Bboy Crazy Legs - Breaking Boundaries, Defining Hip-Hop Culture And The Rock Steady Crew

Full transcript: Bboy Crazy Legs on London Real

4:22 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Bboy Crazy Legs, the American b-boy from the Bronx, New York City, who was featured and credited in some of the earliest stories on hip-hop dancing in the mainstream press in 1983 as president of the Rock Steady Crew. You brought your dance over here to London and Paris, 8282 Yes, and you also appeared in the movies Flashdance, Beat Street, and Wild Style, and the documentary Style Wars, and the freshest kids today.

4:51 You’re involved in community outreach, dance theater productions, traveling the world for Red Bull B-Boy Champs, and promoting your home country of Puerto Rico. You’re here in London to emcee the UK B-Boy Championships happening this Sunday at the Forum in Kentish Town. Crazy Legs, welcome to London. Thank you very much. It’s great having you.

5:09 Thank you. House, a nice intro. It’s pretty good. Thank you, thank you. You’re probably one of the better ones.

5:13 Yes, you had to do that. You’ve been coming here forever, right? I mean, ’83, you came here and toured. Why did you want to come to London so early? Well, that was even something that I set up.

5:29 It just worked out that way. We were brought out here by a woman named Cool Lady Blue, and she had this series of events in New York, which started at a place called The Grill. Then it went to Danceteria. These are all nightclubs, and then eventually the Roxy, and that gained so much success, especially after the Studio 54 era, when that was on the downhill the rocks, he became the hot spot, places like the Roxy, the Garage And being that the Roxy was featuring this happening, you know, this thing that was happening up in the Bronx and Manhattan which was breaking, you know, Fitti DJ, and I’m seeing all these things She and who I guess she thought with Europe 1, and I’m not, I’m not sure who out here, but they put together this tour, and it was the first time, and this is before it was really called hip-hop.

6:37 It was the first time there was a hip-hop tour ever done where it featured all the elements in the manner that she did it. There was something that was done by Henry Chalfant prior to that but not as intense. Okay, and Bambaataa toured with you as well? Yeah, it was Afrika Bambaataa. He toured.

6:55 Mm John D, White Rock Steady Crew, Doubt, Double Dutch Girl McDonald, double Dutch girls, aka Fantastic Four and I’m not sure who else. I can’t remember. Do you remember what you thought of London and Paris when you came over here, and did it change you to see Europe as opposed to, you know, the Bronx? You know, we really had no appreciation for anything like that. I think we thought that British accent was funny, funny, like any hit, like any ghetto kid at the time.

7:26 We were, we kind of had an ignorant perspective of the world. Real more concerned with, like, take us to the hood or, Wick, we get some blackberry brandy and some beer and stuff like that, and when we performed, it was more about asking each other how we did on stage, as opposed to being concerned with did the audience like it. And I think the audience liked that, maybe, they didn’t understand what we were thinking, but whatever they saw, they liked, and it’s weird that we really didn’t care what they thought.

7:59 Anyway, maybe that was part of the B-boy culture, doing your thing, not their thing. Yeah, our ignorance. Yeah, you know, we, it’s not like we were groomed for the four stage, and when you’re not groomed for stage, you don’t really know how to work it in a manner that is really catering to the audience. So I guess there was a certain rawness that worked. Mm-hmm.

8:25 I watched a clip last night on YouTube from 1983 of you on David Letterman, and you’re there, you’re performing and you’re talking with, and I was just like, whoa, this is almost 35 years ago. Yeah, and I guess I was around ’83 when it was just blowing out Stan’s last stands. Oh yeah, that just come out. Can you describe what that year was like for you, you know, with just all that exposure, movies, Letterman? I mean, you seem like you were keeping it together.

8:49 We were living double lifestyles back then. Now, double eyes for all of us, you know. We were still doing wild things in the streets while these movies were coming out, and but at the same time realizing what fame was. And in ’83, I was in Hawaii, and it was shortly after we did the David Letterman Show, which I thought was a smartass anyway. It was back.

9:13 Yeah, what celery? Yeah, I didn’t really care for them, but I was in Hawaii and Waikiki, and I’m just sitting down on these rocks looking over the ocean, and then there’s this preppy guy with his typical light blue shirt with his cream-colored shorts, and a white guy, and he is sitting next to me. He said, “Hey, weren’t you on David Letterman?” and I’m thinking, wow, like, you know, 5,000 miles away from home, I’m on this small island, and this person just came up to me and recognized me from television.

9:52 That was the first time outside of ghetto celebrity status that I realized that I was getting some fame. So that was, I think, that was the first time I was, I guess, made to think that there was something bigger happening. In retrospect, how did you guys deal with that fame from the eighties? We had no appreciation for it, man. We were just trying to get girls and party, and we would do it again, since we weren’t groomed for that.

10:29 We weren’t chasing that. We didn’t know how to appreciate it. We would show off. Yeah, we came to London. We can’t, it went to Paris and went shopping and came back home with clothing that was fresh and things that other kids didn’t have, and other people looking at us like, oh wow, would you get that?

10:48 And they, you know, they can’t get it. That’s when shopping in another country was really different back then. You couldn’t just get something the way you can right now. So things like that, we’re cool, but we, we really had no appreciation. We never really stopped to look.

11:10 We never really took in culture. We never really took in the arts. We never really opened ourselves up to the bridge that was being built at the time in terms of bringing people together and understanding the differences and nuances between cultures, and I think had we done that, we would have been able to sustain ourselves better before we had a downfall within the industry, and kind of like shut down for a little while, and but I don’t know, but it’s still something that served as inspiration for others, because there were other people who were probably looking at us, saying, wow, these guys came out of the Bronx, I can do that too, or Turkish people in Europe looking at us like, are they Turkish?

12:10 You know, they didn’t know we were Puerto Rican, so some of them thought we were Turkish or Arabic, whatever, and they were inspired because we were coming from the same kind of social economic background as them, so it was kind of empowering to them to see us. And we didn’t, we had no idea that it was affecting people in that way. And these are things that I’m learning now. Right, right. Yeah.

12:34 Look, I, I want to talk about kind of the pop in the ’80s, with Yeah Boy in, and then disco coming, and I want to get your thoughts on B-boy culture today. But before we get there, I was wondering if you could tell us, you know, Tony Avenue, 1977, when you first got down on the floor for the first time, and how that happened, and even what was it like being in the Bronx back then? Like, what, you know, you’re talking about, what you were like as a kid. But if you had to describe it to me and people listening, like, what was it like?

13:03 Bronx in the ’70s. Run down, burned down, fun, dangerous, survival, hungry, needing clothes. He said fun. Yeah, all those things. It’s still fun.

13:29 Still having a great time, parties, house parties, grown-ups having jam sessions. That’s when the grown-ups of that era grew up in a system that still had music programs, so that was like the last real generation of musicians who learned in school, and it was very typical. So there were moments like that. I’d be out in the street all day running around and playing all these street games that we had back then, but then come home on a weekend or on a Saturday night, and my family’s there having a jam session with an upright bass and dibala’s and ganga, an organ, and doing five-part harmonies and singing like Latin jazz or doo-wop and things like that, and it was really cool, you know.

14:19 But then there was also the dysfunctionality of the home within that, whether you’re in a single-parent home, you know, being raised by six kids, or you know, watching, you know, domestic violence, being around you, alcoholism, drugs, you know, a lot of those things that existed, and then from time to time being evicted, and then not having anywhere to live, trying to find a place to stay. I remember things like that. And then it’s all that happening, and then you have the opportunity to be exposed to, of a jam, and cousin Lenny Land brought me to Crotona Avenue in the Bronx by 180th Street, to a park jam, and he had been telling me all along, you gotta come to the jam.

15:10 People are rockin’, people are breaking, and there’s no such word as break dancing or hip-hop. So he would tell me all these things, and he brought me there, and I was a really shy kid, and I witnessed all these things. I saw writers and seeds these days and people getting down in a circle. I was blown away, and I was there with like the corniest outfit you could possibly, possibly have. But would that have been embarrassing?

15:40 That’s what it would have been then and everything. I don’t know, you know. I wish I could. I had a picture of that day, but you know, I was, we were poor, so it wasn’t anything new. It wasn’t anything cool, and but that day I saw the dance.

16:00 It’s within this environment. I was blown away. I know I even got down on the floor to dance that day. I don’t know. I don’t know if I got down before I jumped in a circle, whatever.

16:13 I jumped in a circle, whatever I did was not good, because I had no skill anyway. But I felt like I came alive that day. It was something that I really wanted to do, and my cousin started teaching me, and then six months later I got so good at it, I started teaching him. So it was something that became very natural for me. It was something that opened me up, and it was the beginning of, I guess, establishing my lane.

16:44 Okay. Now bombing, going out bombing, going out writing? Uh-huh. What does that mean? It’s some pastimes.

16:52 It’s a pro. Bombing and writing. Bombing, just means getting up, tagging up your name on every and anything, and if you tagged up near your home, you probably had another, you know, several alias names that only your boys knew, so that you don’t get in trouble from your mother. Especially, I would, I would, things like writer. I would, I don’t even know if she knew it was me, but I would write in my own building that we lived in, tag up Wizkid, and you know, since it was graffiti, it wasn’t my regular handwriting, so I would try to do things like that.

