him
And sometimes he still does it today when you see his footwork it doesn't look complete
That looks more like what the original Bboys looked like back in the day
They used to do a style that I hardly see anyone do
Which is more like jerking type of..
It wasn't like a 6 step, you know, "this is how it goes"
It was a little more sporadic
And wild spirit like "Boom Bah Freeze and..." You know what i'm saying?
And then with the Godfather of Hip Hop myself, Afrika Bambaata
You have what you call the Zulu Kings
I grew up watching more like the Zulu Kings, Beaver, Beaver was like the biggest name in Bboying period.
I mean you couldn't find nobody better than Beaver until Spy came along
and blasted him with Trac2 and them brothers
Everything, all the breaking and stuff like that, it was considered undergound
Until Kool Herc brought everything out into the open
And that was like say '74, '75
All the underground stuff, all the in house, all the hallway dances and all the house party dances
Were brought out to the street
And the more they took it to the street
The more nationalities got involved in it
It was no longer an Afro-American thing
The Hispanics took to the dance
I know from fact that when I went to some parts
It was rare to see a Puerto Rican dancer Breakin
And when they did it was like "Oh shit you got a Puerto Rican Bboy!" You know?
A lot of people used to call it like
Yo, like you know, the Latinos you know
Moreno means black, you know, and they be like "Yo that's that Moreno style"
You know that's the original style of Bboying
Those black kids invented breaking as we know it, as we understand it
It was the Puerto Rican kids that put breakers on their back
Batch is, one of the first Hispanic breakers ever
"I'm funky and I'm 35 years old"
Salsoul was the crew where basically we all came out of
The first all Hispanic Breaking crew
After Salsoul, Batch started up the TBB Crew
And they were a big crew
We was one of the best Break Dancing crews out there
And I believe that, you know, up to today's date
If I wouldn't have kept going to jail
You know, and a lot of my people's getting killed
And going to jail as well, we could have probably been big in the industry out here making money
The swipes in the air you see Legs do
That was originated by my partner, Spy.
Who I consider the best breaker I have ever seen break
That's, undisputable
I mean whoever knows breaking, that name has to come up
He's one of the first Bboys ever!
And he was known as "The man with 1000 moves" and his name is Spy
So I want to bring him up here so y'all can see..Come on' Come on' up here man!
Spy was a legend to me because he was already called "The man with 1000 moves"
I used to always go to Mom and Pops
Social club, or night club whatever you want to call it, it was a basement really
On Crotona Ave. and I used to go there a lot to try and see Spy
And then one day I saw Spy there
I'll never forget he had this red hat on and his Afro was just like poofing right out the side
His hat was to the side, just like this
And that's why whenever I go down right now, whenever I start breaking
And I got a hat on, you know this is just like straight Spy, this is the Spy in me, you know what I mean?
When they would tell me stories about Spy
I would look in the sky and be like, trying to picture myself with it, trying to put myself there
You know? Like in the gymnasium in the church
And when I saw him break I was like "Wooow!"
He was just, he just, there's like this energy around a person you know what I'm saying
There's an energy around people that, you know the stories, all the stories
There's a reason why they are being said, there was an energy around him
He was mad clean and mad smooth, it was just like he didn't have to do anything really incredible
Whatever he did, it looked sweet
Trac2 was like a little ladies man back then
You know Trac2 that, at one point they say he was the best
Jojo and them you know, used to be off the hook! For real!
They used to be like traveling!
They was like Gypsies in a way because they used to find out wherever they jamming at, go there
And whoever was dancing over there they would knock them off, for real!
Them boys were just so incredible, they were like stars coming out
These brothers would come out dressed, you know, not like bums like a Bboy was usually all bummy dressed
These guys would be dressed nice, they would come out and they were like stars!
"Yo, there goes Jojo, there goes Spy, there goes Jimmy D...there goes Trac2 right there..."
With his big old track name plate
Those are the brothers that made up the moves, all the moves you see nowadays, come from the root of those people
It was like '79, late '78
By then, you know, a lot of Black brothers weren't really dancing anymore
The Disco scene killed Break Dancing.
In the Disco scene the DJ couldn't throw in no beats, he had to keep that..
He had to keep that, so for him to throw in Apache would disrupt the dance floor and he'd get fired
You couldn't really ask a girl to dance and she'd be like "Yeah"
And then you'd be like...You know what I'm saying?! She ain't trying to feel that!
When I started doing my shit in '77, by time '79 came around
I had brothers looking at me like "Yo, why you doing that, that's played out!"
I used to hustle and I used to practice by myself
Because I didn't dare to cut in with the girls thinking that a girl might be like "Ooh, who's you?" you know?
So I used to just take to the floor and I took all of my aggression
If they didn't notice me for my hustling abilities, they were going to notice me for my Breaking abilties
Rock Steady Crew started in '77, a lot of it's members were like All Star Bboys
From the Bronx
The guys that started, Jimmy D and Jojo they hung out at 115 Park at the Bronx
We came up with the word Rock Steady, we started thinking, because we wanted to continue dancing
We wanted to keep it at a steady pace
You know when they started doing it, a lot of people called it "Rocking", "Going off"
And what they wanted to do, you know, they noticed that a lot of people were stopping around '76, '77
And you know, they wanted to keep it going on you know what I'm saying?
They wanted to keep the "Rock", "Steady"
And when they started getting too old, and it started dieing down with them, they passed it along to Legs
In '79 I moved to Manhattan. In 1979 a lot of Bboys were locked down
Doing stick ups, whatever, murders or went away to the job core
Or just got regular jobs
Retirement age for a Bboy back then was like 16, 17 years old
When I moved to Manhattan I used to always try to come back to the Bronx and go over to jams
Do whatever I can to get back on a weekend, stay on Crotona Ave.
