Interview with B-Boy London (New York City Breakers)

[Music] Welcome to the Bronx Hip Hop Oral History Project. Today is Wednesday, May 8th, 2024. I am Pastor Crespo Jr., the research librarian for the Bronx County Historical Society. Today, I am joined by London Ray, also known as B-Boy London, a dancer, pioneering B-boy, a TV host, an aspiring politician, and a New York City breaker. Yeah, welcome, London.

Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate that. Well, I don't, that intro, I don't know about, I'm worthy of that, but I appreciate it. Well, you know, another thing that I left out is, I, I do want to make sure that, you know, people know that you are a community supporter, a community activist, and you work with kids all the time. So that's something that needs to be credited to you. You know, on a few things that, that we'll cover, all right, you know, and we'll discuss it. That's definitely my life now, for sure. You know, thank you for everything you're doing, you know, with the kids up in Yonkers and New York Citywide. You know, we like to start all our oral histories out by first asking your family background. Where are your parents from? And tell us a little bit about each and where they come from.

Well, uh, both my parents are Puerto Rican. Um, my father was born in PR. Um, my mother was the first of her six siblings to be born in the States. Everybody else was born in PR. So, uh, when my grandparents came here, I believe they came here in the 50s. Could have been like '45, between '45 and '52, because they came separately.

Got it. You know, my grandmother came first. My grandfather sent her over first to set everything up, and then he eventually came down. Um, and back then, I call it like, "The Great Migration," really, right? Um, the 40s and the 50s, you had a lot of Puerto Ricans. It was just after the World War, uh, where they recruited, well, they took over the island, Vieques, and they did bombing, and, you know, you can't even use the island. That part of the island anymore. Everything there is just, uh, it's, you can't eat anything, you can't grow anything. You can't, it's just there, unfortunately. The land is polluted with titanium tips, artillery rounds, correct? And they literally used that to do war games. You know, and it, it cost a lot of Puerto Ricans health-wise, and you could just see it. If you really study history and, and do the research, you can see what the American government did and how it used the Puerto Rican island just as one of the tools in its tool belt. And the people in the island were recruited, uh, to fight in this war, which we didn't ask for. And that's how we gained our citizenship. It was like the, the, to try to make us feel good, like, "You're listen, okay, you know, we're going to treat you a little bit different. You know, I, we appreciate that you're sacrificing your all." So in return, we'll let you guys come and be part of the United States. You can't vote for the president, you can't be involved in the political structure, you can't have political will, but you can say that you're an American. A second-class American, second-class citizen. We've been like that ever since. And we're one of the few countries that are still being occupied. You know, whether you're talking about Puerto Rico, you're talking about Gaza, there are still places on this planet that are being occupied. Um, and I'm hoping one day people wake up and understand what's really happening. You know, I don't know if it's too late to ever win our independence. We went through that, you know, people got arrested. Um, the shooting in, in Congress, you know, was very well documented. You know, but I think ultimately, you know, for me, I think it's about a people trying to keep their culture alive, um, and, and understanding that we are somebody. And, um, we've been stripped of that through the years. And I think that when America takes over the island in 1898, after the Spanish-American War, under the pretext that, you know, "We're going to save you guys," you know, from the takeover, meanwhile, we, they took us over from the imperialist space. Absolutely, right? The Spanish, the bad, bad Spanish people. And, you know, then they come in there and they do what they do. So when you understand history from that perspective, you know, and you grow up, when I grew up in the, in the 70s, you know, my father was somewhat active in that political world, not for any other reason, but just trying to make life better. You know, I got to see and witness and be a part of a lot of things that when I look back to now, I realize like, "Wow, that's incredible." Now I understand why I think the way I think, why I act the way I act. Not understanding that as a kid, these were images and these were things that I was witnessing and I was a part of. And as I got older and I reflect on my history, like, "Why do I act this way? Why do I believe the things that I believe in? Like, why do I feel like the need to want to help people?" I felt like nobody really helped me. And that's something that Puerto Ricans specifically have this issue with because we're, we're lost. We're still trying to find our identity, you know, uh, in many, many ways. And we've been stripped of our language, our culture, our island. So it's tough, you know. And coming to this country and, and saying that we, we're in America now, "What are you speaking Spanish for? Stuff it out of here. What the hell you think you are?" You know, having to go through that, you know, was not an easy thing. And then feeling ashamed at some point, like, "Damn, you know, I'm Spanish, and I don't fit in." You know, like I'm a little bit different. I'm not white, I'm not black. So it's like, how do I? You know, and, and thank God for hip hop, you know, not really understanding how that really brings everyone together. It's an amazing thing. And I'm just very proud to have grown up during the time that I grew up and was a part of that made me feel good.

Awesome, awesome. Did your grandparents ever talk about the old town in Puerto Rico and share any stories with you that you'd like to share?

Well, I mean, just food-wise, I just basically just the whole system of food. Everything was on the island. You can grow your own food, you, you're self-sufficient. You come into this country, everything is processed. Everything is not what it really is, you know? Now, everything is sugar-based. Everything is just, everything that you eat in America, if you really do your research, is really not good. And then we wonder why we have cancer and blood pressure and, and diabetes. But if you take those same foods and compare them to other countries, they're banned now. Think about this, because the information, because of computers, is, is prevalent now. It's not like back in the days, right? So now you can research this stuff. Can you imagine feeding your child these poisons for 30, 40, 50 years? So I've learned to eat differently. Not that I have the best eating habits, but the one thing that I've learned is is that the, the old food that you grow, the pigs, the chickens that you, that you cook, you know, yourself, you know, you don't buy them in the store. Like you literally grow, you have a farm. Like, not a real farm, but yeah. And when I was growing up in the Bronx, every Puerto Rican that had a house, pretty much had chickens for the most part. I don't remember too many that didn't. But it was part of the lifestyle, you know? It was part of the way that we ate our food. Uh, and it was all natural food. And so, you know, when you compare the food and the health from back then to today, you can say, "Oh yeah, I eat fresh vegetables and fruits," but you're eating the pesticides that go along with it. These are not organic foods that you're growing from your backyard. That was a huge difference. And my grandmother, oh man, she was Superwoman, man. She would cook for everybody. I mean, it wasn't, everybody had cereal. So my grandparents believed like, cereal was for, for lazy people. That you had to have a hot meal. There was no, like, maybe, okay, she had cereal, but that's if you're in a rush, you got, you're running late. Okay, have some cornflakes or Cheerios or whatever they had back then. But it was oatmeal, hard-boiled eggs, like, like toast, butter, like, it was, it was, and everybody had their own. You want scrambled eggs, you want over easy. Like, my grandmother was phenomenal. And I'm talking about that was for lunch, for dinner. Everything was cooked. Nothing. And it was leftovers. That was for lazy people, okay? We'll eat the leftovers, you know, for lunch or something. But, you know, now I have leftovers for four or five days, man. You know, back then it was, you know, everything had to be fresh. And so, you know, when I talked, especially to my aunts and my uncles, all my tías and, and tíos, and I asked them like, "What it was like growing up?" You know, and as a little kid, I've witnessed all, all of this. But that's when things, to for me, began to change, you know, especially in the 80s. Then there was a totally different lifestyle. Um, but those in the early 70s, it was pretty much like, I mean, listen, I lived in the Bronx. I grew up on 161st Street. My grandmother lived on Coldwell Avenue on 156. They used to have a little hospital there. It was a clinic or a hospital. And I found a picture recently of it, and I was amazed. But it was such a great place to grow up. Um, and we used to walk like for miles because we were kids. It didn't seem like back then. Everybody walked or had a bike or had skates. The roller skates, the iron roller skates, not the what they have now. Yes, but they were the iron ball, you know, like, so we roll the skates, we ride our bicycles, five speeds, 10 speeds, you know, you had the, uh, they didn't have like the West Coast, the BMX bikes, like at least on the East Coast, I don't remember that. We had the banana boat, the banana seats. I loved it. Yeah. So we had stuff like that. Yeah, you had the big hand. If you were fancy, you got the head with the little, uh, uh, little things that used to fly the sides. So you, you had little mirrors like cars. Yes, like, I mean, you know, you had a bike, it was like a car as a kid. So you took care of it. And we would all just get together and ride bikes. It would be like maybe 10, 15 of us that all had bikes. Some had nice bikes, some had, I didn't have the greatest bike, but I had a bike, right? And we would just ride. We'd go from the South Bronx to Orchard Beach and back, like literally side of the highway riding the bikes. It was amazing. Hang out there and just have a good time in Orchard Beach. It was, oh my God, paddleball, salsa. I mean, it was, it was, it was a party, awesome, 24/7, nonstop music, food, culture. I mean, I guess maybe still kind of sort of like that because you still got the old school guys that still kind of represented the last of them. Oh, heans that'll hold it out. But it wasn't like when I went there, you know, when I went there, it was all day. We'd get there like early in the morning, the, the little, the things you put your food in, the coolers, stack it up, full of food because it was put forward to, you know, so we had all kind of food and we'd bring it. It was just like literally bring half the house there. And we stayed there till it got dark, and we had to get in line and wait for the buses. And there was thousands of people. So sometimes you have to wait 30, 40 minutes for our bus just because it was, uh, just rows of lines that they would have. Everybody would just sit there with their coolers, and they would sit there and wait to go home. And then the 12 bus, one like 30 seconds later, next one, 30 seconds later, the next bus. And that would just happen for like two, three hours, just bus after bus after bus after just to get all, all the people out, you know? And then, you know, some stayed over, you know, back then. Now they block it off. But there was so much freedom growing up in the 70s that, uh, there were no restrictions. You could pretty much do anything. Like, think about it, from playing music in the parks, to opening up the, the, the, the water hoses, the, the fire hydrants, to just hanging out on balconies, sleeping on balconies, roller skates, like, like now, forget it. Can't do any of that stuff. You, God forbid you open up a fire hydrant now, you might get arrested. You know, so things are totally different now. Uh, you know, I, I miss those days. I'll say that.

Before I, I hit you up on the neighborhood you grew up in, you know, what was, tell me about some of the meals your, your parents and your grandparents served you at home?

