The Rise and Fall of Hip- Hop Dance How the B-Boy and B-Girl Became Choreographed Count-By-The-Numbers Dancers Prologue: by Mauled Sadiq I Have a Dilemma
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<img class="progressiveMedia-noscript js-progressiveMedia- inner" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/ 800/1*yATv4WvSeSkbcCN9uXKnyA.jpeg"> The Rise and Fall of Hip- Hop Dance How the B-Boy and B-Girl Became Choreographed Count-By-The-Numbers Dancers Prologue: By Mauled Sadiq I have a dilemma. Every time I pull up old clips of Def Comedy Jam’s first season all I see is the comedians. Which is cool. Bernie Mack made his name with “I ain’t scared of you mothafuckas” on that jawn. But we didn’t really watch it for the comedians. We watched it for that last minute or two after Russell Simmons came out and said, “God bless.” We watched for the dancers. The culture itself was founded on dancing, with the active participants, b-boys & b-girls, attending those early parties to dance to the breaks — or “the get down” part as Hip-Hop forefather Kool Herc called that one to two minute pocket of funk that drove the crowd wild. Now, whenever I see what people call good dancing I’m bombarded with boy band dances: modified New Edition, Backstreet Boys, New Kids On The Block, Nsynch, B2k type shit. I count with them, 1,2, step, 3,4,5 step. The Five Heartbeats ain’t get trained by Harold Nicholas for us to suffer through a world full of Biebers. Where’d the dancers go? Can anyone catch wreck anymore? Who gonna open a circle? And if you weren’t trained to be a Motown artist, why you dance like that? <img class="progressiveMedia-noscript js-progressiveMedia- inner" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/ 800/1*tXSsgDCTkDrSTh0ITsGSMA.jpeg"> An ongoing joke between me and my brother Shawn McCallister is,“where is Hotdog” (Chubb Rock’s infamous Que Dog, dancer) — then we run down the list of all the MIA dancers. My starting point is always De La Soul’s China and Jette, the flower girls. Not because I saw and remember their dancing either but because Pos immortalized them in “Plug Tunin.’” We return to that joke often because the dancers were an integral part of any East Coast rap group…and now they’re gone. Unfortunately, as time has passed, many of these dancers only exist in the memories of those of us who lived in that small window of time between 86–94. InshAllah (God Willing), we will eventually get to tell their stories but for this writing we’re going to talk about the development of what people now call “Freestyle Hip-Hop,” it’s elimination from the mainstream, and the rise of the highly choreographed dance moves that now are the common aesthetic. <img class="progressiveMedia-noscript js-progressiveMedia- inner" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/ 800/1*BoYUTTmJCtQwbR7FIG0Giw.jpeg"> As we previously discussed in “Video Birthed the Rap Star,” through videos, dances and trends were spread across the country. In a time before the internet, you have LA Rapper, Def Jef and his dancers, The Soul Brothers (Kraig E, V-Love, & Legendary), doing similar moves as their New York counterparts. (Of course, West Coast dancers have their origins in Locking, but that’s neither here nor there.) Like every story that I tell — it has to be personalized. My older brother, super man, was a dancer. There’s stories of him dancing at 2. Me? No. I did not rock. I did not gigolo. I did not cabbage patch. I did not prep. B-boying was my entrée into the world of dance. Not popping. Top rocking, footwork, knuckle spins, back spins — that was my vocab. I have to admit, I was a part of the masses. I dropped out of breakin around 1985. It was 1987 when the dancing bug finally got me. Once again, Whodini plays an integral role. The bait was their video for “Be Yourself” featuring Millie Jackson. We were biters. We were. We clamped on. The bait was two brothers in baggy suits, and they were going OFF. Next thing you know, Whodini was working the circuit. Boom, they were on Arsenio, same baggy suit brothers, now in baggy white and black sweaters, more moves — more moves — chomp chomp. Again, there they were on Soul Train — same sweaters. More moves CHOMP. We had no idea who we were looking at. But what we were witnessing was two of the pioneers of what became known as Hip-Hop dance — Cliff Love & Buddah Stretch. Cliff Love moved out west and spread the love. While Stretch stayed on the East and added on with Link and Calaef around 1989. Later, Ejoe joined on. They were all a part of