Between the summer of '76 to '77, me and my friends, we had a crew called the Rock City Crew
And then like, around '79 the dance started fadeing out
I still kept on, but the only time I would go down is if I seen somebody else
And then my cousin TyFly, he introduced me to Ken Swift and his crew called the Young City Boys
My crew, were just like, mischievous, we used to do things like
Go and throw, there's a, down the alley there's a precinct right straight there
And we would throw eggs at the police and run
They was like, you know, 3-4 years younger than me or so, I looked like a big kid to them
But, you know I told them any time y'all have any battles coming up, you know
I'll take your side
I got down with Rock Steady when I battled Legs and then a lot of my crew got down with Rock Steady
And Mr. Freeze was part of Rock Steady in the Bronx already
The only white boy that I knew that was a Bboy, was Mr. Freeze
And he was the only White boy, the first White boy in the Bronx with juice
He could go to any Black, Puerto Rican neighborhood and walk through and say
"I'm Mr. Freeze, Rock Steady Crew" and they was like "Ooh, Yo, you cool man..."
Me and my cousin Lenny Len, we was traveling all over the place!
Battling people, and then just like start hanging out with them
When you hang out with those people they might know someone that might be breaking in another area
Like, alright cool let's go over there, I want to battle them
It's like the martial arts films where it's like..
I heard your style is good! But mine is better!
And you go there and you test their style, and that was my way of recruiting.
Our crew was called the Rock City Rockers man
From the 173rd St. area
We were battling, we would do it for fun because there were really nobody in our area that were..
really involved, until we met up with a guy called Crazy Legs
I was like "Ohh man, I want to adapt that style"
That's why my name is Little Crazy Legs
That's basically how I met everyone else that ended up being in Rock Steady
You know I met up with Frosty Freeze, he knew people that would take new people
Ken Swift, Mr. Wiggles, then you had my peeps from our Crotona
Toxic, A. One, we just had like 500 members of Rock Steady
Johnny J is my name
Frosty Freeze, please
Rip Ski, please
What happened?
Dualism
Crazy Legs
Lenny
Kenny
Robski
Mr. Freeze
Toprock Can't Be Stopped
One of the first times I met Rock Steady and we did something together
Henry Chalfant, legendary Graffiti photographer and documentarian
Got together with the Rock Steady Crew because so many Graffiti artists used to come in his studio
To look at his photos of the trains
He began to realize that a lot of these guys were also breakdancers
Hence, they were the Rock Steady Crew
Henry knew me, he knew a bunch of other heads
He said "Listen I wanted to have a, put together like a show"
They projected the slides up of the Graffiti
While the Rock Steady Crew danced and I rapped and the DJ was cutting it up
And that was reviewed in the Village Voice
The Village Voice wrote a big article on that
And from then, like it seemed like it was on
We started doing that, Henry Chalfant put us on
And we what we were doing is we were breaking up Rock Steady Crew into 2 groups
It was Rock Steady and Break Masters, for shows
We just battled each other, but it got to a point to where like "Yo let's make it interesting"
And we were hooked up with a show at the Lincolin Center
Henry Chalfant again, hooked us up with that show
And it was like "Yo, let's battle dynamic in a neutral ground now"
At Lincolin Center, Manhattan...Boom!
And after it was covered by National Geographic
It came out on the front page of the Metro Section of the New York Times
It was also on 20-20
And they showed it on Channel 7 ABC News
I just remember seeing plays on a news mount
Like, "Ooh shit!" You know like, "There's Legs!"
And at the end of the battle they were like "Who won the battle?!"
All you heard was "Rock Steady! Rock Steady!"
Like in the middle of Lincolin Center!
One day I was watching TV and I saw Rock Steady on TV and I was like "Woah!"
"If they can do it, we can do it!"
And so I got a group back together and went and recruited Chino and we started from there
To make a long story short,
We met Michael Holman, who was some type of a manager to Rock Steady
And in 1982, they offered us a battle..
I had a night club called Negril
The first Hip Hop club in downtown New York
And I invited them, The Rock Steady Crew, to preform every Thursday night
And believe me, everybody was there..
Ren Ricard, Francesco Clemente, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring..
And so here's where Negril comes in to exposing Hip Hop to the rest of the world
You know because, New York is a media capital
Every important magazine, every important news paper, has a representation in New York City
"The man! The man!"
After a while I started getting a little bit bored with just Rock Steady Crew doing a dance performance
And I said "Legs, what's up with these battles I keep hearing about" I didn't really know
And after a couple of weeks he found a crew called The Floor Masters
Well actually they needed a crew to battle so that they could look good on film!
And they wanted a crew that wasn't as good as them, so that they could look really good on film
And what they didn't know was that The Floor Masters were really good!
And when Floor Masters came down to perform, a light turned on in my head
Because what I saw was Breakers
Who may not have been as good as Rock Steady crew in the finesse and style in their break
What they lacked in that, they made up for it in the athleticism of breaking
They spun longer, faster and harder
And I thought "That's what I want to do, I want a crew that's athletic!"
A crew that would eventually find its way into the Olympics
Michael Holman saw something that he felt like "Wooow! This is a real good thing!"
And, you know, they changed the name from Floor Masters to New York City Breakers
A lot of people think that if you're from New York and you're from the Bronx that you're no good
But we're from the Bronx and we are here to show everybody that we're good
And that the Bronx doesn't just have bums and ghettos, but it got something good too
Cuz we're the freshest kids out there
I had embarked with Charlie Ahearn to make the first Hip Hop movie, Wild Style
My main intent with Wild Style was to show that, Break Dancing, Graffiti and Rap were one
It was connected, nobody had seen these forms as being a part of each other
I sought to make this film to bring all these forms together in one format
So that people could see how they interrelate
Wild Style, that was the one movie that captured more of the true essence of Hip Hop
Around that time, we were just doing it to have fun and gain recognition
We ain't never think we would turn out to be famous or you know be taken world wide
This park right here..