Oh my God, bro. Bro, number one, bro, pigeon gandules, uh, uh, bo. I mean, just my grandmother was a freaking chef. I'm all from that generation, okay? I'm born in 1966, so I'm talking my grandmother and father. My grandmother got down, right? Like, I'm talking like, past. I mean, I'm talking everything. All parties, man. That was one of the greatest times of my life, going over there for New Year's and Christmas, and just the, the food was just phenomenal. It was just amazing, like, just the amount of food. I remember back before they had the, uh, the food processors, having the, the, the potatoes and, and all, man, sometimes my father, man, I mean, just, it was like an assembly line, right? You know, and everybody wrap, you stringing, you doing, you're doing that, and making the, oh my God, yes, it was great. And because it was family time, too, you know, it wasn't one person, it was like four or five of us, you know, and then just, and it just, we laugh at today, you know, at those family events.

What kind of music did your grandparents and parents listen to that you were influenced by?

Oh my God, you're talking the classics. Uh, man, just, uh, this is, I mean, I guess at that time, it was probably called Mambo. You know, I, I don't even know if the word Salsa was around, but it was Latin music. And, you know, like whether Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, uh, Arsenio Rodríguez, um, um, this guy, what's his name? Machito. Macha. Um, oh my God, I forgot his name. He's one of the great Latin guys. I mean, it was, my grandfather had a phenomenal record collection that I wish that I really fully understood those classic records. That my brother-in-law, who became the Weapon Man, who went on to remake some of those things. That's so he took a lot of those old phrases. Who's your cousin? Uh, Danny Arroyo. My, he was married. He passed away during COVID, unfortunately. But he's known as the Weapon Man, and he was the one that came up with, um, all those Latin. Anytime you hear the Puerto Rican Day Parade, any of those Latin songs, "Two in the Room," "Two Without Hats," he produced and wrote him. And his brother wrote a majority of all of those records, including "Boricua Anthem," all of that stuff, you know? Unfortunately, like I said, it was, it was stuff that was, uh, done prior. So I think that when the copyright stuff came out, because you used that phrase, and you didn't own it, or you got that idea from this person on this record. So, you know, but these were like, just things that we all grew up in, not understanding because we were just kids. We didn't know. And for me, in particular, you know, was a little confused because it was like, where I grew up, especially in my grandmother's neighborhood, it was probably like 90% Puerto Rican. I mean, maybe they might have been a Mexican, a Dominican, I'm sure, but everybody was Spanish, right? Might have been a handful of Blacks, maybe one white or Jew, maybe here or there, I'm not really sure.

What neighborhood was your grandmother from? And then you tell me about your grandmother's neighborhood.

Well, she grew up on Coldwell. Well, they, prior to Coldwell, prior to them purchasing the house on Coldwell Avenue, uh, my grandfather was a mechanic. They lived on Crotona Park area. So that's what they had in a, they rented an apartment back then. So my grandfather, I think he might have worked for Hertz fixing cars. So he had saved up enough money to purchase this house that his seven children all grew up in. And that house was 683 Coldwell Avenue. And, uh, that was right on the, the cross was like a 156 and Coldwell Avenue, like in the middle of the block. You had one side of the street that was predominantly private houses. It was like maybe about 15 private houses. And then on the bookends, they were like the six-story apartment buildings or tenements. Then across the street was all six-story tenements, fire escapes. They had the metal, um, gates that kind of, I guess, you know, protected the buildings or whatever or shielded. And, um, it was nothing but kids, like hundreds of kids, like, you know. And then back then, like you see today, you know, um, you had people selling gepas and baguas and just, you know, just whatever, you know, sugar canes. Oh, needs to come with the sugar canes, man. You, you know, suck all the juice out of that, but it was natural sugar, right? Wasn't processed again, you know? Um, and these again, gepas, these are all organic, natural things that grow from the earth. Stuff that we grew up in that was part of our lifestyle, our culture. And everybody, you know, whether you were Puerto Rican or not, enjoyed these fruits. You know, it was part of the culture. Like, you just, there's no way that you could tell me that you grew up in the Bronx in the 70s and you don't know what a gepa is or or anything like that or sugar cane. Like that was in New York. It was prevalent. I mean, you, the fruit stands, they were everywhere, you know, um, not like today's food stands, you know, um, but it was just a different time. It was a different era, a different culture. Even the mannerisms were different. The people were polite. They always helped out. It was community-based. Um, other people's parents were allowed to reprimand your children without getting shot or stabbed or beat up, you know? It was just a different time. It really was about community. Um, not that it was particularly safe, but it was just something about in your community, you were safe. Maybe outside of that, there was a different game, right? But that's why when you really study the gang culture and the lifestyle, when they talk about, "You don't leave your neighborhood," that's really what it was. That was your safeguard. Just like when you walk into your house and you close your door, everybody in that house, everybody loves each other, they take care of each other. Well, when you came into our neighborhood, it was the same thing. When you left the neighborhood, it was like leaving your house. You don't know what's going to happen, right? Right. You could be okay going to the store, or you might get jumped. So that, those are the risks that you took when you left your neighborhood. Now, you don't normally leave your neighborhood unless you knew somebody else from another neighborhood. It was okay, we can accept them. I know they'll vouch for you, right? Now, okay, you know, as an outsider, they didn't look, they didn't look fond. They didn't appreciate outsiders, you know, um, outsiders were not welcome when I was growing up. So we were always conscious not to get caught in a neighborhood that wasn't yours. Even if you had to go through, passing through, your head was on a swivel, just, you know, something you might have to run. You gotta be ready, right? Don't be a lamb and fall asleep because the line is out there. So we grew up, you know, very conscious of our surroundings. So it, it made us aware.

Okay. Well, tell me about your neighborhood. Where did you grow up?

So I was born on Evergreen in the house in 1966. It was a snowstorm, and so unfortunately, we couldn't get to the hospital. And so I was literally born in the house. My father passed out because I don't think he was accustomed to see the baby coming out of a vagina and the blood, and it was just, there was nobody that was professional. So he just, he was down for the count. So my mother always says, you know, like, um, there was no stopping me. Like, I was, I was coming whether I was ready or not. The world's gonna accept me. So I think that that rang true to who I am. Like, when I come, I'm coming. There's nothing that's gonna stop me. So from Evergreen, uh, we moved, uh, to 161st Street and the Grand Concourse. Okay. Now, back then, uh, this is before they built the projects across the street. This is like, this is like when the Yankees were like terrible. This is like, um, just, this is when the welfare building was on 161st Street. So we lived right around the corner from the welfare building. This is before they built that, um, the, uh, the mall they have there. That mall was literally 50 feet underground. So when I was growing up, we used to play that open area. There was nothing there. It was just land. And, uh, they built these, these apartment buildings that were like 30 stories high. Now they call it Concourse Village. You had an East Side and a West Side. So, where they have that, that mall underneath, we used to play Ring Around the Rosie. That's where they had the pillars. Okay. So when you go under, we call it underground. It wasn't really underground, but it was so you go underground, you can see these concrete pillars and you can see how it's holding up all of these buildings. So we would play like, uh, follow the leader. We had to run and jump from pillar to pillar. We would zigzag through like a little maze. Then we would leave the underground section because that's where all the buildings were, and then we would go to the open land. And that's where they built the mall. And back then, you had like a little hill because it was like, I said, like 40, 50 feet down. And they would throw abandoned cars and junk. And so we used to take the roofs of the abandoned cars and take them off. Don't ask me how, I don't know. But they would just be there. And as kids, we would take whatever debris, tires, whatever, and those became our sleds. And we would go down these hills all the time. And I remember one time I was with my best friend, Craig Logan, at the time, and my sister. And we were on the hood, and we were, there's no control, there's no brakes, there's no steering wheel, you just, you know. And I remember we were going so hard down that hill and so fast. And I think there was a tree stump or something it was sticking up. And when the, when the hood hit it, it flipped over. And I remember my sister was in the air, and she fell, and she just stopped moving. So we thought she was dead. We had no idea. We start running like, "Oh my God, oh my God!" Running, running, and we get her. She's like, "No, okay, I'm okay." I'm like, "Oh God, this is crazy." Uh, I remember, I think it was 1976 or '77. We had a major snowstorm again. You're going 30, 40, 50 feet down. So the snow would accumulate. So I remember one time, again, my best friend, he had me doing crazy stuff. So Craig and I started to dig like a, not a tunnel, but we started to dig down like a circle, like going like, let's say, how far down we could dig. And, um, he dared me to go down headfirst. And me, like an idiot, I do it. And I can't get out. The blood is rushing to my head. He's not strong enough to get me out. I'm like, long story short, I get out. But like, just things like that, you know? I remember playing games like punchball, handball, slugsy, Kick the Can, Ring Around the Rosie, Manhunt. Um, I remember just playing outside every single day. I remember, man, as soon as I got out of school, go outside Saturday, right after the cartoons, right outside. Nobody ever stayed home. Like, there was always kids outside. And today, I don't see that as much. And it makes me feel kind of sad, right? You know, you're losing that social connection. And hopefully, we'll get back to that.

Wow. Take, take us through your elementary school and middle school and high school. Run us through those schools and your experiences. Anything that stands out in your memories?

Well, uh, I remember going to PS 16. That was not too far away. We used to walk to school back then. It wasn't that far. And, you know, in elementary school, you, I was a good student until I hit the fifth grade, I think. Um, and I got hit by a car. And so I had to miss a lot of the school year. I was in a body cast from my neck all the way down to my toe. And they had to cut a hole so I could breathe. Had a hole cut so I could pee and, and, and so I could defecate. Wow. So it was tough. And it was very itchy. It was hot. It was a summer. It lasted that whole time. Had to get tutors. And so from that point on, I wasn't the greatest student because now I was like, man, I'm home. And then I started playing hooky. And, you know, but I eventually graduated. I don't even know how, but I graduated. And then I went to the school that was right next door, which is the Luke Garrick, I believe it was, uh, 156, PS 156. So I went from PS 151 to PS 156, which is the Luke Garrick School. So that was kind of cool, I thought, because I was like a Luke Garrick, New York Yankee legend, you know? And then they had sports. So that was something that I was kind of into. I loved basketball. I was pretty athletic. Loved baseball. Was a huge baseball fan. Collect baseball cards, comic books, fantasize about being a baseball player. Um, I would go to the Yankee games. We would sneak in. It was so cool. We were like the, the, the Bleacher Creatures because we were able to sneak in. If we were lucky enough back then, I believe a ticket cost $1.50 to go to the bleachers, which were not desirable seats, you know, maybe now they are. But back then, tickets were so cheap. People would just literally go to the games every single day. It was like, you could take your whole family. And the reason why I believe baseball was so popular was because it was very affordable. It was the one sport that you didn't have to spend a lot of money on, which is why there was always so many people at the games. Um, now you can easily spend $3, $400 with a family of four, you know, easy. So they've priced out a lot of people. And now it's more corporate, so it's not quite the same, right?

