Open up your mind, and travel back to the 1970's...The backdrop is a dilapidated neighborhood, where landlords would have rather burned down their apartment buildings to collect insurance, than lower the rent for their minority tenants.
When white business owners fled, the poverty, gangs, and drug use spread. This was ghetto hell. A suburbanite's nightmare. This was the Bronx.
Adversity can lead to futility,or spawn creativity. As history has always shown, society's oppressed adapt, and make the best out of the worst situations.MCing, Grafitti, D-Jaying, and B-boying, were all created in the Bronx. All of these art forms would become the building blocks and core elements of the Hip-Hop culture. As Hip-Hop's popularity grew, the fascination with breaking began to spread. Films such as Wild Style, Style Wars, Beat Street, and Breakin', propelling the elements, and compelling outsiders with no understanding of the culture to explore this "new" phenomena.
As break dancing became popular, crews like Rock Steady becameworld famous. Mr. Wiggles was and still remains a part of the legendary crew of B-boys.
"I used to was break back in 1976...77'. And when I started breakin' then, it was already big. It had already been going on since seventy-two or seventy. I was like the only Puerto Rican breakin' for a while. I was local though, I wasn't famous. I was just literally known on my block. And what kills me, what people don't know, is that breakin' died in 78' in the Bronx. Breakin' just totally played out. Late 78' early 79', I remember going to a Cold Crush jam on the block, jumping in the crowd, and people looking like, who is that Puerto Rican doing that old sh*t? I really knew from that point on that this sh*t ain't going nowhere. I never did it again, I was so embarrassed." Wiggles explained, laughing at the incident.
To Wiggles surprise, breakin' became popular again, only a few short years later. After hangin' out and displaying his talents on the block, he was asked to become a part of Rock Steady.
"Rock Steady was a crew in every sense of the word. You gotta hang; you gotta be down for everything. Whether it be fighting, chilling, dancing. Ultimately, they look at your skills, and be like, Yo, come by the neighborhood. That's how it happened with me. I just popped up around 97th, 98th and Amsterdam. But honestly, we was fighting." Explained Mr. Wiggles.
As money started to enter the game, the focus wasn't really on the original crews anymore. Squads were formed in order to capitalize off of the money making. Opportunities that shows, tours, and movies offered. “One thing I have to admit is that even Rock Steady kinda gota little taken over by the management. Rock Steady was a big crew. So when you look at the movie, I'm like, what happened to Take 1? What happened to Wiggles and Fabel? What happened to Ty Fly, what happened to Jimmy D, JoJo, Mongo? You don't see none of them. KnowwhatImean? It was a weird time, because the management would only pick five people to do a lot of stuff." Wiggles explained.
When it came to movie opportunities, The Rock Steady Crew was divided up to do different projects. When Crazy Legs appeared in Flash Dance, other crew members appeared in a movie called Portfolio that ended up being shelved. When Wild Style came around, only five or six members from Rock Steady would get to represent. So, Wiggles decided to do the movie with Little Rodney C and Electric Force. Shortly thereafter, Wiggles, Fabel, and Freeze started there own crew called Electric Company. At the time, everybody was crew hopping. I can remember seeing Beat Street for the first time, and actually getting a glimpse of the some of New York's most famous B-boying crews on the big screen. Even though Wild Style is regarded as a more authentic Hip Hop flick, I actually saw Beat Street first. I remember the lead character Lee, being idolized by a lot of cats, and I always wondered if he was a real B-boy.
"Lee was the kid that used to always live in the scene, and wasalways at the Roxy. He was a young kid that always managed to getin, cause he was too damn young. But, he was always at the Roxy. He was a quiet kid, that was down with the 3rd avenue crowd from the Bronx. Weebles and all those cats, they were in the movie too. Like Perico, he was one of the stars of the movie, the Spanish kid. So he was running with that crowd, and when the audition came up,he was just the best actor. And he could break a little, he could rhyme a little, he could do a little bit of everything. So he just managed to get the part. In the movie they had Lee do a little bit of breakin', and they had Tiny from Dynamic Breakers do all of his big moves." Wiggles stated.
He went on to explain to me how Lee went on to learn how to break real good, and ended up battling and getting served by Crazy Legs, approximately two years after BeatStreet came out. All of the graffiti in the movie had a generic feel to it. No "real" graf artists were used by the movie creators.Because of regulations, a union artist had to be used to create all of the pieces. After Beat Street, I remember seeing Breakin'. I viewed it as a West Coast reenactment of the B-boy scene, not really knowing the science behind its creation.
Wiggles schooled me on the what went on behind the scenes, that resulted in the evolution of the B-boy culture on both coasts.