We basically named it Rock Steady Park
Because it was a central meeting place for all the chapters of Rock Steady in the early '80s
We used to come around here and just act up, you know
We kind of like shared the park with everybody, everybody knew each other
You got Rock Steady on one side of the park and then you had all the drug dealers on this side
Like people selling mescaline, loose joints
There's a carpet store now
But, that's where we used to get our cardboard and bring it to the back
Right there it was just basically, roughing it up, concrete style, just doing our thing
And you know, scrapes and bruises, cutting up the back
Getting all the, what what we call the "Bboy burns" on their shoulders and things like that
So many things have gone down here
I mean, you've had like the Buffalo Gals video was filmed here
The lady that was our manager at the time
Kool Lady Blue
Told us that these people saw the show and wanted us in their movie Flashdance
And that was it right there
But, do you remember what we said?
What did we say?
When she said I'd like you to be in a movie, we were all like..
"No! We don't want to do a movie like that where everyone is going to start doing our moves!"
Or, the way we though back then was..
They were going to "bite"
And I remember like it was yesterday
It was in the dance studio, we did not want to do it
But then she said, "You'll get paid! The pay is $1038 Dollars!"
And we were like "......Okay!"
Jennifer Beals didn't really talk to us there
But after the premeire on Broadway New York, when they saw the response
The public and the press on how crazy they were, when the world first saw Bboying, was through us
I mean during the scene, the actual scene people were going out of their minds
Besides chills going through our bodies, you know we couldn't believe it!
We were like "Holy shit!" "We're on the screen!"
When we came out, the press was all over us, all of a sudden Jennifer Beals was like..
"Hey! Hi!" You know, she got in the middle with us with pictures
And we were like "Whatever, get in the pictures.."
So, you know she took pictures with us..
And it just, that's when it kind of escalated for us
Breaking hit the West Coast with a fury, in '82
When it came out here it originated really from Flashdance
When that came out, it just spread right from that little scene, just that one scene
And everyone started doing it
Maybe 13-14 years old and I picked up on it like everyone else, they saw it for the first time..
People just knew it was part of them
You know, I found a couple of other brothers that felt the same way
And started up a crew called Shake City Rockers
Which were influenced by New York style breakers
We were more like into the air moves, you know what I'm saying?
I used to look up to the guys out here in the West Coast
I used to look up to the Shake City Rockers, you know, Pony Express
You know, I wanted to learn it so bad and they used to just make fun of me back then
Cuz I was so small they wouldn't even pay attention to me
And then when I saw New York City Breakers, I was like "Oh shit!"
There was a lot of breakers everywhere
And we had this Youth Center called the Radiotron
And a lot of the roughest kids from Los Angeles were kicking back at that center
Everyone would know the Radiotron
Everyone would know Ceaser
Max was big, Orko was very big
Like everyone would be here, I mean you would see everyone from everywhere
L.A. was behind New York terribly at the beginning
What it was, was we were just finding spinning moves and that's what we adopted
Because that's what we saw, New York had so much style
But their spinning wasn't up to par
As far as L.A.
L.A. started just rising
I mean, I'm proud to say that I'm from the West Coast
We are proud of our West Coast roots
You know, we're proud of Popping and Locking
Los Angeles was a real hot bed for new dance
And new hot things going on
Locking is the very first professional Street Dance
Locking was created by Don Campbellock Campbell
Some time in the late '60s
He was trying to learn how to do the Funky Chicken, he was like a real wild flower alright
He couldn't do it
And he stumbled on to this style of locking
I didn't meet Don until '69, I stuck with my all night prayer meeting
With this club called Maverick's Flats
And I looked across the dance floor, this guy was doing something that was just awesome!
I'd never seen anything like this in my life, what is this!
Locking is, comes from dance locking
This is Uncle Sam Point
Everything in Locking has a name
Knee drops, Uncle Sam Points, Locking, Wrist Rolls..
Playing with the hat, all of that has a name
Locking was a lifestyle
You would wear some tight clothes
You walked a certain way
You didn't look in Locking
You...LOOK, or...
You didn't point in Locking
You...
I was watching Rerun, Michael Jackson when he was doing the robot, the Jackson 5..
I was watching Jeffery Daniels popping on Soul Train
And I started trying it, you know what I'm saying?
I just started jumping off chairs, trying to do the dive
The "popping" movement was a combination of locking and the robot
Breaking came from the East, but Popping came from South Central to West
Talking to Pete, he was the first one to start "hitting" or "popping"
The actual "pop" part of it was Fresno California
Popping is really, really minute, it's like this...
See that's, that's...
Popping is like, like, like...This is Popping
Strut, Strutting is continuous movement in the same direction
And then there's Ticking..
And then Hitting is this..
When I hit, it reminds me of like a gangsta perspective
From where I come from, so when I hit, I hit like I'm getting ready to fire on
You know what I'm saying?
My Hitting comes from the hood! You know?
It didn't come from me, it came from the hood because I had that..
Gangsta vibe, you know?
Real niggas wanted to see real niggas hit
Popping and Boogaloo are 2 different styles
Boogalooing was like really loose..
So if I'm Popping here, if I'm Popping..
Then I'm here, I can hit, and then I can Boogaloo at the same time
And move, you know what I'm saying?
So Boogalooing is like, you're moving the body, you're turning
Your head's going, your body's going another way
Pete told me that his influence, besides that of seeing his brother
From San Francisco, there was a group called Demons of the Mind and Close Encounters of the Funkiest Kind
2 different groups that used to perform at San Francisco Pier
We didn't realize until later on that yes we were, we are a part of the Hip Hop culture!
The cultures blended along time ago
The brothers that represented the most in New York, always had respect for the West Coast
Always.
We were obviously inspired by the styles from over there
I mean, we were really far apart man
And to have both of these dances come from 2 distant places like that
And then come together man, that was like mad incredible
This is called Break Dancing, or Breaking
Like Rapping, it's a competitive display of style
The dance is a form of ritual warfare
After the initial splash of Break Dancing it became a phenomeon
And it was all about Break Dancing, at least as far as the media was concerned
As soon as the man with the money said "Hey we can make money off of this here.."