How about your high school? What high school did you go to?

So I bounced around because now what happens is, is that 1977, a movie comes out. I'm selling candy to raise money because back then, uh, and still hold true today, schools don't have any money. So they have candy sales. And we used to sell the little chocolate bars for a dollar. And I'm pretty aggressive, so I sold quite a bit. This movie comes out called Saturday Night Fever. That changes everything for me. So from that point on, I'm like, I have all this money. I know I'm supposed to turn it in, but, you know what? What I'm gonna do is go to the movies. I went to the movies every single day. And back then, you could see, go in like a matinee, and you can literally stay there a whole entire time till they close. And that's pretty much what I did like for a month. And I went so many times that I literally memorized the whole entire script of the movie. Wow. And at night, I would bug my sisters and recite and react everything from that movie. And then, and I did the whole John Travolta, you know? So my father was like, "Oh my God, look at my son." I was always shy. I was very quiet, you know, I always stood in the background. And then when he saw me doing that, he started showing me off, which kind of helped with my shyness because I didn't want to do it, but I was terrified of my father. My father did not play. "I'm doing it." That, you know, but that's what kind of got me into dancing, you know? And, and then when my mother started realizing that I wasn't going to school, and that, you know, I was probably, you know, doing things that I really shouldn't be doing, running the streets, misbehaving, not listening, you know, my father had moved to California because again, he was involved with community as an activist, kind of sort of, but he was involved with the wrong crowd. So he left New York, not by choice, just so that he can still be here. And he just left with whatever he had in a bag, and he went to California, moved with his sister. And then later on, my mother said, "You need, you got to help your son because he's, you know, he's going, he's gonna get lost in these streets." And I was, you know, I was doing a lot of bad things, to be honest with you. Um, I even hate to repeat what I'm doing just because it's like, I think back to it now, it's like, "Oh man," like I'm embarrassed to let people know, you know? But let's just say that I was in a lot of trouble. Uh, so with that, they shipped me out to California with my sisters. And that was '78. Uh, so that's when I start bouncing from school to school. So when I get to high school, I go to John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx, but I also go back to California for for a semester or two because, you know, again, when I went, my mother, I'm not always doing the right thing. Whatever my father, "Yes, sir, no way, hey, I'm 8 AM, whatever has to be done." You know? So like my father, really, I was petrified. You know, I remember one time I was running track, and my father just be home before it gets dark because if not, you gonna get it. And when he said, "Get it," I already knew like, "Oh no," like, I'm talking my father was no mercy. So that's what I tell people, I think that's where I learned how to fight well because I can take a punch. I can, like, you know, if I can take a whooping for my pops, he's a grown man. Ain't nobody, even if you're a little bit bigger than me, you're not like my pops. My pops is like, he was built, built, you know, he was in, he served time in the Army, so he was a, you know, and he was a very hot-tempered with everybody, you know, type person. He was not to be played with. So, uh, it was, it was tough, you know, growing up. And, you know, me bouncing back and forth, I never had a chance to set any real roots, which is why I think in the beginning, people really couldn't put a finger on me because I didn't stay in any one place long enough, you know? But I'm fortunate that in my life, you know, I did make some imprints. So, you know, when I go to John F. Kennedy, that's where a lot of the top B-boys and dancers went, whether your name was Crazy Legs, Action, uh, Powerful Paks, Fast Break, Awesome Paul, Mr. Freeze, um, uh, a guy named Leon Frankie. I mean, it was, it was just, it was just an incredible time in my life, because, uh, there was a guy named Glide Master from the New York City Breakers, and him and I became like the best of friends, and we were like inseparable. And it got to a point where I was practically living with him. And we would just stay over his house and go to school. And we went to the same school. And, you know, it was like a phenomenal relationship. And then at that time, New York City Breakers is just starting to become like super big. I would say '83, New York City Breakers becomes very popular worldwide, more or less. Um, and I, I mean, it was, it, listen, I lived a great life, man. I got to see some of the greatest dancers before they became great, right? I got to witness a lot of things in the early days. Like, I grew up with legends. Like, I grew up, so I never had that confidence like, "Yeah, look at me," because these guys were superstars already, right? Right, right. Like, they were already just, you know, before the movies, before Flashdance, before Beat Street, these guys were celebrities in the neighborhood. In particular, a guy named Action, Chino Lopez, who was like, he was like the Fonzie of the neighborhood. Like, at his early age, he just had that flair, get dressed nice, everybody wanted to be like him. I mean, he was just, something about him, the charisma he had that just everybody just got sucked into. And I was no different. And, and I think that that's really where I felt like my life starting to change when I started to spend more and more time. Back then, what they were known as the Floor Masters. That's where K-Krew comes from. He's from that neighborhood. So there was a lot of people that came out of the Bronx from that Kingsbridge, Marble Hill, Avenue, Decatur, uh, Park, around the PM Road, that, uh, by the Bronx Zoo. Even Little Italy, which we didn't, back then, ever really go into because that was real dangerous, but not, not very hospitable. Oh, no, no, no way. Oh, no, you get chased out. I mean, I remember, I don't know what year this was. This had to be, I would say 1980, maybe somewhere around that time. Uh, there was a problem with the Albanians. Albanians had a strong hold of Mullaly Park. They owned most of the apartment buildings. They were white. They got along with the Irish for the most part. In comparison to the Puerto Ricans, they definitely did not like the Blacks. So they were, when I moved to Marble Hill in the 1970, maybe '78, my mom moved there. There were not many Blacks on on that particular block within that area. Again, everything was predominantly Puerto Rican, even back then. Um, and I remember, uh, a person by the name of Damon Flag. We gave him a nickname of U-Kumba, Kumala, because he was one of the first Blacks to move into the neighborhood. So we say, "Oh, you're black, you're Kumala." And to this day, they call him Kumala. I don't know if we could do that today, but he embraced it. Um, there was a guy named Kev Green, who was a rapper, who did a song called "B-Boy's Best." Uh, I remember when he moved into the neighborhood. Uh, he was light-skinned African-American. We became good friends. I remember dancing with him, breaking for them for their record that came out, I believe in 1984. They, they had that record. But there was a strong, and I remember the Albanians came in and with chains, bats, and you want to see a bunch of Puerto Ricans spread out. Everybody ran for their lives, went into the buildings, locked the doors, went upstairs, got on rooftops. Like, it was not good, you know? There was, if you went into their community, and it was a problem, they were going to retaliate. And that was a retaliation. Not that we had anything to do with it, but just the fact that we're from the block, we're from the neighborhood, mostly Blacks and Puerto Ricans at that time, we were going to pay that price. So there was a couple of times, you know, even when I used to live back with my grandmother on 156, or even on 161st, where, you know, there was gangs. Gangs were, you know, very common. And they were common. I don't think people really understand because it was, it was dangerous. You needed protection. You needed help, right? And there was a guy named Littleman who was ruthless. I didn't know who he was. I'm just a kid. I don't even know. I just know that I could take a weapon, and I'm not going to let this guy, you know, rob me. Like, he was robbing everybody. That's it. Let me see, turn out your pockets. You got rabbits? You got to pull out and make sure that they see the white, make sure there was nothing there. And I'm like, "Noah, Noah," because I had baseball cards, and I was a baseball card. We used to flip them. And, and I'm like, "No, I mean, huge baseball, like fantasize. That's all I ever did." And I was like, "Nah, nah." And it was just something about my attitude that he just, I like this kid. Like, he got, he got some spice. He got a little bite to him. Yo, from now on, ain't nobody messing with this guy. Right? You mess with him, you gotta deal with me. So then I was like, "Anointed." Oh, I got protection. I got, oh yeah, I felt good now. I felt like, okay, so nobody kind of mess with me after that point, you know? And then as you get older, and they feel like if you have some type of talent, they start protecting you. Like, "Nah, no, you ain't got to do that. We got this. You gonna be the one that's gonna, you know, look out for us and help us, and you're different." You know? And that went for sports athletes too. If you were a sports star, they felt like, you know, you, they protected you. You didn't have to do certain things because what people don't realize is that there were times you're gonna have to do things if you're gonna survive in this neighborhood. You gotta demonstrate to the stakeholders, which for the most part are gang members, like, you gotta hold your own. I don't care if you don't know how to fight, you do not, you gonna show us, or you gonna get your ass kicked. Now, either we gonna kick your ass, or you gonna handle your business. But I'm gonna tell you right now, this ass-whooping is gonna be a lot worse from us than it is from them. So you didn't have a choice. So you had to constantly go out there and prove yourself. If nothing else, just so that you could live in your own goddamn neighborhood. And that's the reality of what happened. So fast forward all these years later, I don't promote that gang lifestyle. So when I see all these old school guys trying to, to romance that time, there's nothing to romance. There's nothing that good that comes out of that. I don't want to promote that gang lifestyle. There's nothing good that comes from that. And we can revisit all of those things, and The Warriors, and yeah, because that was huge. But let's be honest, that was a very scary time. It was very dangerous. We did what we had to do to survive because at the end of the day, we're survivors. We survived the gang era. We survived the crack era. We survived the heroin era. We survived the burning of the Bronx. We're survivors. We, we made it. How many people can say that? When I look at my friends, people I grew up with, the neighborhood, they're dead, in jail, no longer with us. And we survived, man. Stop playing. Life is great. What is there to be upset about? I mean, things are not perfect, but man, if you came out of where I came out of, man, I'm blessed. Who, who is it to complain about?

Got it. Before we move into breaking, who were some of those gangs that existed while you were growing up in the 70s?