17:30 And but, it’s fame. It’s, it’s like Mr. Wiggles would say, graffiti is your lights on Broadway for someone from the hood. Okay, so it’s you up in lights? Yeah, when recognized? Yeah, and you and your work, and hopefully you are in a toy, because there are some bad shows that go on Broadway, and then they get shut down, so hopefully your stuff is good.

17:52 Yeah, the writing is good. Yeah, so I would, I was what you would call a motion bomber, a motion tagger. I would go into trains while they were in, while they were working, and I’d just be bombing the system, and bomb your line right to name, just keep getting up. Okay, just, it’s all about fame, but fame to your own people, and people outside, they didn’t really matter. Okay, now those sick.

18:20 Fast-forward six years, it’s ’83, you’re on Letterman and all that stuff, but what happened from ’77 to ’83? Oh wow, but by the time 1979 came around, I was already getting much better. I had evolved the backspin from spinning maybe two, three times around, and if you’re small enough, you spend more, but I added a whipping motion with my leg, and because of the plant, I added the plant that you would do in the chair freeze, and a way to whip around, and it called, inform, what created what’s called the whip backspin, where you could whip your legs around and then ball up, and then spin faster, right?

19:07 And it’s been more, and that was the beginning of power just came up with that when you were practicing one day? Accident, a complete accident. I was actually, I over-rotate it when I was going into a chair freeze, and it was on Crotona Avenue, and when I was practicing in this small hallway, and I went into that move, I’m gonna over rotate it. I don’t want my feet to hit the sides of the walls, so I bottled up immediately. Didn’t realize what I was doing, because it was more defensive and trying to protect myself and my cousin.

19:43 Like, oh, do that again. I was like, I’ll do what? And He helped me to realize that I was on to something, and then that eventually evolved into what people called the windmill but originally called the continuous backspin, right? And you’re practicing in a hallway, hallway, a tenement building. Okay, would you put cardboard down, or no?

20:03 No cardboard. Didn’t start until, like, we started hanging out in Manhattan, and we would hang out, and but what is now known as Rock Steady Park, and we would hang out in the back of the park where there were swings, and the rubber mats were under the swings for protection in case you fell off. But right next door to Rock Steady Park was also an appliance store, and we would take those boxes that were thrown out on the side of the building and put them in the back of the park under the swings, because, number one, some of that black mat would get really hot, and it would, kind of, I guess, break up into little pieces because of the wear and tear, and you get that on your clothes, and you get dirty.

20:50 So we would start putting that there, just for practicing. But when it came down to us breaking and battling, we didn’t walk around with cardboard. It’s just like concrete wherever. If you had a building of wood floor tiles, man, that didn’t matter. We didn’t walk around with anything like that.

21:07 That’s just a whole misconception about, you know, how he got down. You just get down on the concrete, whatever. Yeah, I mean, eventually people did start using our cardboard, but we weren’t about that. We were more of the raw B-boys who would just, like, let’s go, right here, right now. Okay, it’s crazy, because the last 12 months I’ve been trying to get the windmill right, and I’ve been banging my head trying to get it, trying to get it, getting so frustrated and finally, like, I kind of got it, and now I’m trying to perfect it, but the reason I’m doing that is because of something you did in a hallway in Katonah Avenue.

21:40 Oh, my accident. Yeah, and now me over here in London, I’m trying to copy that. Meme, and then move. Does that design ever blow your mind when you think about it? Yeah, it does.

21:51 There was a point when I started dancing, or being a lot more active, began in the ’90s or late ’80s. My friend Jerry Fontana, aka Fast Feet, he was a light heavyweight champion kickboxing you know, he was also a hip-hop enthusiast, grew up in the Bronx. He was like a Legs, Rock Steady for the ’90s. I was like I don’t know. I don’t know how to roll.

22:18 So anyway, he convinced me to do it, but as that started happening and I realized there were some other people out there who was still breaking, and they wanted to battle, but they were doing my moves. I’m like, you know, but they’re doing… why do I want to battle these guys? It’s like, they’re doing my moves. Well, what’s going on? They want to battle me with my moves, and he told me, ‘Your legs, you have to understand, you created something that went around the world.

22:44 You did something that people want to emulate around the world. You need to take pride in that.’ And It was the first time that I looked at it like, wow, okay, yeah, yeah, I really had an effect on on the world. People want to do this move. So in order to appreciate that perspective, yeah, because when you and Ken we’re on Letterman, I think, either cancel afterward, you both said, ‘Yeah, people are stealing our moves.’

23:09 Yeah, yeah, I guess in the beginning you’re like, wait a second, that’s mine. But yeah, well, the thing is, with our stealing moves, it was legal back then, but since there were so few moves, it was very obvious to someone that was stealing your move. So what you wanted to do is steal a move and then recreate it so that people can look at it and say, oh yeah, that’s the Jimmy D swipes, or, you know, that’s just the crazy Legs backspin. You know, there was something significant about it that identified you with a person, as opposed to kind of like blatantly just doing something.

23:49 But then you have to realize that if it’s done widely enough, it just becomes part of the vocabulary or the foundation, and then you just have to submit and take pride that you contributed to the foundation of the dance. Yeah. All right, so that’s ’79. What’s ’80, ’81 like? Is it just get, is it getting bigger?

24:09 ’80, Wiest, I started hanging out and in more of the downtown scene. I’m already battling people, trying to find more B-boys to battle, because coming out of ’79, what most would be B-boys were stopping I was getting better and didn’t have much competition out there, so I would battle someone, and that, you know, I beat that person. They would say, ‘Yeah, I have this other person, you should battle,’ and they probably want me to battle that person, because they lost to that person, and because they saw my ability coming from the Bronx to be more than the average person in Manhattan.

24:52 I kind of became this mercenary B-boy, where I would just continue to battle people. Then it just kind of, like, became like the Borg, where it’s like, you battle him, you take him on, I beat you, you become bigger, and sometimes that would lead to, and this is before I had a chapter of Rock Steady. I was in Rock Steady, but I didn’t have any chapter, and I would see people who would come to be down with me, then start to form their own crews, and someone would come up to me and say, hey, would it first stop.

25:25 Why are they doing that? And I would tell them it’s weird, cuz at a young age I was already thinking it’s all right, like, if they go start another crew, that’s more competition for us. Let it happen, leave it alone. It’s alright. Disappointing?

25:40 Yes, cuz you know, the childhood friends, your boys, whatever people you think that are loyal to you, are running off and wanted to do their own thing, sometimes with good reason, because maybe they weren’t gonna get enough fame with the size of the size group that I had, and So that was good, because I think, become great at anything, unless you have competition, you know, what do you really gauge itself by if there’s no one to compete against? So You have to think of, like, New York City Breakers, Dynamic Rockers, another cool crew, Scramblin’ Feet from Queens, I believe they were. If we didn’t have those crews to battle you know, the Rock Steady wouldn’t have been seen as who we ended up being, you know, or as what we, and they’ll be regarded as, in terms of, like, all-time great crews.

26:34 Now you say downtown, so now downtown Manhattan, and that, yeah, artists and stuff like that. But are you not even that far downtown? When I see, coming from the Bronx, when you say downtown, you’re talking, you’re still talking about the Upper West Side? Okay, right. You know, Spanish Harlem, things like that.

26:49 That’s downtown for us in the Bronx, and then you know, down there, it’s like all the way downtown, you know. But that led to me meeting Take One, who lived in Washington Heights. David Martinez is his real name. Just passed away a couple of years ago. But Take One introduced me to Henry Chalfant, because he had demonstrated his dancing and Henry Chalfant was interested in it.

27:12 He had heard, or heard about it already, because Martha Cooper had documented some kids who got arrested for dancing in the subway up in Washington Heights, so Take One told Henry that he knew Frosty Freeze, myself, Frosty Freeze, myself, went down to Henry’s studio in Soho, and we did a demo for him, and he then told us, hey we’re doing this event at this place called Common Grounds, and we’d like to have you part of it. It’s called Graffiti Rock, and it was the first time that there was a presentation of breaking, graffiti, DJing, and seen as a happening, like, this is what’s happening uptown. Okay, that’s what led to the whole downtown explosion of hip-hop.

27:59 Do all of those go together in your mind? I mean, is there an Oprah? I think there’s a Genesis. Okay, that occurred. I think it was very natural, because a lot back then, it wasn’t.

28:11 There was no you didn’t have to be, be like, there’s no requirement to feel like hip-hop or anything like that. It’s just like, these were some of the things that we did in a hood, and now, we just happened to be people who did multiple things, you know. A lot of times it was like you were trying to DJ, you’re trying to be B-boy, trying to write, whatever, and trying to find out what you were, get a good at or doing it and just looking horrible at it and thinking you were good, right?

28:39 What about the music at this point? Because the name, well, you’ve got to break down the name for me as far as B-boying and breaking. But the music was a big component. Music is key, because we were dancing to the music that came out of our parents’ civil rights movement. You know, we were dancing to music that represented expression, going against the grain, a funk soul personality, character, so that’s why there is so much character, and the original B-boys and B-girls because we danced to the music that really meant something.

29:19 They’ve represented a movement, and we came out of that. So, and because there were so few moves back then, you had to have some character and style, because there aren’t enough moves to, kind of, like, create the visual dynamics that can, I guess, make someone believe that you’re better than you are. Okay, you know, in terms of response to rhythm, you know. You could do a very acrobatic move, and because the move comes with, from the dance, people will think you’re still dancing, even if you’re not rhythmic, even if you’re not really in sync with the music.