the Latin Quarters scene. A name synonymous with the Latin Quarters is the IOU Dancers, a group that Fab Five Freddy estimates at more than 20+ members. Freddy says that out of this scene, rappers began plucking dancers. Most notably, Scoob and Scrap (IOU) by Big Daddy Kane, Steezo & Fendi by EPMD, and Kid and Play were also popular dancers at the LQ. Of course people know Kid and Play as rappers. If you know Hip-Hop, you know Steezo, possibly as a rapper. To some, this may seem strange, but again, Hip-Hop was a participatory culture. In the early days, it was common for rappers to have been DJs (see: Grandmaster Caz and Run of Run DMC) or writers to become DJs (see Dez née Kay Slay). Many dancers from this period also rapped — from Zhigge down to two of our for mentioned pioneers Stretch and Calaef. Me and my brother, Sayyed Munajj took on the monicker Zig and Zag, studied videos, and chomped away from 88 to 90. One time, while practicing for a talent show try out, we attempted a Scoob & Scrap move that ended up with me landing on my head and seeing lights — there was a price to pay for stealing moves. Our thievery aside, we became known as dancers…and many other names: “PE niggas,” “De La Soul niggas,” but alas, another story for another day. <img class="progressiveMedia-noscript js-progressiveMedia- inner" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/ 800/1*qAU7n-ruJFJkSmU6p10l6A.jpeg"> A sk the average person, 30 and under, what they think of House music and they immediately associate it with LBGT culture, and while that remains to be true, there was a time period (1987–1993 roughly) where House music and club culture was almost as, if not more, dominant than Hip-Hop culture. My Freshman year in College, parties were advertised: House, Classics, & Rockers — whether that was Lower Manly parties or just random parties, some promoters went as far as adding “No Hip-Hop” to the flyers. All those clubs and parties were just a warm-up though. The real party was at Plastic. Opening at 1am and going until you left the next morning, Plastic was a special place. Ron Pullman played the best classics, dub (rockers), and house in Atlanta and kept the floor packed. But what caught my eye and kept me captivated was…there were people opening up circles. A circle, of course, was common with breaking. A person needed their space for footwork, windmills, headspins, and whatever other flips and kicks they had. But I hadn’t seen one in years. Yet here they were — big, huge, imposing circles. The first thing I noticed was the spins — the footwork was blinding, no doubt — but to see a person go from their footwork to a two, three, four rotation spin was mind boggling. And then there was the acrobatics: there were flips, cartwheel like moves, and high jumps, often ending in the splits. This was something you couldn’t bite. Over the next few months, I learned, I felt, I joined a circle or two — it was good. Incidentally, my studies have shown many of the innovators of the now dubbed Freestyle Hip-Hop dance were also House dancers — we’re talking the Moptops in general and Ejoe and Calaef in particular. If you track the moves, you can certainly see how one progressed into the other. Now — back to our story. history of house dancing <div class="player-unavailable"><h1 class="message">An error occurred.</h1><div class="submessage"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGwzoJ7LFMs" target="_blank">Try watching this video on www.youtube.com</a>, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.</div></div> A study of videos would reveal a change was taking place in dance. Case in point — Leaders of the New School videos. “Case of the PTA” features moves that were very familiar to any House head at the time. But it was there next video that we saw something different. It may have only been for a few seconds, but those quick ticks of the clock were enough for us. The few seconds I’m referring to is the quick moves done by Gerinimo in the “Sobb Story” video. The first chorus comes, “I know you and you know me…I know you and you know me…” Then 1:40 in Boom! The move itself was standard fair but the execution was unique. Where once the whole going down, crossing your leg, spinning and coming up action would have taken two moves — Gerinimo did it in five. Translation: it looked like he froze on each beat. Maybe nothing to the untrained eye, but to someone who studied music video dance moves it was a seismic shift. I liken the summer of 1992 to the spring of 1987 in terms of breakout videos.