Well, they were all miscellaneous gangs. Got it. You know, so it wasn't, you know, but these gangs existed even prior to me because my father grew up, was a part of that. Not that he was a gang member, but their gangs existed for, I don't know how long, maybe the beginning of time. That was part of living in the Bronx at that time. There are no choices. That is what it was. And it was because people of color were constantly being picked on, whether it was other groups, whether it's Italians or Irish or Albanian, whether it was the police, whether it was the school teachers, whether it was people of anybody of authority, we were always the brunt of everything negative and everything wrong. Didn't matter what happened. Central Park Five weren't even involved in it, wasn't even, but yet they were convicted. Well, that's how we grew up. That was everyday life. I can't begin to tell you how many people got caught up that should not be in jail, but are in jail with no real evidence or proof, just based on an eyewitness. Like, can you imagine? Just based on what somebody says, there's no DNA, there's no blood work, there's no fingerprints, it's just, "I saw him do it." "Okay, lock him up." That was a reality that happened all the time. Gang fights, block fights happen all the time. I can't tell you, I remember what year, probably '82. I remember I was walking through the Concourse Avenue one day, and I remember them throwing stuff at me, and I was like, "Holy smokes, like, I'm only live like a block and a half away." And I'm turning around and I'm saying, "Man, these, okay, that's how you are." Okay, cool. I'll be right back. Went, called a few guys, man, that turned into a melee. Like, nobody, we must have, we all got arrested. Must have been about 30 cop cars. Every, everything from Bedford Park, Marble Hill, everything was shut down because there was like 10 fights. Everybody just fighting. Wow. That's how it was because everything was about respect. You just can't talk to people a certain way. You can't treat people a certain way. And then at some point, you're going to have to make a stand. And when you make that stand, that's when you earn your stripes. Okay, he's a, don't, don't play with him. Get him because he, yeah, he a little bit soft, you can get him. Don't, don't mess with him, though. So that's how you build your reputation back then through fighting, unfortunately. That's the reality. Until breaking came.

Tell us, tell us about the first time you saw someone breaking and what your impression was. How did it impact you?

That had to be '79 when I started DJing. Not that I was a main DJ because I wasn't. My friend Rocky, um, and Richie bought equipment back at that time, and they wanted to do parties because, you know, Black parties were very popular, like super popular. It was like always a Black party. And again, I grew up in the Fordham Road, Kingsbridge, Bedford Park area. So all these places, well, walking distance if you wanted to get on a train for one stop, maybe you could do that, but we would just walk. Paul Park was a place that we would gather, hang out. Echo Park was another spot. Holy Cross was a school that used to have parties. John F. Kennedy High School used to have parties back in the days, hip hop parties back in the days. So, um, my two friends, Rocky and I were super close at the time. He was one of my best friends, and he played baseball, of course, as well. So we had that, and he was, we were both avid baseball fans. So he decided to chip in with his friend, our friend Richie, um, and they bought equipment and they kept it in Rocky's house because he had more freedom. And it was bigger, and we could all go there to practice. So like four or five guys from the neighborhood would go there, and we'd all practice DJing. Then they started.

To do parties, from Webster Avenue to Teabout, to you know, to Sweet Sixteens, to basement parties. And one day, they did a party, and it was, I, I think it was a basement party because back then, in the apartment buildings, they had like these ginormous basements. Like, and the buildings were all connected, and so you can go from roof to roof, or you can go from basement to basement if you knew the layout, right? And you can get around. It's crazy. That's how a lot of people escape police and stuff like that, or gang. You know, they, if you knew your neighborhood, you knew the buildings. You knew that once I got into the, the, the basement, because back then they didn't lock anything up to that gate, so you just get through the gate, slam it. But once you start going, it's like a maze. Once you start traveling through, they're not going to find you, especially if you went from roof to roof to roof. Not many people had that type of courage. So we did a basement party, and I, I, I remember seeing this kid. Just, I didn't know what he was doing, to be honest with you. I just know, like, he was just doing something that, that I was just like, "What the holy smokes?" Like, "Whoa!" Like, I, I couldn't even understand it. It was just, I didn't, I couldn't do it, right?

There was also Boogie Boys. I didn't know them as poppers back then. They were called, back then it was called The Electric Boogie. So, you know, I saw Boogie Boys, but I had seen that on Soul Train. I saw the lockers. Um, again, there were no VCRs back then, right? So the way that we kind of learned how to dance was basically everybody would watch Soul Train or American Bandstand or The Gong Show or, or, or these other variety shows. Merv Griffin, they would always put on these acts. They're variety shows. So some, you might have a tumbler, you have a juggler, you might have a comedian, you might have a dancer, you might have somebody come from Europe and, and do these acrobat things, and you might have classic, you know, tap dancers. So that was our form of, of education, you know? Um, so when we saw things like Soul Train, it was just like, "Oh man, I saw him do something like this and like that." "No, no, no, he actually did this." "Oh yeah, you got that part. Okay, you got that part. I got this part." So we just pieced everything together as best we could. It's not like today with YouTube and you can go back and rewind it or VHS it. It was none of that. It was just, you had that one show. You just had to capture whatever it is that you saw, memorize it to the best of your ability, and then get with your friends and try to figure out what they did and try to copy it. Until we started DJing in '79, and now we had to see people like actually do. Now I'm, I'm in the circle. Like, "Oh man, yeah." So now, again, I'm shy. I'm in the back room practicing, you know, trying to do it. Never like going in public. I was nervous. I was, "There's no way." And then I started to meet everybody. Like, as we're doing these things, and then in school, you start to meet people. Like, "Oh man, he's dancing." "Oh man." So at the schoolyard, we would go to school early just to watch everybody dance before school even started. It'd be a crowd, you know? So it was things like that. Lunchtime, sometimes it was a battle, you know? So that's where I got a lot of that exposure where I really got to see a lot of things. So, you know, I, I probably started out as a DJ. Kind of like, then I started trying to rap, and then that, that's when I, you know, met Kev Green, and that's when they did. I was trying to get on that record, but I wasn't really good enough, but I practiced it. Just, you know, wasn't my thing. And then I became a, a Boogie Boy, you know? But when I saw breaking, that made me say, like, "Man, I, I think that this might be my thing, you know?" And I just, I just started practicing, you know? And then when I met Glide Master, that's when I really started taking it serious because that's when I got a chance to see action. Glide Master, Kid Nice, people like Little Lep, um, Mr. Ed, um, Fast Break, um, Big Head Joey Snap, um, just, uh, Eddie. I mean, there was just so many like, just great dancers. For me, they were great. I don't know how anybody else saw it, but I was amazed. Um, and I wanted to be a part of that. And then me and Glide Master, we just, like I said, we became inseparable. We just started practicing all the time.