30:02 Okay. All right. And getting that music toward the break beats, it would continue to play and continue to play. That was, I guess, the DJ’s job, right? Yeah, that was a DJ’s job.

30:11 We would, I was, we were all fans of DJs, and we were always trying to get those tapes that were recorded from live jams, because if you had a tape, and let’s say you have a Cold Crush Brothers tape, one-sided tape, be the Cold Crush Brothers performing, but the other side of the tape, my beat, Charlie Chase, Tony Tone spinning music for the crowd before the performance, so you had your music to practice to, to dance to, and then you had your music to sing along to too, because the Cold Crush Brothers were gonna be doing their show. So that’s how we became more aware of the music, and then we would also have little kids try to look at what the DJ was playing, try to see the names of the songs and, let’s say, a song, “Mardi Gras” by Bob James that would be called, no, I’m sorry, I have a last last night, or last, I changed it at all, something like that.

31:18 I had like a telephone ring on it. Okay, last night. I changed it. I really had a ball, but it had a phone ringing thing, almost as if someone’s, you know, answering the phone to talk to one of her girls, and we would just call that, the telephone jam you know, not knowing that it was called “Last Night,” you know, and that’s how we tried to figure out songs. Okay, and that had a break beat on it, right?

31:45 Would you practice the music, or was that just a luxury you couldn’t afford? It’s no, yeah, that was hard to afford, because that meant that you had to have a box, right? We didn’t call it ghetto blasters or boom boxes. We just called it a box, you know, a radio. Yeah, that was difficult.

32:04 So tell me about the cultures, because I think, in The Freshest Kids, it talks about, you know, you come from a Puerto Rican family. Yeah. And you had the Black guys, maybe a few white boys coming in here. They all brought like you said, a different kind of history of dance, and the family, maybe music. How did that all mix together?

32:22 And that, and did each kind of culture contribute something? I think, well, in New York, there was a huge intermingling between the African-American community and Latino community it was very rare when you had, let’s say, someone who was Irish or someone who was Italian that was a B-boy, because crossing into those areas meant a lot of danger. You already had enough danger in your home community, but going into one of those areas, and you were guaranteed to be chased out of something like that.

33:00 So if you are fortunate enough to live in a community where I lived, and you had an intersection of Black, Latino, and Italian in the Bronx, and this before I lived in Manhattan, and that there was a tavern called Nino’s Tavern. It was a family who migrated from Italy over to the Bronx, and my, one of my best friends, Steven, also that, that was his family, so the community would gather there to watch sports, to mingle with each other, and you had a couple of wise guys in there, you knew that and you had different kinds of people mingling in there, and that was a beautiful thing. So it was more likely that you might be able to either influence someone to dance like you, or you’d be inspired to understand what they’re about not by design or anything like that, just what happened, what happened And, you know, for me that was my personal experience, cuz Afrika Islam was actually wonderful, Afrika, and my brother Robert Cologne were the first B-boys I ever saw, and I thought it was just embarrassing what they were doing throw themselves on the floor, this, before I do anything about a jam, but they, you know, we were all in that area, and I think Nino’s Tavern was a true breeding ground for multicultural understanding.

34:42 But then you have someone like Mr. Freeze, who whose French fat his parents were in concentration camps, you know. They came over from France whenever they came over, and then you have Mr. Freeze, this French kid who now lives in the Bronx, and then he became a B-boy, which was very, very rare and odd, because when you do look at everyone who was a B-boy back then, it was very, you know, you didn’t really find anyone who was Caucasian as a B-boy, right? And what is a B-boy?

35:18 B-boy, I originally was a Bronx boy, and then it turned into, I guess, took on more meaning. Bronx boy, break boy, you know? Or a Bronx girl, break girl. And that was it. That’s what it was.

35:37 A lot of people thought that B-boy meant a person that is within hip-hop, and it’s a general term for anyone that likes hip-hop, but B-boying represented what we did on the floor. Okay. And what about the attitude that comes out within the persona, and everything? I mean, we took some pictures here. Oh yeah, and we’re crossing our arms in ways.

35:59 I mean, it has a heavy culture in it. Yeah, I think the attitude just comes from, I guess, it evolves out of your surroundings and everything that you’re living, and there were no theatrics about the character. It was very real. If you were acting an aggressive, in an aggressive manner, it’s probably because you were an aggressive person, or you became that, or you are a defensive person, because you knew you had to defend yourself if something jumped off, and you know, it wasn’t part of the dance.

36:36 It’s who we were, and it just happened to come across in a dance because that’s how we lived. So I try to tell people, look, you know, if that is not who you are, the beauty of this dance is that you’re allowed to be who you are. You know, and you’re allowed to create and think outside the box, but also you know, respect the essence of the dance while creating, but that, the theatrics of acting like you’re ghetto or acting like you’re a gangster, to me it’s just fake.

37:12 Come on, man. Okay, there’s no acting like anything, and unless you’re going to commit it from a situation where you’re happy, or you’re smiling and you’re goofing around, cuz, like, oh yeah, I’m gonna get the attention of this girl, or, yeah, I’ma show this girl, I’m the heart, do what? But, you know, let her know who’s around so she can check me out. We did things like that, you know, or you know, it depends. It really depended on the moment, but it wasn’t really anything fake.

37:41 If you are a funny person naturally like, there’s this guy, Easy Mike, who’s in Rock Steady. He was Dopey Boy, but he was more on the funny side, you know, if you’re always cracking jokes and goofing around, and that also showed in his dancing, but he was also a serious B-boy as well. He’s a serious, funny B-boy right? Right. Very nuanced.

38:06 Yeah. Right. But you got to be yourself. Yes, yeah, yeah. Okay, definitely, and you also have to respond to the music soulfully.

38:15 Right, right. And respond to your opponent in the battle. Why a battle? I don’t, I think, I think we, it’s weird, cuz I mean why a duel? You know, you’re testing your ability, your practicing all week, and when you have nothing but the props, you get the respect you get for showing up and doing the best you can and coming up with something new every week That’s a beautiful thing, cuz you’re going back home to nothing anyway.

38:56 So it’s some instant gratification based on a lot of hard work, and sometimes as simple as we just wanted to meet girls, and we just wanted to get respect from other people, because there was really nothing else. There were no opportunities for shows, no music videos, no movies, nothing like that existed, so it was just really about being the best, like, you know, like a boxer wants to be the best in the world you know? Yeah. And the beauty of what we did back then was, in order to protect your reputation, you actually had to put it on the line, and when you lose, then it matter.

39:44 He just couldn’t be a punk, so if there’s a jam, you’ve got to go in that circle. Yeah, you’re going to battle. You gotta go, right? Otherwise you just I don’t know. Yeah, you’re just part of the crowd.

40:00 How many times were you battling? Weak back then, not many. You practice all week and wait for a weekend. You would do things like let’s say when I was a kid, I would hear about someone, and if I heard you live like 20 blocks away meanwhile, 20 blocks, I shouldn’t be going, because I’m so young, but I’m so hungry to dance, and I don’t know if I wanted to be the best, but I just wanted to battle and I would go to your neighborhood. Don’t know what you look like.

40:38 I know your name, and I kind of know where you hang around, and I find you and say, “Yo, you B-boy Brian? Oh yeah, you break?” Yeah. “You want a battle?” And we go into concrete, or we find somewhere to dance, and that’s it, and that’s how you gained your reputation.

40:57 You would track people down, or you would go to a jam, because you would hear, like, “I heard this crew, Zulu Kings, is gonna be there” “I heard the Bronx boys are gonna be there,” whatever, and you knew that you wanted to go there and battle. How could you spot a B-boy? A lot of times, the hat was set aside. Why is that? The hat was to the side?

41:26 I don’t know. It started before I started dancing, but I was emulating B-boy Spy when I first started dancing. He was just like one of the most notable B-boys and one of the superhero B-boys, and I wanted it to be like Spy, but a lot of times, a lot of B-boys were wearing their hats like that. That was a style, and sometimes I was a giveaway, but then there was also, let’s say, a person who is kind of like a pretty boy, dude, then next thing you know, he’s on the floor.

42:01 It’s like, oh, this guy’s dope. You never expected him to be one of those dudes. So, you know, I was a little kid just figuring it all out, ten years old, like, wow, I was blown away. Everything is in my mind, embellished to be more than what it actually was, so I think there are other people you’d have to interview to find out why, right? That started.

42:26 Okay, so we’re now getting them in the early ’80s, and now you’ve probably seen that, “I can get paid for this,” and that’s probably changing things you know, we got paid. Our first gig, I probably made like maybe $15. That was a gig we did with Henry Chalfant at The Kitchen, Center for Performing Arts, and we, again, and we would make money, and for us, the money we made, we treated it as short money. It’s not like we were looking at investments. I was probably the only guy in Rock Steady to get, like, a put my money into a CD fund or anything like that, but we didn’t have any real money management skills.

43:14 We were just spending it as soon as we got it, and sometimes there were people in Rock Steady who would spend it before they even got home from tour, and that was just talking to their girlfriends on a phone. So there were things like that, but I never really thought of it as us becoming rich or anything like that, because we didn’t think it was possible. I don’t think we thought it was possible you know, and we were too short-sighted to realize anything beyond the moment.