That's when it blew up, that's when it really blew up..
Remember when they came out with those books..
"Place your right foot perpendicular to your left ankle.."
This guy was selling cardboard, he had a company making cardboard boxes that you carried with you..
And opened up that says "The Oz Rock"
When we got on the train, there would be kids breaking
And when you went to the city their would just be people breaking
You know it was just all over the place
It was falling out of closets, coming from under the cars,
Looking around, I mean hanging from the ceiling, popping in!
I mean, it was everywhere, it was like "Daaamn!" You know..
"Ooh Damnnn!"
That's when the Olympics came..
What, 4 Billion people saw the Olympics
We are the pioneers of taking Break Dancing mainstream
Ladies and Gentlemen, Homeboys and Homegirls, the New York City Breakers!
We, the New York City Breakers, we certainly comercialized it more than any other crew did
We got it on to big shows..
And in advertisment
Probably culminating with this big television show..
That Ronald Reagan was at..
It was some big presidential performance and they had Break Dancers performing on national TV
And it was like, "What is going on?!"
And Break Dancing just spread so wide, I mean they had cardboards on every street corner
It was like, I think it even hit more bigger than it hit New York
And it went in every mall, malls had to close down
Sometimes they had things where kids were doing windmills and falling down stairs and getting up
Hitting customers while they were shopping
It was so packed that the police would go undercover
They would wear undercover uniforms and just arrest kids for Break Dancing
The media just fed into it and grabbed whatever breaker they could get
They were like "Well hey, if you can just do anything we'll take you!"
Make this election different, this year vote, break..
And make it count more
And more..
And more!
And more!
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is not the..
You are Ken Swift, right?.. Yeah
Rock Steady traveled all over the world and then next you know, "Boom!"
Beat Street came out and..
"Yo what's off?"
"Yo man y'all are biters, all your homeboys are biters!"
"Y'all are wack, so what's up with that?!"
"Yo, what are you talking about man, I never stole no moves from you!"
"All your moves ain't worth a bit! So what's up with that, punk?!"
"Punk?! Who you calling a punk?!"
And then "Boom!", Rock Steady and New York City Breakers in mad force
Chillin' in France, we was buggin! We was buggin!
We were like the young kids of the '80s, you know what I mean?
The exploitation era, but it took us all over the world
We were bumping into each other across continents, you know what I'm saying?
And we though we were rich and shit!
Crazy Legs and those guys were managed by a chick named Lady Blue
She had engineered them to make a record that became a number one hit in London!
"Hey You, The Rock Steady Crew!"
It was not a Bboy record, it was a copped record..
But it was a number one song
And I don't think the Rock Steady Crew ever really loved the record..
Cuz they were like, you know "This ain't about Bboying!"
But it was about putting some money in their pockets for a minute..
I started Break Dancing with my friend Donnavan and Mike
And we actually had a lot of those Black people and Simon
And they used to all come to my house and my mom would wake up in the morning and there would be like, a gang of Simons
From like Carson City hardcore, and she would be like "What the fuck is going on here?!"
Like, "Mom, they're teaching me to spin on my head!"
A lot of people, unfortunatley took it as a fad, you know?
I guess what was going on was that the Break Dancers themselves weren't in control of it..
It was just a media frenzy
As often times happens, in this here crazy pop culture that we live in..
And so you just get chewed up and spit out by the media machine
I don't know why, but the police and other people in the city..
and officials, wanted to ban Break Dancing because they felt it was a nusiance..
And they shut down the streets, they shut down Venice Beach before..
I saw a guy just do an arm wave and go to jail..
Well what they did was just, you know, they put it out there and..
And then everybody was into it like it was the "in thing"
Then when the next thing came through, they kinda like kicked it to the curb
A lot of the mainstream kids, you know, the media said..
"Okay, it's dead it's time to move on"
So you know, everybody in the industry tried to get all their milage out of it and milk it for what its worth
Rape it like they do, and move on...
Bboying did eventually..die out
There's a number of reasons why, and there are people out there that kinda blame me in a way
Because they see myself and the New York City Breakers..
As being the people who took Breaking from being undergound and taking and making it really huge
And making a big splash out of it, putting it out there on television...
And in films, and we comercialized it..
I'm not, I'm not ashamed of that.
Everywhere and one minute we were in the lime light..
Everything was, everything was straight!
Traveling all around the world, walk up to a club "Hey come on in the club!"
You helped build, as far as reputation, you know?
And the next thing you know it's like.. "Go to the back of the line!" "Boom!"
You know, how do you really nurture someone for this industry?
You know, and prepare them for what can happen?
Especially someone coming from the ghetto, and all you see is like, money!
From that, to having loot in your pocket,
Getting all your boys high, and having honeys...
And to the next thing, having the rug pulled out from under you
Yeah, I went through an ill identity crisis
When we were dancing and when one of the guys, Matt..
He got killed in a motorcycle accident, it's like from then..
It's like everything just started falling apart
We didn't get more gigs.. Yeah that kinda brought us bad luck..
We just kinda lost it from there we stopped dancing..
Toward the end of '84, a lot of crews broke up
Including Rock Steadys, New York City Breakers and Dynamics..
I think that it should have never gone above ground
I don't think it was made for comercialism and I think it was designed..
By God, to spread love between the communities, you know
There's a lot of kids that have so much energy, creative energy and they don't know what to do with it..
You know, we were doing wild things man, but..
When I was on the cardboard, it just kept me occupied
You were too tired to fight, because you've been Popping and Breaking all night
You were too busy learning how to windmill, then to rob and steal..