Wow. What does, in your opinion, the B and B-boy stand for? What a great question, man. You probably get a hundred answers. The B for B-boys. Well, to me, which is going to be really different for most people, if not everybody. For me, the B stood for a bad boy. Like he was a bad dude. You ain't want to mess with him. That's a bad dude right there. I know that some people say that the B stands for Bronx boy. And then now, fairly recently, um, now they're saying that it really stood for break boy. So I want to get into that because I feel like that's kind of important. All right. So the reason why, to me, that it really stood for bad boy is because when I was growing up in the Bronx, again, I'm born and raised in the Bronx, been a part of everything from the very beginning. Born in 1966. So I don't want to hear anything. They tried to make an argument, "Were you there in 1973 when Kool Herc did the party?" How can you talk about that? I said, "Oh man, you're right. Let me ask you a question. Were you there when they made George Washington the first president?" So how can you talk about that if you wasn't there? None of us was there, right? So we should just forget about all of that. Were you there when the dinosaurs roam this Earth? Does that mean it didn't exist? So it's not about being there. It's about doing the research, collecting the evidence, the DNA, the fingerprints, the blood work, the documentation, and putting it together so it makes sense, opposed to taking one person's word for it, or sometimes it can be a conspiracy. So the reason why it's bad boy is because when I was growing up in the '70s, and we would see guys, yeah, what? I didn't see them dance. "Check out them B-boys over there." Standing over there. They weren't dancing. I didn't see them pop. I didn't see them lock. I didn't see them break. I saw some gangsta-looking, hardcore dudes like, "You, what? Holding up that wall." That's right. That's where you get the B-boy poses, right? What is a B-boy pose? That's a bad boy. He ain't, he not doing that. He like, he like, "What?" He's like, "Yeah, what?" That's a B-boy. That's a bad boy. It just so happened that this energy was coming out of the Bronx. So now people say, "Well, okay, he's a bad boy. He a Bronx boy. He must be from the Bronx." Go, "Only people from the Bronx act like that." So that's where you get the confusion. That's a bad dude. But all the bad dudes were coming from the Bronx. Brooklyn didn't have that energy. I got mad respect for Brooklyn, but Brooklyn was a different energy. The Bronx was about that. That's why when you look at the photos, you look at the archives, you look at the documentaries, everything is coming out of that Bronx. That's not to take credit away from Brooklyn or Queens or anybody else who made have had some type of fire going on, but there's levels to this. There's a difference between a house fire and the World Trade Center being on fire. There's a difference. One floor burning or 900 or 99 floors burning. There's a difference. So to me, it's bad boy that came to be a Bronx boy. But when Kool Herc started DJing, he coined the phrase, not in 1973. He coined the phrase break boy because he was playing breaks of the record. Now, when you really do your research and study all of this, none of this stuff can be proven for what they are saying, whether that's Kool Herc or the people from the 1973 party. Because this room that we're in was about the size of the room that they did this party in. And you're telling me that this room that cannot hold more than 50 people, but when you speak to people, it seems like 3, 400 people will live. Come on, come on. What are we doing here? Like, this is history, and it's important history, and it's important that we get it right, right? So to me, when I started to speak out because I felt like that wasn't really accurate, then I got blowback. So I did an interview back in '94 or '95, I think, and Legs, there's a whole bunch of pioneers that are there. And again, I'm not really talking much because a lot of these dudes are before me, but they're not saying the right thing. So now they say, "Man, London, you've been kind of quiet. What are your thoughts?" I said, "Oh, you should have asked me because you asked me, I'm I'm gonna tell you the truth, and you might not like it." And I said, "Well, it's a beautiful story that someone that cool Herc in 1973 started to play the break of the record, and that's where you get your break boy or your B-boy." I've seen Crazy Legs say it. I've seen Mr. Wiggles say it. I've seen Kool Herc say it. I've seen The Twins say it. I've seen everybody say it. And I said, "Well, if that's true, and it started with him, then name me a crew that has the word 'break' in it." Because if it starts with him, and nobody knows about anything else but what comes out of him and his camp and his party, then everything should be break. So it should not be called a Rock Steady Crew. It should have been called the Break Steady Crew because he's playing the breaks for the break boys. It should have been Dynamic Breakers, but they come after it's really Dynamic Rockers. So this really comes from the rock dance, not from the Kool Herc break of the record. That's why you have Kool Lorac, Starch, Lac, Rockwell Association, Dynamic Rockers, Rockwell Association. You can't name me one single crew or anything with the word "breaking" in it. I don't care. You talking 1973, 1974, TBB, everything is a, everything is about the rock dance. The word "break" does not exist till later. So I, I, I just want to make this clear because I think that sometimes people can take my words out of context. This is not to discredit Kool Herc, who is very important to this whole movement. What this is, is to bring clarity to what really happened. Because look, we all embellish, right? I'm not the cashier, I'm the head cashier, right? So we all embellish a little bit, but we want to know what really happened because this is important to inspire other people. So the reason why Kool Herc deserves the credit that he gets is not because he was the first DJ, because he wasn't. It's not because he was the first one to do the block party, because he wasn't. It's not even because he was the first one to play the breaks, because he wasn't. He was the first one to identify that every time they play the breaks, whether it's me or another DJ, these guys go off, they go crazy, they go bananas. So you know what? I'm gonna change my whole style and I'm just gonna play the breaks. I'm not gonna play the whole record. I'm not gonna play the disco stuff. I'm just gonna play the breaks. But Mr. Herc, for who, what the dancers? So that acknowledges that the dance was already here because he's changing everything just to cater to this energy, this movement that doesn't really have a name for it because it's making a transformation from the rock dance to staying on the floor. So it's a new dance, but it's not, but it is. So I don't know. I guess since they're going off, we call it the go-off. I don't know what to call it. So that's why you get all the different names. The boy, because they used to have these hats with the little ball. The go-off, breaking, they didn't have a real name. So when he starts playing the break, now he's saying, "Well, let's call them break boys or beat boys." That's after the bad boy. That's after the Bronx boy. Now that becomes the break boy, the boogie boy. But in the beginning, again, when you're walking down the street, you see B-boys. "Oh, okay. You, okay. You don't want to mess with them. That's some bad dudes over there." That's right. But what people didn't realize, a lot of these thugs used to dance. You think every thug acts the same way, talks the same way, walks the same way? No. Some thugs like to fight. Some thugs like to be fly. Some like to dance. Some like to party. Everyone's different. You can't paint everybody with one brush. We're all different. That's what brought us together. The fact that we were different. What made us different is what brought us together. That's something to be celebrated. That's not something to be ashamed of. So would play these break beats. That's what he wanted to do for the B-boys. They didn't have a name yet. They didn't have an identity. We just knew this energy is phenomenal. So I'm gonna just do this. That is telling on himself. That's the document. That's the proof that everybody is looking for. Why did he do it? For who? For the dancers. Okay, well, there you go. The dance must have already existed then. It wasn't like when they tell the story, he happened to be playing these beats and then people made up a dance. That's how they're portraying it. That's not what happened. Yes, the DJ was the superstar. There's no question about it. If you were the DJ, you were the power player. You weren't the governor, you weren't the mayor, you were the president. Maybe the boogie boy was the governor. Maybe the B-boy was the mayor, but the DJ was the president. What he said mattered. Who he put down mattered. Who went by behind the ropes. We take garbage cans, we flip them upside down, and take rope and tie it up. Don't go behind that rope. You get a beatdown. That's VIP. That's for your click. That's for your crew. That's for your people. That's for all those that are rolling with you. That's it. You get caught in that circle, yeah. So everybody knew anything roped off, you didn't, you didn't penetrate. You just left it out. But it's those block parties, those house parties, those basement parties that not only Kool Herc, but Afrika Bambaataa, Disco King Mario, Smokey, that nobody ever talks about. DJ Hollywood, even though he was more commercialized, he deserves credit. He is one of the first MCs. Arguably the first MC. Grandmaster Caz says he's the first MC. We can maybe give him that credit. I don't want to discredit him, but he was known as a DJ. So is he a DJ or an MC, or is he both? All I know is that all of the rappers that came out sounded like DJ Hollywood. Again, go back to the original mixtapes because again, radios were not playing hip-hop music. So that's why these block parties were so important because they were recording them. That's how we got it. There was no radio station we could turn on to when I was growing up. It was country music, pop music, rock music, funk music, or soul music. But everything was pop, rock, country. I don't care what you were listening to. There was no FM, it was only AM. 77 AM. We'd be listening countdown stuff like that. Doobie Brothers. Why do you think there's so much rock? The B-boys used to rock to the rock music. We used to rock the party. Everything was about the rock. Breaking didn't exist. That is a new terminology. You're not going to see that word pop up in 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974. Show me. It doesn't come around. Run DMC, "I'm a B-boy chilling in my B-boy stance." Right? He wasn't talking about windmills or headspins, footwork. Those were B-boys. Look how they, they look like gangsters with the, with the, the fur hat. You, you chilling. That's a B-boy. When they talk about dances and they say, "Oh, you have no footwork, you have no style, you're not a B-boy, you're a break dancer." Well, why? Because you ain't got that attitude, you ain't got that flair, right? Well, what is that? That's a B-boy. But wait a minute, I'm doing windmills, I'm doing headspins. Yeah, but you're not a B-boy. If you start to put it together, it makes sense. The B-boy is not the dance. Mr. Wiggles, to me, the greatest B-boy ever to walk this planet, my personal opinion, my favorite. You ain't gonna find no one better than him. He's gifted. He can rap, he can produce music, he can play the electric guitar. He listens to rock music, soul music. He's a rocker, a breaker, a locker, a graffiti writer. He does everything. And everything phenomenal. Everything. His artwork, A+. His popping, A+. His breaking, A+. And he's not even the breaker. But when you see a break, you're like, "That's a B-boy right there." Like, he's nice. He does everything. He's a B-boy. The greatest ever. Because B-boy is a lifestyle. It's a mindset. It's the way that you approach things. It's the way that you solve things. It's the way you absorb things. That's a B-boy. It's not someone who does windmills. It's not someone that does footwork. That's a dancer. That's a breaker. Cool. I love it. I'm a breaker, but I'm a B-boy. I'm a real Bronx B-boy. I live that life on both sides, the dark side and the light side. I've been through it all. I've seen it all. And I'm here to tell you my testimony that a B-boy is a bad boy who happens to be from the Bronx, and now he can break. And so I'm a B-boy that's about to break down some knowledge. Now that's a B-boy. And if you can't break it down like that, you ain't a real B-boy. Come talk to me. I'm telling you what it is. Awesome, awesome. With the New York City Breakers, the first breaking crew, you were down with? Yes. The only one. Talk to me about the evolution of the New York City Breakers. How did they come to be? So the New York City Breakers starts with a guy named Noel Manuel. His name is Kid Nice. So he was always known to be a leader within the community because he was always trying to do things, create things, put things together. He's a kid. We're all kids. He was older than us. He's, I think 60 right now or about to be 60. But he's, he's up there. So again, if I'm 11 and he's 13, doesn't seem like a lot, but trust me, that's a big difference. If I'm 13 and he's 15, the conversations are totally different. He's probably talking about women, and I'm still collecting baseball cards. It's night and day, okay? When you're 58 and he's 60, there's no difference. Now, again, bringing it back in time because it's a different era. You're talking late '70s, early '80s. Life was completely different, completely different. So back then, it was about sports. It was about teams. You had gangs, that was a team. You had baseball, that was a team. You had breakers, that was a team. You had poppers, that was a team. So everything was about bringing people together to do something that everybody could be a part of. That's what Noel did. Kid Nice. Whether he started his own football team, his own baseball team, now he decided one day, "I want to start a breaking team." Didn't have a name for it. Went to his best friend, Chino Lopez, who's doing his B-boy action, and said, "Chino, I want to start a breaking crew." You know, like, "I think, I think we're just as good as all these other people." Like, "Let's put something together." He said, "All right, let's do it." So that was the birth of the Floor Masters. Chino, who I believe had a cousin that was in Brooklyn that was associated, was a part of a group called The Floor Masters. They were a, a rocking group, believe it or not, right? And asked for permission because again, everything was about respect. You just couldn't go and do things on your own because you can get snatched up, even from dudes in Brooklyn, which was like an hour away. But there was a level of respect. So he got the okay. They decided to to form a crew, and they decided to call that crew the Floor Masters. And the Floor Masters are significant because back then, everything was really, again, you have to keep this in mind. Just look at the footage. Don't take my word for it. Go to any footage. I don't care if you're talking about movies, TV shows, news reports. You go back to anything. Breaking is still relatively new. Again, it doesn't start in 1973 with the, with the break of the record, and then they're doing windmills. There are no windmills in 1973. There are no headspins in 197. There is no power moves. There's no backspin. There's none of that. The way that breaking comes about through the rock dance, and then eventually you stay down. When you stay down, you have to do some type of leg work or footwork. Again, go back into The Rumble in the Jungle, Joe Tex. Go look at his footage. Drops coffee grinds, footwork, come back up. That's breaking. Now, it's not breaking as we know it today, but you're not going to find anything in 1973, 1974, 1975. It's totally different. But that's what breaking was. It was, you go from the top, you're dancing, you drop down, and then you come back up. Somebody eventually stayed down. People like to credit Rubberband, who happened to be a black, dark-skinned Puerto Rican. But because he was dark-skinned, people assumed that he was black. So this is where a lot of confusion comes in. Did it come from the black community? The Spanish community? Again, the lack of understanding and knowledge and not doing your research causes confusion. And now Schomburg, the museum in Harlem, it's a black museum founded by a black Puerto Rican, okay? We have roots in this. We have founded this. You cannot remove or erase what the Puerto Rican community did, not just for the Bronx, not just for New York, but for the world. Our culture. We were enslaved. You think that when the boat left Africa, it only came to America? No, my man. It stopped in the Caribbean islands and made a few stops. That's why some Puerto Ricans are black, like my cousin Neota. Some of them are white, and some of them are like me. We're mixed. My father has an afro. Why? Because my grandmother's a black Puerto Rican. So when I have family reunions, half the family is black, half the family is white. So people don't understand. We are indigenous. We, Puerto Ricans are indigenous. You can't get any better than that. Where are we're organic. You want buy organic food? We're organic. We brought culture to America. You have to understand history. The American government was not letting African-Americans learn about their history. You didn't have Afro-American studies back in the '70s. There was no education. Everybody was being stripped of their culture, including the Puerto Ricans. But it was the Puerto Ricans that were migrating from the island. They weren't even getting stripped. They kept their culture. So when my grandparents come here, they're bringing culture, they're bringing language, they're bringing music, they're bringing tales and congas and all of that, clave and all of that stuff. That's the resurgence. That was not happening until the Puerto Ricans, with all due respect, and I don't mean any disrespect to anybody, just please do your research. Go back and look at it. There's a lot of black Puerto Ricans that contribute to Latin jazz. Alfonso "Chano" Pozo, who went and teamed up with Dizzy Gillespie, Mona. He was Latin. He couldn't read music. He couldn't write music. But Dizzy Gillespie could. So that's why he gets credited. But it was him, and he admitted it. He said, "Oh yeah," he said, "Bo," and he's explaining to him with with his mouth, "the bass plays like this, and the horns." And, "Oh, I start writing it down." He says it. And then he says, "But it lacks structure, so I added the bridge." So because he added the bridge, he became a writer. And then Joe Cuba, who's a little hot-tempered, gets