43:51 Okay, what about crime? As you get to a point where you’re like, crime still a possibility? It’s still, it’s always a possibility and always happening. There was no difference back then between us going to do a show in Soho and us being hungry after practice, a few days later, and you need to go rob someone or go snatch a purse, or, and you know, or maybe winter’s coming. We need a coat.

44:23 Let’s go catch someone on Western Avenue, because you know, you know, yeah, there’s money over there I worse than having you it in Manhattan and more than likely, some person would be wearing, like, a goose down jacket that’ll keep you warm, right? So that’s always part of the light, how back then it was, not now, obviously right. All right. So yeah, we were still in survival mode, because it’s not like we were millionaires or anything like that And even when we had the record deal with Virgin and Charisma, we were completely robbed on that one.

45:01 When was this? I was ’83 we signed a deal with them. Okay, but by ’85 we were already in court with them, and you know they were draining our money, because how you gonna go up against Richard Branson, and with a small amount of money in your bank account, and we ended up, we had, like, a million-dollar deal, and I believe we each got about $7,000 out of that deal like, a record business, dinner. Yeah, but again, it’s still something we had never expected in our lifetimes, and I think the hardest thing for us was not the idea that we didn’t get to a certain peak, but after getting to a certain peak and not realizing where we were, and then having to come back home completely and realize okay, those places, used to go to, like, the Roxy, and the places that you helped put on the map, you’re now being told to get online, or, you know, having a hard time getting in, or realizing that, alright, there’s a whole industry that’s coming up now that you’re not even a part of and not benefiting from, but you helped to create that industry.

46:21 Frustrating. It was, it was, I think, at that time of my life I was going through an identity crisis in the mid-’80s. And if you guys blew up, you’re in the movies, you’re signing deals with Virgin, olive oil ’82, ’83, ’84, then someone decides, and even more, maybe that break-ins not cool anymore. Yeah, and it’s about disco Mm-hmm. And now you want that disco.

46:45 It became more about rap music, and more pop music. Disco is pretty much dead by then. Okay, and now you’re going to those clubs that, like you said, you put on the map, and as opposed to being like, “Legs, get right in here,” yeah, yeah, they’re like, getting lined yeah, and you’re like, what’s going on here? And some of us went back to school. Some of us got jobs some of us sold drugs, some of us sold guns, and you know, those are the choices that we made, and that’s why some of us aren’t around anymore, and you know, you’re looking at a bunch of kids who’s some took education a lot more seriously than others, and then people who just felt like, I have to survive, and I’m gonna do whatever I can to survive.

47:34 And then there were people who, like myself, who juggled between both of them. How’d you deal with that identity crisis, and when did you come out of it? Oh, man, is still in it. I think in the ’80s, late ’80s, I was going through it, and it got to a point where I didn’t want to, MTV, I didn’t want to watch anything related to music videos, anything like that. I just didn’t want to hear about.

48:00 Okay, was that, I felt like they’re there because of us. Not just us, but you know, we were part of the reason why a lot of people are existing in that zone, and even rap Yes, especially, rap, because of what you guys did. Yeah, yeah, because we did the first tours that helped to expose all of hip-hop, and you know, and it’s weird, because I know we had no appreciation while we were doing it in the first place, but I kind of felt, maybe I felt like, a sense of entitlement after, which is kind of just pretty, that airs.

48:37 But yeah, but it also seems bitter. Yeah. And I realize that and you know, I decided I don’t want to be that person, right? When the Freshest Kids are, some interviews with you and you can just, you could see it. You’re pissed off.

48:50 Yeah. And, but you know, in the early ’90s, I had, you know, after watching so many people die after all that stuff, and so many of my friends, and I realized, all right, I could, I want to do something that helps people. I want to do something that doesn’t put people in the same predicament that we were in. I want to help kids to strive for the education. I want to be able to use hip-hop, like we were being guided to initially, to be a tool to manipulate kids who have this common interest, you know, and teach them the art, but also hold over their heads that you have to get a good education.

49:40 I’ll teach you, but you have to do the right thing, because I didn’t want them to go in the same direction. Okay. So you kind of reengaged. I really ’90s. Yeah, at the point where you wouldn’t watch MTV, cuz you were just, just driving it.

49:52 Well, ’90s, I was better. Okay, right? I started throwing events, right, and then early ’90s, and doing volunteer work Okay, alright. Yeah. Now, yesterday I had B-boy Storm on here, and I know you battled him recently.

50:03 We’ll talk about that later, but he said he won, I think, Battle of the Year in Germany in ’91, took the money he earned and went to the Bronx in search of the real deal, the culture. And it’s this crazy thing, it’s this meme in Europe that’s like, looking at what you guys did, and then this whole culture grew out of Europe by watching what you did. I mean, that must boggle your mind sometimes. And then they go to the Bronx, and he said when he got there, he was trying to find you and trying to find the Rock Steady guys, and but, he was like, they came in, they’re like, well, we’re doing all this breakdance and stuff, and he said that you guys were kind of like well, that’s kind of old news.

50:39 A little bit to tell? No, I just hate. All right. Well, tell me where it was in ’91, and then what it was when these Europeans are coming over doing what you were doing, you know, eight years ago. Well, in 1991 we were already doing things again, because we had performed with Jimmy Castor, and the cast, a bunch I had a Sobeys.

50:56 We were doing things with The Source magazine we were already, since ’89, when my friend Fast Feet told me, “Legs, Rock Steady for the ’90s,” right? That’s that perspective shift, right? Right. So that, that invented ’91, rate folder using your moves, not be right, angry and jealous So in ’91, Buck 4 passed away, and that’s when I had already made the decision to go full force and do an event that summer during the New Music Seminar where we wanted to bring it back to the park jams and recreate that vibe for all these people who are already gonna be in New York and kind of piggyback off of the New Music Seminar crowd, which luckily we did, because a year or two after that, when we were still doing the event, the New Music Seminar died, and the Rock Steady anniversary was growing, so all those people who had their summer vacations based on a music festival or a conference, where it would still come, but now for the Rock Steady anniversary, but I don’t know why Storm believes that we were like that.

52:14 I think we probably looked at him like, for me personally, growing up the way I grew up, anyway, any outsider coming in trying to get to know me, it’s I’m gonna be a little standoffish, because back then, if he would have known everything that was going on in our lives, from shootouts, murders, and struggling, and just the lifestyle we came out of, he probably would have understood why we were, I, you know, a little standoffish, or like, who’s this dude with this happy German coming in? Yeah, we’re in his fresh kit, and you’re probably like, what’s going on? Yeah, yeah, yes.

52:52 So, I don’t think for some of us, I don’t think we were the most welcoming, because number one, when we looked at a lot of Europeans at the time that we were getting back into it, we realized that a lot of people weren’t focusing on the rhythm of the music, and there wasn’t a funk to it, so we were like, their break dancers, we’re B-boys, so we started to flip the word breakdance, didn’t in breakdance. Then it come from hip-hop anyway, so we never really used it, but as we saw that people were using the word break, breakdance, we’re like, they’re the breakdance, where the beam was. We try to turn the word breakdance into a derogatory word, but it was also a conscious effort by Mr. Wiggles and myself to say, well, if we’re gonna bring this dance back, Rock Steady has a name.

53:40 We had the connections with the magazines and media that we could use, and they’re all in New York, so we can, we have access to them, and if we’re going to create some sort of interest, we need, we also need a dialogue. So Wiggles and I, we’re doing this program for PBS called Everybody Dance Now, and it did really well. It won Emmy Awards, but when we filmed it, we walked out of the building and said, why don’t we just say the word breakdance up there?

54:11 We caught ourselves saying something that we never used to say, and that’s when the discussion came about. Yo, you know, bringing it back, the dance back, because there are people doing it but don’t have the clout to give it the recognition that we can, we can give it. But when that’s, we’re gonna piss these people off and start correcting them, and tell them it’s not dancing is B-boying. If you are breakdancing, you’re someone that doesn’t know how to dance anyway.

54:36 You have no rhythm. You have no style. You have everything. You don’t have anything that allows you to be a B-boy except the moves you know, and the epitome of a B-boy was style and flavor and freshness and things like that. So fast-forward to now, you know, the B-boy Champ started off as the Breakdance Champ, now it’s the B-boy Champs.

54:57 Okay, and B-boys any real practitioner that understands the history and their art itself no longer calls themselves a breakdancer. They call themselves B-boys and B-girls So it took several, a couple of decades, but the Wiggles and I planned that day, it worked. It sounds like an invasion. So in the early ’90s, you’re like, okay, we’re gonna claim this back? Yeah, we’re gonna take it back, and don’t get kind of back to the old school, right?

55:26 Yeah, and this is the way we started it off, the way we envisioned it, and we’re gonna take it back from those. I’m not gonna say is the way we envisioned it, because we were too young to be thinking like that, but we recognized what it was. I know we’re a lot more mature. Have a little wisdom. We can look at things a certain way, or we’re also still trying to understand who we are as a people of color and how to make sure that things aren’t co-opted, that we create, and just kind of, like, figuring out ways to become self-sufficient, and and learn how to market ourselves and throw our own events, because those events that were thrown in the ’80s were thrown by outsiders capitalizing off of the breakdance craze, and you could see a lot of that when you watch those old videos.