Because an idle hand, is the devil's workshop
So if you had so much to do, you ain't never had time to go out and do the wrong
Imagine if someone took me and showed me how to wear a bandana, a rag or somethin
To claim a color, I would have put the same energy into gangbanging as I did into Bboying
Our agression was Break Dancing, it was Bboying
Towards another crew, you know because before that came, there was gangs
N.W.A. they came out with their versions of Rap
And what they did was that it actually influenced gangsterism
I've seen the change from Rap being, rocking parties to Rap being gangster, I was there when it changed
I was there and I even became a part of it
Trying to be a gangsta
Like getting tatted, started getting braids, cornrows, started sagging..
And I was like so disappointed with just like everything that was going on in my life
With you know, Rock Steady Crew...I just..
Started going back to school, I got a job, what, you know..
Also going to college for a minute..
And I started hanging out with some old school friends
Buck 4 and you know, he was my best friend
And unfortunately they weren't into the greatest scene in the world..
I was sniffing blow, smoking weed, I used to sell guns..
I held over a million dollars for a friend of mine at my crib for about 2 years..
Cash?
Cash
And I, you know, I was involved with certain things that
That you know, um, led to some of my closest friends getting killed
You look right now, at like um, Randy, um
He was from the L, I think he was from the L.A. Breakers
Kid Tough, they are all in jail!
And it's like, even Float, one of the best breakers ever in New York City
Is in jail for murder right now
Buck 4 got involved with hustling and doing his thing..
Along with that game, comes a lot of
You know, rediculous beefs, sometimes there's beef and then one person gets murdered
Another person on the other side gets murdered
And eventually it got to a point where they found out where Buck lived..
They caught him in his uh, in his uh..
Garage
And uh, they basically kind like tortured him
And murdered him execution style..
We ask to have a moment of silence..
So everyone in here can be quiet for a few moments,
Just want to remember all our brothers that have passed away
In the street you see markings, killings..
And you say to yourself, "Hey I'm doing something for this world, I'm entertaining people"
And that's good, that makes me feel good..
Thank you
Now, there are a lot of people from the old school that are not here right now
My first moment of silence
Goes out to Kid Tough from the Dominoes
Kid Tough got to the point to where he was one of the
Best on the West Coast, I mean one of THE best
He got caught up, he ended up doing time..
He got back out, he was going to start breaking..
I talked to him 2 days right before it happened
And he was killed. And it took breaking away from us,
Gangbanging and dope dealing came in and that's when everybody from here know what that means
Wanna be a gangsta, wanna be a thug aspect, don't get too caught up in that
Always understand that this is entertainment, you know
You don't see, Robert De Niro trying to kill Al Pacino
You know what I'm saying? Or Joe Pesci, them is actors, you dig it?
Just like all these Rappers is basically actors!
Let's be for real here, I know!
"If I lay low and let the day go,"
"It'll slow my payroll, Aye yo"
"I'm a terrorize charge and slay shows"
"Ra slay flows go as far as the Barbados"
"On the turntable, sound like tornadoes"
"My style is performed like tropical storms"
"You're not to get on, the whole spot will get torn"
"I keep the metropolitan hollerin' and bring the dollars in"
"Keep the models followin', wise as king Solomon"
"Come slow through the jungle like an animal"
"Invade any land, I go like General Hannibal"
"From Long Island to Queens light up the New York scenes"
"All the way to New Orleans and everything in between"
"Left to go, bless a show in Mexico"
"Next thing I know it's extra cold, I see Eskimo's"
"It's time to rock, get it hot soon as I get in there"
"Spit in they ear, so flow they froze and I disappear"
You could go up to a business man and say.. '85
"You ever heard of Break Dancing?" "Yeah"
"You ever heard of Rapping?" "You mean wrapping a gift?"
And all of a sudden it just died out, Rap took over and shit..
The dancing was really what catapulted Rap music
Into, like, the media's eye
And it was really the media grabbing these Bboys and saying
"Hey, let's take these kids on tour, let's do shows"
And "Hey we want to bring these Rap artists.."
Rap has product
It had something they could sell
It had music, it had CDs, it had records
And it had something that one could take home
You can't take a breaker home with you
It lasted for a minute, we used have dancers for your stage show
Until after a while, it became more pop..
So, a lot of that phased out..
I think the MCs, the Rappers out there have not really recognized
What Bboying, how Bboying opened doors for them..
When they say "Yeah I do Hip Hop" It's like, you know..
What they are really trying to say is "I Rap"
The thing that really makes me represent
Is the thing that's not gonna let people forget, us and KRS-One of course..
Not forgetting about that time or that era where, the whole culture of Hip Hop was..
The music of Hip Hop, which is Rap..
The dance of Hip Hop, which was Breaking..
And the art of Hip Hop which was Graffiti, those things..
All were like 3 in 1, hand in hand
But once Rap became a Money Dollar Million entity
Those things fell off..
Break Dancing really didn't play out, per se
It's just that, you know, motherfuckers over here are too much of a Bitch
To understand what real Hip Hop culture is!
The music
I tell a lot of Bboys
Especially a lot of up coming Bboys
They just see a circle or they just want to get down and exploit their move
But, I always tell them listen to a certain beat
Because, that's important that when you go down
What you go down to
I have video tapes of guys in Germany dancing to, fucking, Donna Summer's "Bad Girls"
And Brooklyn Rocking to it, how do you Brooklyn Rock to that?!
Many of my Bboys around here we always go down to the break beats
Like Apache was one of our favorite records around here..
That's a Bboy anthem!
This is it! James Brown or some "Just Begun"
You can be dressed in a tuxedo, if you're a real Bboy..
You gotta, I don't care if it's a little bit of Top Rock
You're gonna go, you're gonna do something!
All you had to do man was put that record on, man, that "Just Begun" joint!
And, um, that's when it was on, man, we got busy man
Every Funk is the music that we danced to. I mean if it was funky, we danced!
Although we could dance to a Waltz, okay!
Planet Rock!
That was THE Popping song!
It wasn't exactly THE breaking song, was it?
Because it didn't have that beat!
It could be a day that you feel like "I don't feel like catching wreck today.."