stabbed, he dies, and then history gets forgotten. Nobody ever talks about him. But what people don't realize is that if you're from New York, I can't talk about California, I can't talk about Florida, I can't talk about Chicago. But all I can tell you is that the energy in New York, if you could not play Latin music, you could not work. Mambo ruled the world, not just New York, America, and not just America, the planet. It was the number one music genre of its time. That's why the Palladium is so important because that is a central location. So people from the Bronx can go there, people from Brooklyn can go there, people from Manhattan are already there. You see the white people there, you see the black people there, and you see the Puerto Rican people there. Cuban Pete, he wasn't Cuban, he's Puerto Rican. But Mambo was considered Cuban. So I know you're Puerto Rican, but you gonna be Cuban Pete. Look at his footwork. Look at what he's doing. You can see him breaking elements of it. So these are all the things that influence this B-boy culture. The issue really is, if I can really be honest, is that the African-American community has never been to a real Puerto Rican jam. Never been to our functions, our parties. So you can't tell our history. But someone like me, I grew up in that culture and I went and spent time in your culture, so I can tell your story and my story. But you can't tell my story because you didn't come to our house. You didn't eat our food. You didn't listen to our music. So that's why you feel we don't have a part of this because you were not involved in what we were involved in. But we had a chance to experience that. And if you do your homework and your research, you're going to see how all this connects like a hand to a glove. It all connects. It's so clear if you want to take the evidence and if you want to take that DNA and that fingerprint, you want to take all of that. There is no other conclusion that you can possibly come up with. But if you want to ignore that, then yeah, of course, then you can say it's purely African-American. It's impossible. Again, Schomburg, Chano Pozo, like it, it's all of it is there. If it's just read it, listen to it, watch it, and I promise you, you won't regret it because you're going to fill yourself up with knowledge, and then you're gonna start to say, "It makes sense. Now I get it. I understand it." But you have to be a part of it, and you have to be selfless. You have to really want to take this knowledge and absorb it. If you're going to reject it, then you should not be in a position to tell a story because you're doing it an injustice. And that's what's happening now today in 2024. I am shocked that the Puerto Rican community and the black community used to be tight. You couldn't separate them. And that's not the case anymore. And that makes me feel sad because Puerto Ricans, we are people of color. We are black, but we're also indigenous. We're natives. Like, think about this. Some people say dinosaurs don't even exist anymore. Thank God that this is a thing called DNA. You can't erase the DNA. "Oh, you're not really Puerto Rican. You weren't born on the island." "Oh, you got Puerto Rican, you don't speak Spanish. Oh, you're not Puerto Rican." My man, take the blood out of my damn vein. I rest my case. There's nothing for me to say. I'm about evidence. That's I base my life, my story, my everything, based on factual stuff. I need receipts. I don't need stories. I heard stories my whole life. I heard about this man coming down once a year giving out presents. That was a beautiful story. Then I found out it wasn't true. I hear stories all my life. I hear that if I lose my teeth and put it under the pillow, I'll get money. Then I found out the fairy tale doesn't exist. The Easter Bunny doesn't exist. All these sto. I don't want stories. I want evidence. I want documentation. I want the truth. That's all I'm looking for. That's what everybody wants. So why can't we just be honest? Let's go to the historical records, whether that's movies, pictures, videos, news articles, books, uh, Daily News, New York Times, Washington Post, whatever. It's all there. Just research it. It's not that hard. If I can do it, if I can do it, anybody could do it. Trust me, I'm not the sharpest pencil in the box, but at least I'm in the box. Gotcha. Gotcha. I appreciate that. Now, you, B-boy London, what were you known for as a breaker? What was your thing? Popper, locker, a rock dancer, power moves, your thing? What makes B-boy London a breaker, a B-boy, a dancer? Well, I think that I started late. Most of the guys that I grew up with started in the '70s. Whether that's Little Lep from the '70s, Fast Break was from the '70s, Action is from the '70s, Kid Nice is from the '70s. All these dudes, pretty much that I grew up with, went to school with. Mr. Freeze from the '70s. All these dudes went to the same school for the most part, with the exception of one or two. So my life is so blessed because I got a chance to see the authenticity of what this was really about. But my fame doesn't come till probably 1983 when I started doing windmills. Reading a book when I learned how to do windmills, and I realized you didn't need your hands. Because in the beginning, you need your hands to push off and catch yourself. But when I realized, "Man, you don't need your hands, I can use my forehead and I roll over, and now I can do whatever I want." Once I learned that, I started like, "Well, let me see if I can grab this, this, you know." I started, I think with a soda can. And when I did the soda can, I said, "Ooh." I said, "Man, let me get a book." It wasn't a book, it was like the spiral notebooks back there. So I started with that. Again, thank God. Photos don't lie. Video don't lie. I was in a contest at the Palladium on Fox Street. It's no longer there. I think that's how I met Mr. Wiggles back in the days. And, um, someone took a picture, and I had it. Thank God. And it shows me doing windmills, reading a book. So that was what started my fame because at that time, that was phenomenal. Like, "What? God, this is crazy." Then again, once I learned I didn't need my hands, I was able to unzipper my jacket. And because I didn't need any hands, I can go behind my back. So I can take off my jacket, and I can throw it, which I didn't. But I would take it in my hand and I would do a body roll, and then I would do a freeze with my jacket like this. People started to lose their mind. So when I'm in Kennedy High School, again, my best friend is Matthew Caban, Glide Master. Unfortunately, he passed away. We weren't the greatest students, so we were caught out of class, and we started practicing in the auditorium. And, well, first we were practicing in the hallways, and then security would come in and, "Oh, you guys got to be in class." And we kept getting in trouble. So we went to the auditorium, and, uh, they had a stage in the auditorium. And so we would close the curtain, and we started practicing. So we close the curtain, nobody could see us. So we did that for a while until we got caught. Then, you know, started practicing again, we got caught. But what happened was, is that it started with just him and I, and then two turned into four, four turned into eight, eight turned into 16. And then eventually, I think a friend of mine, if I could remember this correctly, don't quote me 100%, but I think it was Leon Chess, who was a popper, actually had a teacher that said that because all you guys were back there practicing, "I'll fill out the paperwork so you guys could do this legally." So then it became like an after-school kind of club practice, and everybody started coming to Kennedy High School. People that didn't go to Kennedy just went there because now they started hearing all these rumors. Part of it was, you had all these great B-boys practicing there, but the other part was because I was doing things. Again, there's no videos back then. There's no YouTubes. There's no. So everything was based on your reputation. So when you start hearing people doing crazy moves, you're like, "There's no way." "Oh, go to JFK. They, they every day." So that's what happened. People started coming to Kennedy to see if this thing is true. Windmills taking off your clothes? No, come on, man. Stop playing. Windmills reading a book? Man, you, why you guys got to make up stuff? So that's what happened, and it just got bigger and bigger. And then when I made up what's called Superman windmills, which is both hands out, nothing hits the floor, just your hands and your body. That just my reputation continued to build. And then people started questioning, "London, if you're part of the New York City Breakers, then how come like you're not doing the big shows with all the guys? Like, why do they keep leaving you out? Like, man, like you're just as good as some of those guys." And when I look back at my life now, I kind of get it. When you're young, you don't get it, but I get it. I've always been vocal. I've always been considered argumentative because again, when I'm little, I'm exposed to the Young Lords, to the Black Panthers, I'm exposed to civil rights, I'm exposed to the injustice, and I speak on this because I don't like it, and I'm vocal. So that holds true when I'm, when I feel like I'm being mismanaged or my group is being mismanaged, then I'm gonna say something. Now, if I'm the manager of the group, why do I want this little 15-year-old smart mouth licking [Music]? We don't need him. Why do I want to deal with that headache for these guys? Listen to me, I got maybe one headache already. I don't need another one. I got two headaches. I don't need a third. So I was never going to be included. So we hold it down. Why? Let's say the 18 become celebrities. But what I try to explain to people is the New York City Breakers, AKA the Floor Masters, we're a family. We're a big organization, a big group. Not everybody's going to do everything. So when I see the movie Beat Street, I don't see people like Frosty Freeze, who's a part of Rock Steady. I don't see him there. Does that mean he wasn't part of Rock Steady? Of course not. He was part of Rock Steady. I don't see Take One. He was part of Rock Steady, but he's not in the movie. So there are people that are part of New York City Breakers to this day that are not in Beat Street, but were very much part of what was happening. They were part of that energy. They were part of that movement, and they should be recognized. So that's when I come back in the '90s, and now I start to bring history, and I create a, an event called Back to Mecca because New York is the mecca of all of this. It's not rap, it's not the DJ, it's not the graffiti writer, although they're important. What's important is that it's the B-boys that bring the cameras. Like, "Oh my God, what are they doing? Did that guy just spit on his head?" Did you? Now ABC, NBC, CBS, everybody's coming. They're not B-boys. They're not coming because of the rapper. There's no rap music yet. There's none of that. Now they're starting to see this energy that's like, "Whoa." There's rap been going on, don't get me wrong, but it's the B-boys and the B-girls that bring the cameras, the attention. That's what it is. And then you have people that are putting together these hip-hop parties or functions, and who do they invite? Always the B-boys. Why? Because we bring the life for the party. We are the heartbeat of this culture, literally. And you kill the, you kill the heart, you kill the culture. We are the only true foundational resemblance of the original culture because the MC doesn't exist. He's now the rapper. Although you do have MCs, but the truth is, it's really about rap music. Rap music has dominated, took control, and erased everything else. Why? Publishing. That changed everything, right? How do B-boys make money? You have to perform. How do DJs make money? You got to DJ. Well, how do graffiti writers make money? You got to paint, you got to draw. How do rappers make money? They write lyrics. It's no different than writing a book. That's publishing. Every time they sell that record, you're getting paid. It's not like I do a show, and every time somebody watches the show, I get paid. I gotta keep dancing. So once they understood publishing, the rapper started making money. In the very beginning, every single rapper had a rapper or an MC had a DJ. Even Grandmaster Flash, Cut Creator was his MC, Chut Three had it. Every single MC, rapper, everyone in the very beginning had a DJ. Everyone. When they did shows, they had B-boys, they had all of the elements in the very beginning. But once that check came in, wait a minute, I wrote all these lyrics. There's five in a group, and I gotta split that. You know what? We don't really need this DJ. He's not doing anything. So what happened to the DJ? He became the producer. Now, technically, you're writing the music, publishing. Now the DJ's getting paid. So now the DJ may not be on stage anymore, but he's getting money because, "Hey, I did the music for KRS-One. I did the music for Jay-Z. I'm getting paid every time they sell that record." Now, after the MC makes his money, now the DJ makes his money. Now the graffiti writer says, "We were here before everybody. We were here before the rapper, before the DJ, before the B-boy. How can we not get paid?" So what happens? They start doing the album coverage. "Oh, that's cool. You know what? I can do tattoos." Now they open up tattoo shops. "You know what? I can do a gallery." Now they got galleries, and now they're making millions. They become designers, graphic designers. They learn Photoshop and Illustrator. Now they're doing crazy, and they're getting paid. Some of these artworks are going for millions. Scott and stuff is going for like 10, 15 million. They're getting paid. Everyone is making money, but the B-boy. The one that brought light to the culture. The one that made it possible for this dream to become a reality. We get left out. We, we're nonexistent. Now they're laughing at us. "You're still break dancing?" "Oh, my look, it's still breaking." We become a joke. Until the '90s. Now there's a resurgence. Breaking is dead in New York. There's a guy that comes from Europe, from Germany, with a couple of his friends named Storm, and he smokes Rock Steady almost single-handedly. And now everybody's in an uproar. Like, "This started in New York. He got some foreigner coming in here." He came here thinking it was like 1984, Beat Street. He was shocked that nobody was dancing except for a handful of people, and most of them were street hitters who were not getting the, the proper respect because they were viewed as, "Oh, you're below us. You're, you're dancing in the street." As though we didn't do that. Come on, man. So that right there was a violation. They tried to disrespect the street performance, but they're the ones that kept it going with a couple of handful of traditional B-boys and B-girls, along with the West Coast, California, with the power moves. They kept on taking it to new levels. Then you got Europe that are doing these events where they join thousands of people. So now when I come back in the '90s, I'm blown away. Like, "Whoa, y'all are still doing that? That is amazing." And now I start to speak to credit them because it is them. They did make the difference. They woke me up. They woke everybody else up. And if that's not true, then why is it that everything changed when Storm comes to New York? That is the beginning of the Renaissance. That's the beginning of Crazy Legs getting back into shape. He had started getting back into it. They had already started to do style, but the rest of New York, no handful of people. But when that happened, that changed everything. That made it like, "Yo, it started here. We got to get our act together." And then that's when you start to see everything come back in the mid-'90s, you know, to the late '90s, and then the 2000s, it just goes somewhere else. Amazing, amazing. Just kind of to backtrack a little. This is, this is all great stuff. Latin Boogaloo, how does the Latin Boogaloo connect? What's its association with breaking? So the Latin Boogaloo is important because what happens is, is that you see when we'd have these parties in my grandparents' house, it's just Latin music. That's all there is. There ain't no English music. It's just all Spanish. Then us as kids, like I said, when I'm growing up, you know, don't speak Spanish. You're in America. And then now, you know, ABC radio, it's all American music. It's mostly rock, country, you know, folk music, you, you know, soul also. But there's this. So now you have a group of people that now start to take the Latin music but now sing in English. That is the beginning now of fusing those things together. Now, not only do they do that, but they also take English style music and sing Latin over it. So it's both ways. Then that what they do is they start to bring in and tie this in together, and then that's when you start to see that whole Latin Boogaloo era, which is what they would call Latin Soul. That is the birth of all these break beats. Not really, but yes, you can trace it all back. It's not the only thing because there's other things, but that's what it all comes down to. When you listen to all the original break beats, again, there's two. If you don't come to the Latin side, you don't know about this. If you just know James Brown, then you're limited because he's not, not, it's not just James Brown. Did he play a big part of it? Of course. But why did he play a big part of it? Because now when Latin Boogaloo comes out, now quote unquote, they're adding soul to the Latin music. So now it makes it more acceptable for people like me now because now it's not strictly Latin. Now you got a little soul, you got a little bit of English, you got a little. It's not known as hip-hop, but you got a, you got a funkiness to it now. You can get down to it now. Okay. So the transition for the rockers who come from the Boogaloo, who come, that's all comes from the Puerto Rican community culture. Now, that transition to go to the Kool Herc stuff, to go into a different neighborhood, it makes sense. It's easier now. It's not like we're a bunch of hicks. May have started out like that. It's not like we're a bunch of hicks that don't know anything. We're already killing it. We already got our own style. We already got our own dance. We already got soul. We got all of that. So now we, when we go to your stuff, it's easy for us to fit in. But y'all can't fit into our stuff. That's why y'all can only tell your story, your side. You can't tell a full story because part of the story is the Puerto Rican community or the Latin community. And if you didn't go to those parties, you didn't go to those functions, you can't tell a story. Go back and speak to all the dancers from the Palladium. Listen to what they have to say. They'll say what I'm saying. They'll say, "Oh yeah, we have blacks, we have Puerto Ricans, we had..."