"There was a meeting when Sugar Pop came to New York in like 1980.We all hung out in my hallway. Sugar Pop was the Californian dude down with the Electric Boogaloos, the group that created poppin'.And he schooled us on poppin', we schooled him on breakin' in my Hallway, this was like 80 or 81. He went back to Cali, showed everybody what he learned, of course we learned some poppin' from him. The poppin' is their sh*t. And then he called us up and said,Hey I got three friends coming to New York with Lionel Richie, they got a big hit record. Lionel Richie has these three dancers that areour boys. I want you to take them around, hook em up, and practice with them. So went over there, we went to the hotel, and hooked up with Shabba Doo, you know, Shrimp, Ozone, Turbo, and Papa Taco,the Mexican cat. So we practiced a lot, and then we just had a sit down and we talked about the West coast culture and the East coast culture. We schooled them on everything, and they was schooling us on the West coast sh*t. Next thing you know, a year later we both had movies out. And you could see the inspiration in both sides.In our scene, you see that we're dressed like them, and in their Movie, they're trying to dress like us. It was a weird thing, so I can't down it, even though I say it was watered down when they put the white girl down, it was the same thing in Beat Street when they had the white dude playing the Puerto Rican graffiti writer. We looked at both movies very critically, and we were like both movies are watered down. But still, they were the movies responsible for bringing the dance and culture all around the world," Wiggles explained.
The movies propelled these local B-boys into an unimaginable stratosphere that Hip-Hop's forefathers could have never foreseen.Mc-ing would eventually blast off, but at the parks and clubs back then, the dancers were the center of attention. Rap artists and dance crews would have equal billing when it came to shows back then.
The art of breakin' had become a phenomena that was blowingup, and the corporate big wigs were ready to get their claws in, and milk it like a plump cow. I remember buying an album called,Electric Breakin', that came with a pullout that taught you the art of breakin'.
"That's when it started getting watered down. I can't front. Forus as little kids, it was some of the best times I ever had. But now when I look back at it, it was some of the worst times.KnowwhatImean? Because man, they had us doing all kinds of sh*t," Wiggles stated.
The typical break dancing movie reflected the dancing as a means to avoid a physical conflict. The director would give his cameraman a cue, letting him know to start rolling the film. The camera would pan the dance floor, showing two B-boys, in the typical B-boy stance, staring at each other. ROLL MUSIC PLEASE!!!The music would come in, as they approach one another. Are they going to fight? No!!! Are they going to shoot the club up? No!!! This is an "authentic" break dancing movie.It was time to start up rocking!!!" They would get us to say things that weren't true. Like the word break dance, we never said that, that was such a corny word. And there was a lot of things that they made us say, that we never really believed in. Like they said, we heard you were gangs, and instead of fighting you would break dance. We were like, Yeah!!! And I thought about it, and I'm like I got into more fights dancing than I did f****n stepping on peoples shoes. Dancing, Iwas fighting every week. The reality was that no one was getting killed over no B-boy battle. That was the blessing," explained Wiggles.
All emcees use to have dancers, but as time went on, focus slowly became centered solely on the man (or woman) with the microphone.Sure, Heavy D had the boys, and Kane had Scoob and Scrap Lover,but they weren't B-boys. They also became part of the show, as opposed to being the show, as dancers had been in the past. Even though the dance forms popularity faded in the United States, it continued to be appreciated abroad. Nowadays, every R&B artist is trying to pop lock. There's even videos that will teach you how to pop and lock like N'Sync. Ain't no lie, baby bye bye bye...
"Darren Henson, that got that video out, I grew up with that kid,he was a real dancer. He's really good...he can pop. He was a younger cat, and he used to dance for Scott La Rock. I use to hook up a lot of kids to dance for Scott to go do his shows. And he would take them on tour. And that's where Darren came from." Wiggles explained, pausing before continuing.
"He's watering his shit down, and making money now. And if I ever see him, I'll tell him that his sh*t is wack. But, I respect him. He's from the Bronx, he paid some dues, and he was in the streets dancing and battling. He really is good, but, he looks wack in the video. I can't front. I know his history. I tell people, you don't know this kids history. When Scott La Rock died, that nig*a was crying in his mother's lap." Wiggles stated.
Even with the resurgence of b-boying, and dance techniques being used in recent videos, old school legends like Wiggles are rarely called upon to assist with choreography.
"I have ties and have heard rumors from every major artist out there, that they have my video. I can't think of an artist out there that's dancing, that doesn't have my video. It kills me, I can watch a video, and I can point out moves from me and my friends, and the Boogaloos. They're all trying to pop. You got B2K, Ginuwine, Usher, even Mya, they all got our sh*t. But, what happens is they're tell their choreographers, I want to learn that. And they choreographers are saying well you don't have to learn from them, I'll teach you. They're cutting our throat, because they don't want to lose that money. So, they're not going to introduce them to us. Instead, they're going out, sneaking buying our video, learning our sh*t, and teaching the stars," Wiggles explained.
Wiggles keeps it moving though, not getting upset over his moves being stolen, or the fact that he doesn't receive any credit. His love of the culture has him teaching his son and other kids out in Vegas, the art form, its history, and instilling a level of respect and appreciation for the culture in each of them. One of the most down to earth old school cats you'd want to meet, Wiggles understands the importance in passing the knowledge on."Yaw'll are being invited and welcomed into a culture that came from a certain people, you'll need to respect it and understand the roots of what you're doing before you water it down," Mr Wiggles advised.
Written by: Moses Miller for 88HIPHOP.Com