56:14 Yeah, and the corny, the corny, and it feels like they’re just, like, “Whelan, you’re soulless,” right? We were dancing sometimes we’d be forced to dance to music that we didn’t even like. So, for instance, when we filmed Beat Street, when we actually did the filming of the battle, we weren’t dancing to that music. We were dancing to “Light Give It Up” a turn it loose, and just funky music. When they showed us that music, that was made by Arthur Baker, I believe you’re like, I said, it’s horrible, like, we don’t want to dance to that, but they laid it over what we actually did.

56:48 Right? It kind of gets corporatized, or someone else’s vision of what you guys were doing yeah, or they’re just trying to sell them, so a soundtrack, right? Those first five minutes of Beat Street, I watched it again last night, and you know, for, you know, what, someone that’s never seen the scene, you know, these guys are in a disco, whatever, a dance club, and they kind of meet, and these two crews, and got the dancing and the moves, and stuff, is it still a good representation, roughly, of what might have gone, or is it really wack?

57:12 Corny, it’s so corny. I look, I’ll be honest, I never liked Beat Street. Needs Beat Street has its moments with certain scenes, but for me personally I looked at it, and I know what it represents in terms of inspiration and for culture and dance and things like that, but I look at a movie based on the script, the act, and the acting. You know, so I’ve never really liked Beat Street. I never really liked many hip-hop movies, because I want to be entertained by their ability to act as well, and the script has to be, has to be written really well.

57:49 Okay. For instance, last, on the plane on my way over here, I could have been watching to get down, but I chose to watch The Green Mile. Okay, because you didn’t like to get down? No, I think the acting was kind of corny, and It’s so, The Get Down was like this $20, $25 million dollar production. The next, when we did 50 million to 50 million.

58:10 Yeah, she’s the next one, paid for. Yeah, and I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, and I watched, I watched some of it. It’s kind of shows the genesis of what DJing B-boy culture in the Bronx in the ’60s, or it tries to, with a whole storyline. What did they do right or wrong there? I, you know, I watched the first 90 minutes of it and never watched it again, what didn’t you like?

58:35 I didn’t like the writing. I didn’t like the acting. I didn’t like the the fact that the continuity with the slang was off. Continuity with, even, like, you know, back then if you had an afro, you didn’t have a lineup. There was no such thing So there are these things.

58:56 I’m looking at a lineup. What’s that line of, like, like, like this, you know, an exact line when you get your haircut? And back then it was, you know, we were all rough around the edges. Okay. So there were things that they were doing that just didn’t make sense, you know.

59:13 There were the people who were supposed to be actors, who was supposed to embody exactly what’s going on, but they’re using current slang, and it’s like, no, it’s a time piece. Respect a time. Don’t fall into your own slang, because in real life you want to remain cool, because you don’t want people to think, you speak that way you know, or you’re like, you’re coming across as this old school. Do now, it’s like, no, it’s a part become the part, you know, become the tie that, the period of time that they’re talking about.

59:49 Okay. Yeah, I know Grandmaster Flash was involved behind the scenes, but some of that stuff, I, you didn’t get the call from Netflix on that? No, out a little bit, but you wish you would have, to give them some, you know, I got a call and I never got to follow up, and then there was just some other politics that were going on behind the scenes that I wasn’t aware of, and I believe that someone was misled into believing that I didn’t want a part of it, and I would never even had any dialogue with anyone about it.

1:00:19 Okay. on that level. So it was just like, I was reached out to, and someone tried to put a block on it and kind of lied to the producer, saying, “Hey, you know, Legs doesn’t want anything to do with this,” right? But you would have given him that cultural context. I would have, I would have heard him out, just to see where I was going, because I’m very much about the history and for the perspective.

1:00:47 I like to be a teacher, student because since we’re still trying to figure out things in terms of perspective and geography when it comes to things that were happening around New York City, there are a lot of different perspectives. So anyone that’s going into that situation as kind of, like, absolute about the history, it’s probably feeding some self-serving story. Okay. You mentioned B-boy earlier, and breaking, and I want to just, I want to clarify this and get your thoughts on it because a lot of people watching that are in the community, you know, and they always want to hear from, you know, oh, jeez, like you, and what you mean when you’re like, okay, a B-boy is about style and character, and this, and it’s not about moves.

1:01:31 So if you had to break it down for someone that doesn’t know this culture, what is a B-boy? In the essence of what should be, B-boy, and be in your mind, in the essence of the dance, it relates back to, first, you have to have a relationship with the music. Second, you got to be yourself. Third, you have to be creative as you’re learning, so that, as a person doing a dance that’s about individuality, there’s something about your dance that is going to cause people to think only of you, because that’s your style, and that could come from how you deal with your emotions, what’s happened throughout your day, why you want to even dance, things like that, got a personal to you, not becoming a character that you witness someone else being, and then, you know, I think just to a certain degree.

1:02:31 But for us, back when we all started doing, so I mean, we were poor, but whatever we could do to be stylish was also important, and I know, there’s, you kind of have to work with the time, just, well, when it comes to fashion, but looking fresh, looking great, looking good, feeling good, all those things. It should be a part of the dance. You know, there’s a certain, I guess, uniform of freshness that a person, a person should have. And okay, that’s cool.

1:03:10 So you should show up dressed to perform? Or yeah, yeah, you see guys roll in now, and, like, they look just like, yeah, there are pockets hanging up, their sweatpants, and, again, it’s, it’s kind of like when I say create within to essence, hip-hop, kind of create with it, with any essence of, like, alright, this came from people who were struggling to have something better. Don’t bring it backwards. You know, there are people who say, oh man, I wish I could be there back in the day so hip-hop needs to be like what it was.

1:03:43 I, if it were like it were back then, it would be better. I’m like, yeah, but I also have to scrub you after the jam, or, you know, you have to also open yourself up to be, you know, mugged and beat down and you know, you really want to take it back? You understand the climate that we grew up in to say something as ignorant as that, right? So you don’t want to take it back, but you still want to respect where it came from. Yeah, you still want to mold what B-boy culture is for today, and going forward, you want to be a part of that discussion.

1:04:16 I think it’s, I think there’s more of a human element than it is about hip-hop culture, B-boying or anything like that. I think we, we do things that we use as tools, as confident confidence builders, some even for exercise, you know, but I don’t, I don’t walk around thinking, you know, and I always say this, I don’t walk around like life is one big episode of Beat Street you know, there are more things, even with how I’m using hip-hop and even other forms of music, whether it be salsa house music, to do what I’m doing in Puerto Rico. I realize, okay, these art forms can be used in a manner to help other people, and if that means, you know, during the time of crisis in Puerto Rico with the economy and that the $80 billion dollar debt that they’re going through, if I could use my name and my ability to bring people together and help to promote tourism on the island and bring money to the island that otherwise wouldn’t be there, especially cheering down season.

1:05:19 I’m hoping to do something that’s bigger than just the art, but by using the art. Right, right. And you’re taking people down there, and you’re taking over one of the resorts down there. Yeah. And you’re doing, like, kind of, like, just to asses and stuff like that, in all these different dance forms.

1:05:37 My classes South hip-hop, by the way, it’s called Put a Puerto Rock study, but yeah, there’s different workshops, dance, there’s yoga, these parties this beach life. There’s, there’s an outreach that we do with the Boys & Girls Club in Isabela we do some programming in there in terms of education wellness, health, fitness, things like that, and kind of giving them a better sense of pride and direction. That’s it. Yeah, what’s the current state of B-boy? You travel the world with Red Bull.

1:06:23 You’re here for the UK champs, your MC scene and judging, too, hosting, your hosting. Okay, gotcha you know, you, we see everyone out there, and I know you tour and Sway, and you know Sway as well, and you’re all over the place. Where are we now? You know, where and where were your thoughts on the power moves, and is it coming back from there? And is there style, or where do you see it?

1:06:43 And what does it need to go? And who are some of your favorites? And who do you hate for the, for the current state of the dance as a dance? I believe it’s gotten to a point where there’s more of a balance between the foundation and the power and the musicality. So it’s, I think it’s at a better place, and I think maybe an older school, another dude from my generation might disagree with me, because maybe self-righteousness or because they grew up watching it, and their memories are their memories that they’re never gonna let go of, that and that’s cool if that makes you feel better, but you also have to be respectful of the next generation, and their voice and allow them to live the same way you had your opportunity to do, you know, all those things that you did when you were a kid, and just remember that there’s always a generation that’s gonna have their voice, and you kind of have to respect that.

1:07:38 There are a lot of people, ways, and B-girls I love. A T from Flow Mo crews, of an amazing B-girl. You have, I mean, you’re from Flora Lords crew. You have, why not, from Rock Steady, who’s just like the master at top rockin’, and style and musicality. So there are a lot of people out there that I really like, that’s just to name a few, even on the UK side.

1:08:03 You have Sonny, who is probably the person who’s been most effective in reinvigorating the UK B-boy scene, because there have been many B-boys throughout the years, but UK is kind of weird when it comes to consistency with its B-boys and B-girls. There seems to always, there used to be a point where it’d be good for three years, then it’ll drop for three years, and it was never much consistency out here, and I think that’s probably because you don’t have any. I don’t think that the B-boy scene has true support, not even from its government, you know, and recognizing that it’s an art form, and it’s something that the UK can represent on a global level, you know, as far as having great dancers, but the direction of it, I mean, it’s going into the Youth Olympics in 2018.