What were they dancing to? They weren't dancing to James Brown. They were dancing to Mambo, to the Latin grooves, to the Baloo stuff, to the Latin Soul. They weren't dancing to James Brown. This is all documented. Some of these people have already given testimony to this. All those Latin dances from the from the from the Palladium era, not all of them were Spanish. A lot of them were white. A lot of them were black. No Latin, just black, black. But you see them dance, you swear they a Puerto Rican. That's all from the Palladium. They're not playing James Brown or or or Sly in the Family Stone or anything like that. It's all Mambo.

So for anyone to say that that doesn't play a role, they're right. They don't play a role. They are the role. The butter, the cheese, the egg, the everything. It's all in there. So to me, I would encourage anybody that wants to share that this is 100% K herk and nothing else, please do your history. You're doing a disservice to everybody because your voice carries weight. I don't care if your name is K her, I don't care if your name is Africa B, Klarck Starch, whatever. Tell the whole story. You cannot tell bits and pieces. It's all of us. All of us. And if you understand that, then you'll share those stories in the right way. And now you're going to see a big revolution. And that's what I'm hoping. We need a revolution in technology. Well, we need a revolution in knowledge. It's time to uplift yourself, please, because this means a lot to a lot of people, not just in America, but around the world. They're watching you. They're listening to you. They even want to be like you. So please educate yourself to be inclusive because that's what this culture was truly about. That's what made us again, what made us different. You were Jewish, you were black, you were Puerto Rican, you liked rock, you liked Latin, you liked Soul. Everybody was different, but somehow in the Bronx, that energy came together. And that came together because of the dance community. And that dance community comes from the rock community, meaning the rock dance. And that rock dance specifically comes out of the Latin Soul community. Now, whether you want to say that's Puerto Rican, you want to say that's Cuban, you want to say that's Dominican, you want to say that's Caribbean, whatever. You can't talk about it without mentioning that that plays a huge role in all of this. And so to me, I would just say once again, just do your research because when you're speaking, you should be speaking from from evidentiary factual information, not just based on 100% opinion.

Awesome, awesome. Back to the music and the jams that you guys rock to. According to you, what would be your B-boy anthem? And name me the top three. Wow, man. Everybody, everyone's different. It's hard to say the top three, but I I'll try to give you a few. So Jimmy Casper played a huge role. And just just to put a button on this, right? The Latin influence was so potent that Jimmy Casper, who's not Latin, did a whole Latin album. What? A whole Latin album. And some of those beats are considered classic break beats. So he didn't do a Latin record, he did an entire album. Again, this is all documented. That's how powerful the Latin sound was that you had white people and black people emulating that. But in terms of anthems, I would have to say "Just Begun." I would have to say "The Mexican." I would have to say uh um um "Mambo Mambo," whatever I forgot the name of that, right? With that song. Um, I would have to say, um, "Melting Pot," even though that's not like, you know, but it used to be, you know, one of the ads. Uh, "Apache," that's another like major classic song. Um, what else? I mean, man, there there's so many, but it's just, I to me, those are like some of the top all-time classic B-boy anthems, um, that everyone probably could relate to, you know. When I say everyone, I don't, you know, because there are other songs that I like that are like maybe my own personal favorites. But to me, I think like you gotta have "Just Begun," you have to have "Apache," you have to have "A Mexican," you have to have a like somebody these songs. "Bongo Rock" is another one, you know, that that played a big role in all of this. Uh, Sly and the Family Stone, I mean, like, you know, I mean, you had to. But ultimately, I think most B-boys would probably say "Apache," "Mexican," Jimmy Casper had a few of them, but probably "Just Begun" is another, you know, classic one. I think that those are the ones that most people will probably attribute as classics.