But play one of those records, and your mind would change really quick
Damn! When I first learned about the dance in '77
It was called Bboying, by the time the Media got a hold of it
In like '81-'82, it became "Break Dancing"
And I even got caught up calling it Break Dancing too..
Yeah, but you know why?!
That's our fault, kind of...Of course!
Because when Break Dancing went mainstream, and we started dancing and going on tours and all that..
And people would say, "Oh you guys are Break Dancers!"
We never, we never...
We had to reinvent ourselves
You see, we kept walking around calling ourselves Break Dancers
Like, "Ah y'all don't care, it's from the '80s, yeah man that shit's played out!"
But when we started calling ourselves Bboys, it was like, what, "This is some new shit!"
Bboy, that's.. that's what it is!
That's why when the public changed it to Break Dancing, they was just giving a professional name to it
But, Bboy, was the original name for it and whoever wants to keep it real will keep calling it Bboying
And the REAL Rock Steady is taking out these toys!
I used to watch Rock Steady in the park
You know, even when I had records out, they was still in the parks
And in the clubs, and um..
In "South Bronx," that's where I wrote..
"And the REAL Rock Steady taking out these toys!"
"..The Cypress Boys, The real Rock Steady takin' out these toys"
We would go to clubs, we would hear like "South Bronx" by KRS-One
And we would just start screaming "South Bronx! South South Bronx!"
Rock Steady became the image of all breakers everywhere
All serious breakers
That record means so much to me, KRS gave us a place that
No one can, you know like, like historically..
Everything springboarded from that
That, got us more in touch with the Hip Hop audience again
Bboy is dope, the original Hip Hop is dope!
Just when you think like, you know, the dance is just fading away..
Kids somewhere else picks up on it
Every generation has its creativity, and its energy to bring to the table
Its all good!
You talk to some of them OGs
Who first started dancing back in the day
And you show them clips of what's going on now
They'll be like, "Man! I never though it would of went to that!"
It's just who I am, this is what I do!
If I go in a circle and I automatically start tumbling,
It may not be a dance to you, but it's my dance!
With battling now, brothers got rockets up their asses!
Man these kids are doing some incredible shit!
I'm like "Damn! I'm glad I payed my dues already!" I'm 31, let these kids battle it out!
I look at them now and they doing a lot of beautiful things you know
A lot of creativity and you be like "Oh my God, yo he's nice, you see him spinning on his hands, like this, oh God yo!"
Now these guys are like spinning up in the air, masturbating and like you know
Catching their semen in their air, and then like, going back down
Radiotron, it's like the dopest shit around!
The Radiotron, Ceaser just went haywire with it!
He just blew up! I mean, he went all out..
Cuz you know, he was always a strong Bboy man
So he went out there and he said he was going to put it together
Me bringing Radiotron, I think I'm giving another outlet for the young generations
To get down, you know what I'm saying
It's more like, now you get creative with it!
We the OGs, were the ones who came out with a lot of the moves
I think that now it's our job as OGs to like maintain the movement how it really was back in the days..
And let the new generation take it to another level
Stylelements came about in 1995 with 2 crews that kind of united together
They were people from Stockon, Modesto, Sacramento and San Jose
We know the background to this dance
I mean I go and do research with the originals, I've been on tour with a lot of the originals
From New York, you know what I'm saying, from the Bronx
You know, Wiggles, Ken Swift you know what I'm saying, Fabel
And I learned, cuz I'm a student! And I'm always going to be a student
It's been going on since 1991, the Rock Steady Anniversary
Buck 4 had passed away, right Buck 4 is my best friend so
I wanted to keep his name alive as well as RaSean,
LiL Edgar, Shy 147 and all the members of Rock Steady that have passed away
When we had our first Rock Steady Anniversary, you know, in the park
Our first official outdoor, that really got me back into it
You know, when I met people like Easy Roc, Gremlin and the Japanese guys
You know, that really just got me hype
We're on another mission, from here to the end of New York City
We're on the subway right now, I feel like i'm in Beat Street..
Rock Steady Anniversary, I just went to pay respects and just to have fun
And when I sat and listened to what they were saying, I understood more about myself
I actually listened to what they were saying, why I had my mentalities the way I did
Why my drive inside was the way it was
What brought me to New York..
I like what's going on now, and I hope that this can continue, every year..
If I be here, everyone's gonna say "It's my turn!"
Battling. Hip Hop wouldn't be where it was today if it wasn't for battling!
The whole thing was to "burn" your opponent
If you wanted to battle, the guy had to respect you!
The battling aspect, I mean that's what makes it fun!
It also helps the males to get off some of that testosterone!
Cuz if not, somebody might be hitting somebody up side their head!
If a person cannot handle themselves in a battle,
They don't deserve to call themselves a Bboy
That made the next guy better than the next, and the next, and the next and the next..
And it became rediculous!
Now, that's how the dancing got amazing,
Self challenge really, when you really look into it, it's a challenge of well you're going to do under pressure
It was the competitive spirit of this whole culture that made it excel
I'm everywhere, I'm at every jam. You won't be at a jam without seeing me!
Everybody is the next! What's next?! Radiotron next! This event, next! What's next?!
Hip Hop is, out of all things, it's very important to maintain individuality
There's a lot of times when you see a bunch of heads dancing..
But, the one's that you wrote, you will remember, the one's that may have bitten the move..
But, when they bite that move, they advanced and took it to a different level, and made it their own move..
I got pretty mad about the fall out with the tagging and you know
If you guys want to see the venue shut down, go ahead and have it being tagged
If you want it to split, go out and harm, that's with ease, it's up to you
It's just that traditionally, we are not gonna have people being responsible yo
Which means, don't egg on the venue!
Just step back! STEP BACK! STEP BACK!
Music man! Love!
It got out of control once we were told that we needed to move out, or we would all be arrested
The cops are getting out of control
What's going on? We are dancing, all this over dancing!