1:09:03 How do you feel about that? I was indifferent about it at first, and I kind of had I put a statement out there, kind of questioning it, but out of curiosity, and also not being judgmental about it, because I didn’t have enough information and then I came to the idea of, this is gonna happen anyway. Do I want to watch it fall apart from the outside, or, when I’d rather be in on the inside, and try to make sure that we get some of the things that would be beneficial to the culture, the art, you know, at, while it’s, you know, going to, no matter what, be something that’s in the Olympics eventually.

1:09:55 You know, it’ll go from Youth Olympics to full-on Olympics, and I spoke with the people. I let him know about my position, and I said I would be on board They wanted me on it as a judge, but my thing is, if we do this, I, we have to make sure that the community outreach is there, going into places where people are not on an equal playing field, to have the opportunity to develop their skills, to take, to be a part of the future of these games, are dealt with, and they’re given that opportunity to get on an equal playing field, because at the end of the day, this dance was created by people who are less fortunate, and I think that it would serve them best if they make sure that they’re just doing the right thing, man. Don’t, don’t just take this and make it about, you know, the way people, you have all these little dance moms out there, you know, getting their kids into something that was created by some someone else or some other culture, and you’re just trying to get some fame off of it.

1:11:13 Like, come on, man. There’s a whole community of people that do this and don’t care about the fame, and they just do it because that’s all they really have, and I want to make sure that those people are dealt with, and we create opportunities and outreach for them. Okay, understood. And when it came to the state of B-boy, as far as I understand what you just said, and maybe five years ago or ten years ago, it was going too far to the power. It was, forget the style, the top rock, the fact, yeah, there’s a beat, and you got to feel that beat.

1:11:39 It was more gymnastic stunts and now we’re seeing that come back, where these guys are starting to appreciate that it’s, there’s, there’s all of these different aspects of it, and you have to embrace it all. Yeah, yeah. Okay, let’s talk about the Europeans. Let’s also talk about your battle with Storm in Russia. You’re over 50.

1:11:56 Why do that battle? First of all, what happened, and what were your thoughts? First, they called me up and they said, “Hey yo, would you want a battle with Ken Swift at the V1 battle in Saint Petersburg?” Sure, why not? That would be great hip-hop for people that don’t know who, Ken, and why would that be interesting?

1:12:18 Tents, Whiff is a former member of Rock Steady who people have taken sides over, like, me or him, when it comes to something that has nothing to do with anyone but me or him, and people were fed into the idea that there’s a possibility that we may have more beef when we’re with each other than we actually do. And I think they because of, “Ten says,” Ken Swift’s history with Rock Steady, and his, his, a level in the game as being one of the top dogs of all time. It it was interesting, and for me, I thought it would be good hip-hop, right?

1:12:59 It would be some, you know, give some people something that they might want, but I was also thinking, we could do this battle, but maybe even at the end, at the end of the day, set an example and shake hands in front of everybody and give each other a hug, or whatever. I get past whatever it is that they believe it is, or certain things that actually are, you know, and put out a good example for people out there, and you know, because there are a lot of people who are affected by the fact that him and I are, as he’s no longer Rock Steady, or we don’t do anything together and things like that. So it would have been good to make them feel good.

1:13:43 Okay. Show you, so community, yes, those community, hip-hop, and not make people who are friends of both of ours feel like they have to pick a side. Okay. which I don’t believe they should anyway. It’s just, you know, when you’ve got nothing to do with, you, what is the beef?

1:13:58 This is way too much to get into today. I’d rather not. Years and years, you know. So yeah, I’m not trying to go there. I’m guessing you both just have different opinions of what the things should be.

1:14:08 There’s different opinions. There’s, I’ll stick to that. I’ll leave it then. Okay. So you thought it would be a really, I never think it would be nice.

1:14:21 Okay, because everything you do now, you have to think that everyone’s watching you, right? Yeah, you have to, which is also, it’s been irresponsible. Yeah, and that’s a good thing and a bad thing. Good thing means that it makes you be your best, right? And think of the bigger picture.

1:14:36 Yeah, I mean, being your best while knowing you still have flaws is difficult, and you know, I think it’s a, I think that’s a constant struggle with anyone. We’re all human. I mean, I would worry about a person who acts as if they don’t have flaws more than someone who would just say that they have flaws. But anyway, Kenny had declined to do the battle. Don’t know why, and well, actually, I heard reasons why, but, you know, publicly no one knows why, and then they asked me, okay, well, would you battle Storm?

1:15:18 Right? Yeah, that sounds interesting. Let’s do it. I think the fact that Storm would come out and satisfy a crowd that loves him with how he dances, and I would, no matter what, come out and do what I do and make my side happy. And it became, you know, once we had decided to do it and we started training a month before.

1:15:42 We started getting so many, “Mommy” people. I started getting so many people contacting me, like, “You guys, you guys already won just by what you’re doing.” You know, it was a struggle to get to that point, because the training and training while injured, things like that, and trying to do something and not telling people that you’re actually injured, because you don’t want to make any excuses, and also my pride. You know, it’s difficult, you know, but at the end of the day, I think it it was good for the scene.

1:16:17 It was good for old-school people, and it was good for people who want to talk too, and just be like, all crazy, like, “Sucks,” or, “Storm sucks,” or you know, just whatever gets their juices going, right? As long as they’re talking about B-boys. Yeah, that’s the goal, right? Yeah, yeah, and if it inspires, like, for me, my reason for doing it was good hip-hop, bring awareness of Puerto Rico, and inspire people who are getting up there in age to not give up on themselves and stride towards keeping themselves fit and healthy.

1:16:56 Okay, what happened in the battle? What surprised you and how was it for you training and then performing? Well, my goal was seven brain for ten rounds. We, I don’t know, we went six or seven years. Well, I think the answer, so number one, I’m battling this young dude.

1:17:14 He was 46, I was 50, and so he had the advantage in age, but, God was there, saying, “How was on the day? The day of, the day of, I truly believe that you train to win, and on a day, whatever happens, happens. I would say the only thing that was surprising was about the third round, I was gassed out, and, but I wasn’t gonna give up, right? And I was, I was kind of I was saying to myself, you know what, this is great, and this is, you know, we both trained to be here you know, I know, Storm has neck injuries.

1:18:05 I was just hoping he wouldn’t do head spins. Hey, not because I’m worried about it, but about him doing “husband’s” against me. But I was more worried, like, I hope this guy doesn’t, like get ahead of himself and hurt himself on the floor, and things like that, and you know, I had a cyst in my wrist, so, and it had flared up that day, so I had to wear a brace to be able to put pressure on my hand that day. So that was surprising, because I was hoping that wouldn’t happen, and but I would say the third, fourth round I was gassed out.

1:18:40 I was like, what the hell am I doing and that was, that’s pretty, pretty much it. And he did spin on his head. Yeah. I don’t like this guy’s crazy What are you just saying? Worth it?

1:18:56 He said he stopped in the ’90s training those moves, cuz he jacked his neck and he said he only did them when he performed. I stopped doing head spins because I have herniated discs, so it’s like, after a while, you, you know, just thinking smart, right? So he pulled all that out, but good, you guys hugged at the end, and a good show of unity. Yeah, yeah, right? That was really popular.

1:19:17 I got a lot of people talking. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think it ended up being better than what a battle between Kent’s wife and myself would have been. Maybe there would have been a more aggression towards each other, which could have taken it to a different level between me and Kenny, but you know, but at the same time Ken Swift is one of those people that I’ve looked at and been inspired on the spot, you know. So I feel like I feel like I probably would have done a lot more against Ken Swift, because he does inspire me.

1:19:54 Okay, Storm, doesn’t it, sad if it’s different? For it, it’s different because Storm is a product of us, you know. Kenny is my peer, a troop here, and sometimes when your peers are there, it’s like, you know, if you have Gladys Knight, and a guy, what’s the other woman, the other diva, Aretha Franklin? No, that’s right, Aretha Franklin. Yeah, okay.

1:20:26 If you have both of them on stage they’re both probably gonna be intense, if they’re having solos, or if they’re ad-libbing. You know, it gets pretty intense. But then, you know, if you throw Mariah Carey up there, who’s another great voice and a diva. It’s still not Aretha and Gladys. It’s still great, but there’s a difference, you know.

1:20:57 Wait, when you look at Europe and Storm, and like, what came out of Germany, you know, that was inspired by you guys in the Bronx. What do you make of that whole scene? You know, what they’ve done with it? Because, you know, it’s two different levels. One, you’re like, wow, we inspired that, but it’s the second thing, you’re like, but that’s not us.

1:21:16 It, it’s interesting, because the first thing that comes to mind is that, as, since people have had more access and information about Germany and France, in terms of them keeping things alive. The same thing was happening in Japan at the same time, but there was less information coming, because you didn’t have the internet moving like that, and the videos weren’t moving like that unless you went there, you wouldn’t know. So I think, you know, it’s not even just giving credit to people in Germany, but you have to recognize France.

