Wanna Learn how to BREAKDANCE? - YES this was REALLY a THING | MUSIC is not a GENRE - Episode #26

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I grew up with rap. Right alongside of it. Okay, so when I was really young it was in proto form (Gil Scott-Heron, etc.), but as soon as I hit my pre-preteens, it took hold of me and never let go. “Apache (Jump On It)” started it. “Planet Rock”, Kurtis Blow, & “Jam On It” continued it. And then Run-D.M.C. and The Beastie Boys cemented it. And all along that journey was everything else that came with rap culture. The big sneaks with the bigger laces. Parachute pants. The movies. And ALL of the dancing – popping, locking, breaking, etc. Yeah, I did it too. I got decent at popping & locking, but really sadly mediocre at everything else.

Back when you couldn’t just go to YouTube to learn how to do pretty much anything for free, you had to be resourceful. At least until this week’s record came out, as part of a flood of other records and tapes and books and video cassettes and whatever else. Breakdance is an honest to Yeezus INSTRUCTIONAL LP. There are the songs, of course. But then there’s also the giant poster inside with step-by-step photos for several dances, a definition of breakdancing, and a glossary of related terms like “bite” and “homeboy” and “fresh”. It’s mission was to teach you everything it could about rap culture – and yes it was “rap” to the suburban masses back then. Nowhere on this record will you see the word hip-hop. Though that phrase had been around since the beginning, it didn’t enter the mainstream until really the late 1980s or later.

Instructional albums have been around way longer than this one, but usually those were for more established dances. To have the juggernaut K-Tel release an album all about a “street dance” shows you how pervasive rap music was becoming even then. Though none of us could have guessed it would become the dominant and most viable genre in popular music.

If you’ve been following these posts, you already know I’ve been writing & producing rap/hip-hop forever. Of those tunes, this one probably best fits what we’re discussing here:

REC - "Let It Wreck Your Mind" (from the album Syncopy for the Weird)

Have you ever tried this kind of dancing? What connection if any do you have to early rap? Discuss dammit!

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