Crazy! Crazy! Crazy! Crazy! Crazy!...
Get out! Get out of here! Move!
"Peacful Unity Through Hip Hop"
"Fuck Cops!"
Even when I was doing my videos, the company was like
"Umm, we don't need that, we don't want that in the video"
They wanted to put a bunch of girls behind me, and they were forgetting about the true essence of Hip Hop
So when I seen, KRS-One bringing it back I was like, "Yo, Hip Hop is back! The culture is back in full effect"
So what do I do, I say "Okay, you know what? I'm not going to say fuck y'all"
Let me give you Puffy, let me give you the girls singing in the chorus, let me give you all this shit because that's what y'all want!
Then when I flashed the video, we showed them these breakers...
Let me show you this graff room quick, "Boom!"
And when you show it, they go "Oh! Shit! Oh that shit's hot! Oh that shit's hot!"
Then they go "How successful is it?"
Is it go? Does everyone else feel the way I feel?! "Yeah, KRS is go" Oh shit it's dope!
Now all the videos have got breaking, but we knew this, we all sat around we said
"Yo! After we do this everyone is gonna want to put breakers in their videos again.."
I think Lex has done his part to keep that viberant, even in videos like Wyclef's video "Staying Alive"
Where we have, you know, the original members of Rock Steady
And you have kids who have been Popping or Bboying for a long time in New York in the video..
I incorporate Bboying as far as the kids are considered, anything with Bboying that makes you just
Wear the hat, the oldschool bookbags on the back of your back, you know what I'm saying
Sagging your shit, that's Bboying all the way down to Breaking on to Popping and Locking
Bboying didn't disappear, it's bigger than it ever was!
It's just that they're underground
There's kids doing this now, and a whole new generation of kids that, they aren't even supposed to be in to this!
And overseas too!
I'm having a lot of fun here at the Rock Steady Anniversary
This is like very cool, it's very different to Europe, the circles, they are different to Germany like..
In Germany there's a lot of gymnastics and gymnasts, and here they do more crowd pleasing stuff, and I love that!
When I go back to Germany, I will practice a lot of that crowd pleasing stuff
It's so cool in the circle people go "Yeah! Yeah!" all the time, I love it!
When we throw our Rock Steady thing, it's not only for the neighborhood, it's international
You know you have Paris breakers, people from London, Italy, even guys from Denmark
It's just opened my eyes as to like say "Welcome to the family of Bboys"
There's a meeting that happened in 1987
Afrika Bambaataa had a round table discussion, and he said to all of us, he said
"You know, the humanness in Hip Hop, and how it shouldn't remain a Black thing, a Latino thing.."
Oh, this was big, he caught a lot of flack for saying it
And Bam was always from day one, Zulu Nation was always about
"Comeon! Everybody comeon in this!" And it's not about race or color, it's about skill and ideology.
Thus, came the idea of starting the Zulu Nation that would start out first in the Black and Latino community
But then become a worldwide community, with many different nationalities, religions and many truths
I'm glad that the rest of the world is enjoying being a part of this
I like Europe, in the way that they preserve the culture in it's entirety with all of the elements together
You know, the Battle of the Year for instance, I mean that was like, it blew my mind!
Going there and just, there was just writers and Bboys and MCs and everybody just
Mingling together, and it was like, so many people, it was really, it was crazy!
I met so many people, I met people from Japan that didn't even know English!
Respecting me because I danced, I didn't know people from London, England
I didn't know people from Switzerland, I didn't know, I met everybody from Germany
I, from even, Indiana!
When I travel, you know what I'm saying, cats is yo, they breaking in the streets, they got the linoleum!
You know, just like it was Wild Style!
You know, like it was 1982!
You know, the last time I was in Japan, they had a Break Dance competition, I mean this shit was the real deal!
Just incredible shit!
You know, just in England, in Folkestone at a big Hip Hop convention,
Well I was shocked when I saw, there was
2 or 3 crews from Hungary alone, there were crews from Croatia!
Went over to Germany, went over to Poland, went over to Japan
Yeah! You know what I'm saying
During our show they Break Dancing
People over there in Europe they say "Yo, I'm flying in September for the Rock Steady reunion"
There's a hundered times more a hundered times more!
If there were 3,000 kids Bboying in the early '80s, there are 300,000 kids doing it now
Breaking is an incredible dance
That's valid, has foundation, it has vocabulary, there are names for all the moves, you know
It's not someone throwing themself on the ground
Nowadays, the dance is branched out so much, you know?
You got the original Bboy style and footwork
You have the powermoves
So sometimes you got brothers with Bboy moves and you know real original techs
Going up against guys with powermoves, that hardly have any Bboy techs
How you going to judge that?
The neutral people that don't know anything, might go for the powermoves
Because it's really dynamic
5 years ago, when I came here everybody had backpacks with a helmet hanging from it, and they were breaking without sneakers
Or some of them were breaking with sneakers, but all they were doing were flare, windmills and '90s
Not many people had the foundation down, not many people did footwork
Not many people had freezes
It's like if you go to an audition, a Jazz dancer coming to a Bboy audition
You know, just cuz he can do those continuous back spins, which the comercial public knows as windmills
You know, just because he can do that doesn't mean that he's a Bboy!
He's just and idiot that learned to spin on his back!
He has no style, no flavor, no feel for it!
There is a beat, and there is a rhythm to this music
It isn't about how dynamic your move is, it's about like, the feeling you can express with the dance
Dance is about expression and a lot of people have seemed to have forgotten that!
All the spinning is dope!
I ain't knocking it, it's dope! But you need the style and the finesse!
And when they Bboyed back in the days, it was with a......
You know, it was it was, you could see it in they bones in they face!
You could see it in they body! You gotta get that charisma back in there!
Now, as a Bboy that's still trying to be competitive
I think Bboying represents, you trying to dig deep to find something that you haven't seen done
Which is VERY hard!