1:21:54 You have to recognize you, because they were all doing the same thing, with A-TPs alive. They were keeping it alive to a certain point, but they didn’t have the name recognition, they didn’t have the connections, and that’s understandable. They didn’t have a large fan base in A-TPs, and and I guess then that when their crews started, well, I don’t know who started, but they just didn’t have the opportunity to do it. We could do, coming out of New York and having access to the press.

1:22:29 Right, right. But what they did was great, because they helped to evolve the dance in areas that had stopped already in other places, and more power to them, and then, thank you for your contribution. Right? You’re gonna be, you know, I know you judge battles around the world. You’re gonna be seeing a lot of battles here from people from Japan and Korea and France and Germany and everywhere.

1:22:56 What do you look for when you judge? What are the things that you’re like, okay, clear my mind, and I would just watch these people? What are you looking for? All-around ability. I, I try to, I try to make sure that it isn’t just like, a lot of people get credit for the attempt of something, and but they don’t complete it, or they crash out of it, but they’ll, they’ll still be judged by a judge for their attempt, and it’s like, nah, no, no.

1:23:35 You know, did you execute your move properly? Did you dance through your move properly? Did you complete your set? You know, it wasn’t, was it danced from beginning to end, and and if it’s a close enough battle between the two, I try not to do a tie. If it’s that close, you’re looking at who’s slightly messed up, or who had the better clothing back to the style, back to the sky.

1:24:14 Yeah, yeah, cuz, you know, you only have so much time for these battles and you’re looking at a lot of money for rentals and all these things. So if you keep doing, tai, tai, tai, tai, next thing you know, you’ve thrown a promoter over budget because you can’t make up your mind. Yeah. Okay, I’ll find a reasonable way to justify your, your, your judgment. Okay.

1:24:35 What’s the life of Crazy Legs like these days? I hear you’re a visiting scholar at Cornell? Yeah, I just finished five weeks. That’s, which might blow people away. Your son’s also attending Cornell Yeah.

1:24:47 I guess people make assumptions about you and what a B-boy from the Bronx is, but they shouldn’t, right? I mean, they could do whatever they want, you know. A lot of people think I’m arrogant because maybe I’m not as talkative to them, but they seem to forget that, you know, just because you see me on a platform, and you’ve watched videos and all these other things, and you think you know me well enough to come up to me and treat and have a dialogue with me as if we’ve known each other for 10 years.

1:25:18 It’s kind of odd because I, I believe in a true friendship, and if we’re gonna act like that, let’s build up to that. Don’t be upset with me just because I didn’t instantly say, hey, you know, let’s go hang out now. Yeah, you’re from the Bronx. Yeah, always be that, right? There’s a little, there’s a part of me that’s still leery, you know, and then there’s also a part of me that has to worry about what’s this person, in person’s intention, a motive, do I have to worry about this person in any way?

1:25:52 Because I get people coming up to me who may not like me for something they made up in their head, or maybe they have a legitimate reason. So you know, that’s what I think, that’s one of the bad things that comes with being associated with hip-hop. You, you’re standoffish, but, and also people want to try to test you. Okay, right? And you’ve, hadn’t had that happen?

1:26:18 Probably. Yeah, I have to feel it out, assess it, and ease into it. Right? Okay, back to the Ivy League universities. Cornell, what was it like being there?

1:26:27 What were you doing for them? Is it weird going to class with your son? You know, I mean, it’s like being on the same campus. Well, I’m also part of the advisory board for the Cornell Hip Hop Collection, so that’s what that relationship started. And, Bada’s, they got all those records right there, Barra, and Joke on those photographs.

1:26:49 My archives, a couple of Bill Adler, a couple of people. Okay. I think Charlie Ahearn is doing something with his Wyldstyle archives, and that’s how that started, that relationship. They acquired my archives, which I had for over 30 years, holding stuff, keeping it, well, really well preserved, and Hers, creatures, are magazines, newspapers, a lot of things that were the first, some of the first things I put out on hip-hop. Okay, especially what the documentation of the commercialization of it.

1:27:36 Okay, contracts, Okay, immunization cards, for, like, when you travel, and you get your, okay, vaccinations anyway. Usually they like to invite people who have given up their archive to come and do master work, master classes, workshops, whatever. And going into this situation, I went into recently was a little different, because you’re also dealing with people who are, they’re out of curiosity. Some people have to take it because their professor told them to take the class.

1:28:14 It was open to students as well as the public. Okay, so it was a mixed crowd, and not everyone there was necessarily a true dancer, and you had different levels. Okay, so you had physical practice as well? Yes, I was a physical, you know, the choreography, and kind of, like, my theory, my own theory and teaching when it comes to the dance, and them executing things, but we also had, like, videos that they watch. Okay, just to get a sense of how we were when we were kids and what the environment was like back then.

1:28:53 What did you play for him? We, pet them, no documentary called Rock Steady, by, it was done by 2020 Films Limited, which was a company here in the UK, and then there was another documentary that we did in the Bronx. I, I’m not sure who filmed it, but it’s pretty old and I just wanted them to get an idea of what we were like as kids, and to see that you know, we were wild, but at the same time we were shy, and what he came to our dance, who were aggressive, and It was good.

1:29:28 Each class had, like, 40 to 70 students Okay, and usually there’s a big drop off after the first two, and we averaged straight through, about 60. Okay, which is great. So it was enjoyable. Yeah, it was, I had a great time there, and it was cool to have my son you know, meet up with me every time, for dinner, every, for class, you know, when he’s away. You know, students appreciate the meals, so, and when Dad comes around, and you know, he sat him for my classes too, which is nice.

1:30:03 That’s cool. He gets to understand me a little more. Was it always important that your son study hard or go to a good university? Why it, why it was important, because I wanted him, like, I got it too. I got into dancing because I didn’t have options.

1:30:19 He has options, so I wanted his options to be pretty wide, and I told him, when people ask you if you dance like your father, anything like that, or why don’t you dance? I told him to tell them, “My father says I have options.” And then if they don’t understand that, he can explain this is just something we did because there was nothing else, and then, you know, when you’re being raised in a home that’s pretty dysfunctional, and you don’t have anyone there to go over your homework with you.

1:30:53 You want something better for your child Yeah. God forbid you step outside here and get hit by a bus. I don’t want it that, but God forbid, you know, and people watch this right now, and they got to go on what you say, as far as what’s the future of B-boying? Like, where should it be in ten years and 20 years and all that stuff, and we’ve seen, you know, a lot of companies getting involved, you know, really Lent? Listen, Red Bull and a lot of money being thrown, silver back, you know, even the champs this weekend, it’s going kind of this way.

1:31:24 Where do we need to make sure it doesn’t go, or if it’s gonna be on your watch? You know, what do we have to be careful of, because you’ve seen it commercialized once and then left out to dry, and now slowly come back. Sounds like you’ve had a little more control over that perception. Where do you want to see it go? Where do you want to make sure it doesn’t go?

1:31:45 You have to be careful with it, be getting co-opted and saturated. You want to make sure that it maintains the integrity that it deserves, because of what it came out of and what it did for so many people, and it’s weird, cuz I say what it did, but I, I think it, I think it’s more about what it represented for people who wanted to make a choice and say, you know, I like this dance, I’m gonna get into it. I’m also a stick-up kid, and I do up, but I’m going to get into this dance, but the fact that they made that choice to get into that dance meant that they had to develop their skills, and if they were spending time developing their skills, all those other negative things that could, even, it could have been happening, became less, and so that enabled us to become better people, even if we still did a little bit of nonsense.

1:32:47 It just gave us a better opportunity to be creative, a better opportunity to meet people, greater understanding of other cultures as we began to travel, and because of that common interest, in ability or wanting to learn how a person did something, the cultural barriers that would have existed were brought down because of the foundation of the conversation being, “While you’re great, how did you do that? Can you show me?” And then the next thing can be, like, “So what is it like being Muslim, or what is it like being a Christian?”

1:33:25 Really? Oh, cool, and you start to have honest dialogue with each other, and that breaks down so many barriers, and misconceptions, and breaks down racism, and all those things, and I think this dance allows us to become better people. Because our respect for each other’s ability, at the very essence of it, so you want to continue to see this movement practice, establish common ground, and break down all the barriers. Okay. And it is happening, right?

1:33:59 Yeah, it has. I’m sitting here with you. Right, right. Yeah, true. You guys, I’ve got, you know, B-boys and B-girls from all over the world, right?

1:34:08 Yeah. I’m that, don’t even speak the same language that come together, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like the original form of expression, right? Physical expression.

1:34:16 Yeah. Verbal you know, when we first started traveling, what people took to when we went to places like Paris and Japan was the visuals, because they didn’t understand, even the people over here didn’t understand, what them emcees were really saying, because it was slang involved. There was the accent involved. There was the mute, the beats involved, so they didn’t really capture that. They knew something was happening, had to be explained, and, but the dance is interpretive.

1:34:44 The art is interpretive, so it allowed them to be kind of, like, be a part of it, in a sense, and not have to decipher the words and the metaphors, and You want to see this stay pure, and I think I’m starting to understand you with the Olympics, because most people would say, “Hey, Olympics, let’s do it,” but you’re like, “Well, it’s only do it as long as it stays B-boying and doesn’t into something else, right? But also I think it has to make sure that it’s culturally aware and has a nice element of giving back to the community, and reaching out to those kinds of communities that something like this would have been born out of, and give, and kind of, like, pay it forward. Yeah.

1:35:38 I just want to finish by asking a couple questions about you, as far as, you know, how you’ve been successful over the years. Was there anything that you adopted, maybe even in the early days of your training, or your routine, or your diet, or your mindset, that allowed you to just keep getting better and better and better? Is there anything that, claim that you remember, like, when I did this, things had a guest on here. His name is Kevin Kelly. He actually started Wired magazine back in the day, and he said Brian, you’re only as old as the last time you changed your mind, and I was wondering what his Crazy Legs changed your mind about in the last six months or a year?

1:36:49 Well, you look at something differently than you used to look at I do events, and because a lot of, I, I think I’m a visionary when it comes to certain things, and throwing an event in Puerto Rico, you have to have a vision, because it’s very difficult to pull off what I’m, what I’m trying to do, and the past four years I’ve lost money on it, and you know, it comes to a point where you’re like, trying to do something good, and everyone’s making money from it, but, you, the goal, the intentions are honorable because I just want to help my people, but at the same time I’m not trying to go, I can’t put myself in a poorhouse, and then become ineffective when it comes to helping my people, and then I started pulling back, almost wasn’t gonna do my event in Puerto Rico this year, but then I got to a point where I just said, you know what?

1:37:44 Scared money doesn’t make money. I, I’m gonna ride with that this year, and when I decided to just go full-on into it, I think this year we’re turning a corner, where the community benefits as well, as, you know, I’m not, hopefully I won’t be taking a loss, and things start becoming, start to materialize when it comes to the idea of down the road, having thousands of people flying in to Puerto Rico, and really making this a true success that benefits everyone on the playing field. Okay.

1:38:20 What’s something we would be surprised to learn about Crazy Legs? I don’t watch B-boy videos I’ve never really been one to watch videos of myself or anyone else. Okay, a lot of fighters are like that. Oh yeah, they just don’t you would think they would do it all the time, but they don’t. It’s the same with you.

1:38:39 Yeah, okay. What keeps you awake at night? Anxiety about what I didn’t follow up on and, and, then making sure my son has everything he needs and, and, and, and, kind of, like, you also have to come to terms with the idea that there, there is mortality in dance, and you have to come to a realization where you could still be physically fit and in great condition, but the abuse you put on your body, you better be careful with, as you get older, because you have to be smart about it, and, and, unfortunately, left enough to look younger than I act.

1:39:37 I am So in that situation, when people look at me, they think, they think I’m younger. They forget that I put in 40 years of work and dance, and there’s a lot of wear and tear. So when someone tells me, “Hey, can you dance? Or come on, let’s battle?” I’m like, “Everyone do it, I need, like, about 40 minutes to warm up, or something like that, or, you know, I’m perfectly cool with not battling.

1:39:59 Actually, you got this win. Don’t worry about it. I’m good. You win, and because you have to be careful with hurting yourself, are you ever gonna stop dancing? How do you quit culture?

1:40:13 You know, the really quick culture. It’s like, since someone will, you ever stop dancing salsa? It’s like, it’s like part of being Puerto Rican. What’s, what’s your obituary gonna read? You know, when that happens, hopefully a long time from now, what are they gonna say about Crazy Legs?

1:40:31 I don’t know, because I, I don’t, probably something to ask someone else, because I don’t, I don’t, you know, we don’t write our legacy. We could do whatever we want, but our legacy is written by someone else. So I would say maybe, hopefully, it says, “Say what you want, he can’t hear you anyway.” That’s a good one. I always ask everyone a couple questions here at the end.

1:41:05 I’m gonna hit you with these. If you could pick up the phone and make a call to the 20-year-old Crazy Legs, that young guy, who I guess this would have been, kind of, late ’80s, so, would have kind of come down after that craziness, and if you were gonna give that young man a bit of advice, what would you tell him? Finish college. You didn’t know, you wish you had. Yeah, but I’ve also been able to do things that people go to school all their lives for and never get to do, them until they’re, like, less agile.

1:41:39 That’s physical, less energy. I’ve been through five passports in my life. I’m about to get my sixth one next year. I have a whole hell of a lot of wisdom, based on life experiences that people with a PhD wish they had. You know, I could apply things to less knowledge that people, then people can apply towards two degrees.

1:42:13 So, so you wish you’d completed it, but in fact you got lots of degrees, but you know, I also cause a lot of people to finish school and go to college, and I’m proud about that. Okay. On that same note, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received in your life? It could be from a dancer, could be from Swift, could be from someone you met over the years traveling that kind of thing. You got it right?

1:42:39 Yeah. What is it? I was doing a commercial for the ’84 Olympics. It was for Coca-Cola, and I met this man, are they from our first class? Which was great for me back then.

1:42:55 We did it in Italy and on the way back, I was talking to this finance guy on the plane, and he asked me what I was doing there. I told her what I was doing, and I told him, you know, kind of sad, I met these really cool people. It was the first time I had taken a trip and appreciated the people that I met, in terms of having conversation and and being present in the moment, and not it being about me, and He goes, “Look, you know, you’re gonna come across a lot of people.

1:43:28 Don’t don’t be sad about the fact that you’re never gonna see them again. Just be happy that you met them, and you have that great experience to look back on.” Hmm. That’s like a real lesson in being present. Yeah, and grateful.

1:43:43 Yeah, and not thinking too far in the future. Yeah, yeah. That’s a good one. Last part of that question to that 20-year-old that’s watching us right now, listening to us later on iTunes, all that stuff, who wants to be crazy likes, who wants to be the Red Bull BC One champion, who wants to be the greatest breakdancer in the world, B-boy, what advice do you give to him or her? Have a back-up plan.

1:44:10 You, this sounds like the same old thing you hear from every other person older than you, but it’s real, and if you’re really about hip-hop and you think that’s what you’re gonna do for your life, and how did, how do you empower it, you know, without all the tools that you need? How do you, you know, live up to hip-hop for life or B-boy for life, because there’s gonna come a point where you can’t. When you can’t do it, and then that’s when you really tested, as to whether what you were saying was or not, you know.

1:44:52 Are you giving back to the community Did you establish something that allows you to become self-sufficient, because you dedicated so much time into your dance, that did you prepare for when you get injured? Did you make money at a big competition, and invest in something, buy a home, invest your money, do things like that, because you’re gonna have kids one day, and they may not want to dance and you’re gonna have to take care of them. I send them to university.

1:45:24 Maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Legs, it’s been a real pleasure. Thank you. Down with you, you know, preparing for you.

1:45:31 I had already seen a lot of these documentaries a year ago. One, you don’t wanted a few people that prepared. Okay, yeah, journalists don’t prepare anymore, right? Well, I started kind of B-boying about a year ago, you know, so as I learned the moves, then I had to learn the culture, and I got some kind of old-school guys that are teaching me, so for them, it’s like, you got to know why these things happen. So I watched the movies, and I actually saw you at UK B-Boy Champs a year ago, before I knew anything about that stuff, and I saw you MC our host.

1:45:57 I always talk when you do talk about and, and, look, it’s, it’s, it’s important that we understand where you came from, and you know, and why you might be a little standoffish with people, and you’re from the Bronx, and also people know you, and they think they know you because you’ve done all this crazy stuff, and also, to say someone, “All you’re a legend,” like, that’s a lot of pressure and that kind of gets old after a while, and I’m sure, as you, you gotta, you gotta move forward. Yeah, I just say thank you. I’m, I’m uncomfortable when someone calls me a legend, right?

1:46:25 And I say thank you, and but that’s about it. I don’t really know how to respond to that. Yeah, there is no response to this. Yeah, I don’t call myself a legend. I think anyone that does that, it’s definitely not.

1:46:39 Yeah. But what I guess, they’re more than what they actually are. They think they’re more than what they actually are. Right. But, you know, people look to you, because you know you are the guy, and I know you sacrifice a lot of your personal space and stuff, to kind of be that guy for the community, and it’s something that I recognize and a lot of people do, you know, because you could easily not be in that line, light, and it would be a little easier, but you are, so you got to take all the heat and the stuff, and if you do a battle here or there, you know, you got to take all that on your shoulders, and I understand that.

1:47:08 I think a lot of people do too. So I just want to say thank you for, you’ve done, it’s amazing having you here in London. I met, who, a couple days ago, and I was like, “What, you’ve been doing this since ’96? What, you’ve been flying Crazy Legs over since ’96, so 21 years in a row, you’ve been coming over?” Yeah, that’s crazy.

1:47:28 I’ve been here over 40 times. I, man, that’s crazy. I just don’t think people recognize how much you travel and go, you know, hit the pavement. Yeah, to do all this stuff. So yeah, I just wanted to thank you for that.

1:47:39 Stuff. Thanks for coming on, letting me inside your brain. Yeah, I think a lot of people will maybe get to know you better than they have before, you know, because a lot of times, a two-minute video here and two-minute video there, they think they know what’s going on, but maybe now they know you. But yeah, and if not, you, something, yes. Right, good.

1:47:56 You know, there’s always gonna be someone who can watch this and still not want to take it in. So I feel bad for them, you know, cuz that probably carries over into other aspects of their lives. Yeah. Well, we can’t just keep talking. Some.

1:48:11 Yeah, right, so good. Oh, on London Real, we say it’s about the journey. I wish you well on yours. Yes, think you’ve been here, and let’s hook up sometime in the future. Cool, man.