I mean, there's no difference from like Ken Swift or like Barishnikov
There's some things that I've seen a lot of these breakers do..
It's just like, that is just NUTS!
True dances, whether, you have from Tap or Ballet or Modern or Jazz, they look at it as an artform, alright?
I mean they see it and they're like "Wow" I mean "That's incredible!"
I don't know one class nationwide in America that's not teaching street dance!
And every formal dance studio, you read the list, and it has street dance in there
I'm creating this brand new dance academy, the Debbie Allen Dance Academy
And I actually had a young man here teaching Break Dancing, specifically that!
Because, it is unique unto itself! It is a technique like Ballet..
Like African, like Hip Hop
Our main influence was the Good Foot
James Brown doesn't even know the effect his music and style of dance had on people in the Bronx
He was probably inspired by people he saw, Tap Dancers,
Them Tappers back in the old old days, them fools is like Bboys in a sense, you know what I mean?
I mean them fools is dope! They didn't give a fuuuuck!
If you wanna be technical, Sammy Davis Jr. was a Bboy!
Our favorites, no question, other than James Brown was, they were brothers..
The Nicholas Brothers
Some of it came from Lindy Hopping
And if you look at Frosty, with the backflips, you could see all of the Kung Fu influence
Ken Swift told me that the "Mugsy", I asked him where did he get it from and he said "Bruce Lee"
Curly, from the Harlem Globetrotters, put his one hand on the floor and he used to run around bouncing the basketball
I was into gymnastics, I used all of my creativity and tried to focus it into the dance
Moves that were invented years before that, we never saw like the Capoeira moves
Somehow ended up in Breaking
Capoeira is the artform of "fight dance"
Break Dance is "fight dance" is what it really is..
We've never seen Capoeira, just like they never saw us dance
It definitely didn't come from another country
It was made up in the Bronx
Don't nobody really know! It's some, old, old, old human thing!
The feeling to want to get on the ground and spin and dance and really
Become one with the, with the earth, with the ground, as in before concrete!
You was breaking and spinning on earth!
I'd like to see some more of the top MCs out there in the world
Coming together with the top Graff writers, the top Bboys and the top DJs
Like it used to be!
Use Graffiti writers to do their album covers, not just the Graff artists that don't know jack about Graff
Use real Bboys that their dancing, don't put them in the background! Put them in the front!
I think the Bboys need to take it in their own hands, need to take it in their own hands and
And need to "bum rush" Hip Hop!
You know what I'm saying?!
You need to be like "You ain't Rapping if you don't have Bboys!"
Don't talk about Hip Hop, and then you got Booty dancers behind you!
What's that? Where's your Hip Hop at?!
I don't really want it to blow up in the mainstream, I don't wanna have people, you know, in suits
Coming over here telling us, "Okay now you need to have form"
"If you can freeze, and put your toe, it'll look just a little bit better"
Nah! Man you just gotta be raw, you know what I'm saying?
There was recently a Wild Style reunion in Los Angeles
That a lot of the heads that started Wild Style, Busy Bee, Cold Crush, you know
"Waterbed" Kevie Kev and a bunch of original heads from the movie
Came out and did a little performance, and the Rock Steady Crew danced, and when the Rock Steady crew went into the audience
They was surrounded by a lot of West Coast Break Dancers, Black, White, Latino kids
From Los Angeles
And they started dropping down to the floor and doing their thing
And it was so incredible, I felt exactly the same way I did when I first saw Break Dancing
The Rock Steady Crew now, they have organized themselves, they have their politics correct, they have their business in effect
You know and they know how to articulate, direct and control this form
Which is what has brought it back to the form that it is now, it is what has made this form translate to so many cultures and people
If you make a Hip Hop Hall of Fame, Rock Steady would have to definitely be up in there
I definitely get them that honor if I could do it myself
I think that we need to let people know what's up man
I don't want people to take these dances into the next millenium so different whole vibe and feel and origins
You know I think that it's important to teach the people about where these dances came from
And how people felt, you know, so that they can take it on to the next, the next level
Where the respect, or the blood, sweat and years, that a lot of breakers have put into
To develop this whole foundation for these people to live off of now
All the Bboys all over the world, keep doing what you doing, because we're the past,
you're the future, and when we put it all together, it's the present
The cycle has begun, styles always start once, they go out of style,
Then all of a sudden, people get back to the root of things
Rock Steady is gonna be going strong, I think
I'm gonna be in a wheel chair saying "Yes, I'm Rock Steady, yeah Crazy Legs, common let's get busy!"
I wanna thank y'all for coming out
The Rock Steady Crew's 23rd Anniversary!
If y'all wanna go out there and bust out,
It's gonna be an Uprock session right now, and I want y'all to do it out there with us
Ready?!
A lot of people say like,
What we do is played out, but you don't hear that about Ballet and Modern dance
If that was the case, we wouldn't still be doing this!
Nobody would still be doing this!
If it's recognized by the President and the National Grants Institution for Dance or whatever
They can "not recognize it" for the rest of eternity
And as long as kids are still battling and still dancing, to me that's what's important
We have to eliminate all of these labels and titles and stuff
And just see it for what it is man, we are all creating art in the ghettos, you know what I'm saying
All over the world now
It's up to us to be the younger generation
Because we, right now, we are a part of a movement
We are a part of an underground, young culture movement
To me it's not a fad, it's something you can't get rid of, I mean it's always there
And it's always going to be there
Off the top of the dome, just creating!
Bboys, Bboy, any where you go, any planet in the Universe any Galaxy
I see it as such a part of the culture, that those that really wanna stay true to the culture,
They gonna always, it's always going to be Break Dancing
They don't stop the Bboys or the Bgirls
They say, "Whatever you throw at us, we gonna make our dance be known and we're gonna invade your club!"
I knew it was going to stay
I knew from the way it just all blew up from the music
You never stop dancing, it's something that's in our blood
In our blood
In our blood