Got it, got it. These major B-boy battles that existed, you know, the United States of America, the big Roxy, you know, battle, you know, Lincoln Center Battle, you know, did you participate or even were at any any of these these events? So I did a competition in 1985, I believe. And the reason why I know it's 1985 because school starts in September. I was in 11th grade. It was 1984. But the MTV, which is relatively still a new station at that time, I think they aired in '79 for the first time. And um, when I go to school as an 11th grader in '84, MTV has a high school uh breaking competition at the Roxies, which was televised. It was filmed. And so, uh, they do something called like Battle of the High Schools. So we had all the top B-boys at Kennedy High School. So myself, Fast Break, Eric Diaz, who's a dark-skinned Puerto Rican, I'm sure most people think he's black. A guy named Dion George, Leon Chesney, and Kenny Cruz, another dark-skinned Puerto Rican. So again, everybody. I'm the only light-skinned one there. I'll put it like that, okay? Fair-skinned. I had Jerry curls back then. So they probably call me the bars. But basically, it was three Puerto Ricans, myself, Kenny Cruz, and and Eric Diaz, and three African-Americans, which is Fast Break, Richie Williams, Leon Chesney, and and Dion George. We formed the Kennedy Breakers and we entered that competition. And the judges at the Roxies was Curtis Blow, um, the guy, uh, uh, uh, what's his name? Carlos De Jesus. Okay, who did a uh, hot tracks classic video show that hardly nobody ever talks about because he passed away. They speak about Ralph McDaniels. Deserves a lot of credit. But listen, Carlos De Jesus had the number one video show and he also had the number one radio show on KTU back then when it was 92 KTU. It was him and a few other people. So he was a big deal. He happened to be judging it that as well, along with, I think, Jesse and this girl that played in the soap operas who also did the big break dance contest. So we wind up winning. That's how I get into Crush group because Curtis Blow says, hey, I'm doing this movie. I would love for you guys to be in it. Yeah, we'll do it, of course. So we all go down there. Um, I'm very fortunate that I have pictures. Someone came along and took pictures, thank God. And we were able to document that behind the scenes. And then we were in the movie as well as the video for a song called "The Breaks" by Curtis Blow. After we do the movie, we go on this Crush Grove tour to promote the movie along with some of the legends of all run the MCs on that tour, Fat Boys, Houdini, Wow Us, Curtis Blow, Davy DMX, DJ AJ. And we just, we do the Garden. I don't. And that might have been the first time that I think that that hip hop was brought to the Garden. This was '85. So I'm not sure if it was the first one, but it could have been. I just know I don't remember ever doing the Garden or seeing hip hop at the Garden, but we were able to do it because you had so many at that time, Curtis Blow, Run DMC, Houdini, had so many headliners that they were able to do that. So I was very fortunate to be a part of that, uh, to experience that, to travel, to meet people like like just all the R&B artists we got to meet, uh, you know, from Gloria Estefan at that time, who was just up and coming. She had, uh, what was that second, that record she did? "Conga." She had the "Conga." Yes, do that "Conga." So she was big. She had that. I remember doing a show with her, taking pictures with her. I remember doing the, um, the Disney World, they had a, the Magic Garden, so they had a big concert doing that. We just, just great, great times, uh, to witness and experience all of this as a kid. Again, we're just kids. We're not adults. We're all kids. We were all in high school. To travel the world and do movies and and and even for me, that was the second movie. The first movie I did was "The Last Dragon." Well, I thought it was going to be a low-budget movie, but we were filming it because it was low-budget. But then when the movie comes out, I'm like, this is a really good movie, and I'm in it, and you can see me in it. So I'm fortunate to do to be in two movies that will go down as classics. 200 years from now, they're gonna talk just like they talk about Bruce Lee or Jim Kelly or or "Three the Hard Way" or Clyde Patrick Jones or any of those classic, um, black expectation movies. Those two movies are in that category. And I personally fortunate enough to be in those movies. And not just myself, but people like Tiny from Incredible Breakers was in that movie. People like, uh, uh, Joseph, uh, Flat Joey, Flash, he was in that movie. Uh, there were other people in Crush Grove like Float from Incredible Breakers who was in that movie, uh, just us that were in that movie. So there were a lot of people that were in these movies, whether was extras or doing little bits and pieces because again, this is the energy that's coming out of New York. And it's not just even in New York anymore because New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island, everybody's coming. But it was so impactful that everybody that grew up in that time frame was doing something like that. They may not have been professionals, but if anybody's within 50 or 60 years old, they're gonna say, oh, I used to do that and do a little something. All of them. Everyone. I just met the new school, the new school superintendent in Yonkers. Okay? Now, Yonkers is a popular population of over 200,000 people. Our school district alone has 28,000 kids. I just met the school superintendent and the first thing he told me was, oh, I heard that you're doing the break dancing league. I said, oh, yeah, man. It was a pleasure. You know, I grew up in the 80s. Oh, man, that's cool. Yeah. And he throws me a wave. He's the school superintendent in the third largest city in the state of New York, and he's giving me a wave. Who ever thought that hip hop would make it this far? Come on, man. Man, this is great. Man, this is amazing. Kids, and I see Ed, doctors, doctors doing that. That's amazing, man. This is great. Wow, wow.

Back back when you were with the New York City Breakers, but when you were rolling and breaking with with the New York City Breakers, did you guys go to any neighborhoods and and battle any any other crews? Does do you have something memorable? Yeah, yeah, sure. So what people don't know is that Michael Holman, they know this, that Michael Holman was our manager. Okay? But what people don't know is that there's a guy named Vince Gallo. Look him up, please. Vince Gallo. He's wound up being a music producer, excuse me, a TV, movie producer. He did a movie called "Buffalo '66." I think he did a few movies. He did very well off now. Well, he was like our manager. He was like the assistant manager, kind of sort of like. So he would always take us around. He was the one that would watch us, you know, take us from place to place. So one day, he lived on Prince Street. So he's called Prince Vince. He's in the, he's in the graffiti rock, you can see him there. He's an Italian guy. Manhattan Street. Yep, yep. He had an apartment. It was a maybe it was a one-bedroom. I think he still might have it, to be honest with you. I don't even know. But he's very well off. So I wouldn't be surprised if he kept it. I'd have kept it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's priceless. But, uh, so we all stay over his house and we go to the Lower East Side to battle a crew called Scrambling Feet. Yes. We go in a van. He had his big van. And I think Bam Bam, the look at robot, I don't know if he was there, but I remember he told me he had heard about that. I said, oh, yeah, that was us. He said, he said, yeah, I heard New York City Breakers came down. I said, yeah, that was us. We were all in the van. We popped out. We started battling them. And after the battle, again, I don't know how that got set up, but somehow there was an issue and we all got in the van and we like, we we going down the battle, scramble the feet, let's go. So after the battle, um, Vince Gallo, back then they had payphones, you know, for those that don't know, they didn't have cell phones. Big thing. You know, you had to put a might have been a dime back then. It wasn't even right. That's where you get "dropped a dime" from. That's what that is. So for those that don't know, they say, yo, he dropped a dime. That was because the phones used to be 10 cents. And so you would drop the dime and you can make a phone call, which meant you were ratting somebody out. When they changed it to a quarter, you couldn't say "drop a dime," but they do say that. So that's that reference. But back then, after the battle took place, he was so impressed that again, I was already doing these moves that which like people were amazed because they was just different. It was new. Anything new, people are going to appreciate. He calls up Michael Holman and again, and I'm probably 15 or 16. I don't even know. Again, we're in school. I don't even know how old I was. I think this was '84, maybe. I think somewhere around there. So he calls up Michael and he says, Michael, you know, you need to really start putting London down with these shows, man. We just finished battling Scrambling Feet. My God, this my guy, he was doing this, he was doing that, he was doing that. And I remember because I spoke to Michael Holman about that because, you know, I had always wondered like why I was felt like I was being frozen out. I wasn't really being included. Like I didn't really kind of get it. When Glide Master passes away, I'm not included in the performance for Ronald Reagan in 1985. Um, instead, they put Little Al, who did a great job. And I get it. He was a little kid. He was cute. He was phenomenal too. I'm not taking anything away. He was a phenomenal. He deserved it. But I wasn't trying to hear it. I was family. I was there from the beginning. I was part of all of this. I supported this. I helped build it. And now my best friend passes away and now I can't, after all of this, being humble, taking grief from people saying I was stupid because I'm representing a crew that's not really putting me on these big shows. And and now I can't even do the biggest performance and represent my brother. Like that was the last show we did as New York City Breakers. After that, everybody cried and it just fell apart. Like he was the glue to everything, you know? He was the one that that connected all of us together. And like in any team, in any organization, you're always gonna have someone that's out of control. You're always gonna have somebody that's flamboyant. But you're gonna have somebody that keeps everything together, the heart and soul, the glue, the one that calms people down, the one that can make this person get along with this person, make everybody see the the greatness. And that was Glide Master. So when he passes away, all of that goes with him. Now it's just chaos. Wow. And that's the end of New York City Breakers until I come back in the 90s. And now I'm like, we got to do something to let people know about this history because at that point, the only people that people were talking about was Rock Steady. Because nobody was dancing. There was no Dynamic Rockers until I bring them out. For Back to Mecca, there is no Magnificent Force until I bring them out. There is no, there's no Don C. There's none of that until I bring all the original poppers from La Lockers, from La Rockers, Breakers. I bring the MCs, Flash is there, Curtis Blow is there, Do-It-All, everybody, Cold Crush Brothers are there, DJs are there. And that's the first time that people in New York are now receiving information. They didn't know who Don Campbell was. Oh, yeah, I do remember Soul Train. Wait, that's him. Wow. Yo, can I get your number? Wait a minute, you help create the Boogaloo style of popping? Yeah, my name is Boogaloo Sam. Oh, man. Listen, I want to throw a popping event. Can I get your number? Oh, man, you guys are the original rockers. Oh, man. Yo, can I get your number? Up until that point, everything was Rock Steady. There was no New York City Breakers. It was nothing. So that's the first time that the generation that now kind of controls the information highway, if you will, they get exposed to that information. Now they starting to know who these original OG pioneers are. And everybody exchanges information. And that's when you start to see these events take off. So I like to say like, before Christ and after Christ, Back to Mecca was that. Before Back to Mecca was whack. After Back to Mecca, it shoots off like a stock like Apple Computers. Now, I like to think we had a small part in this. And I tell people, we weren't the first. I wasn't the first one to do events. I wasn't the first one to do it in America. I wasn't even the first one to do it in New York. I wasn't the biggest, but I was the first one to bring all of the impactful people from all the different cultures. I'm talking about graffiti writers. I brought Phase Two out. I brought out Flint 707, Coco 144, like the real OGs that can share their history because I got tired of talking about it. They don't believe me. They don't want to listen to me. You know what? Let me get all these guys out. King Krush was there. All of them. Thank God I have the footage to that documented all of this. And so that's what I tell people. I did it because I felt like it was important to let people know about this history because the history that I was hearing, I lived it. I don't remember it that way. So you can't tell me anything because I lived it. I'm a real Bronx B-boy. I'm not from Brooklyn, no disrespect. I'm not from Queens, no disrespect. I'm from the motherland, from where it really started. And it started with the black and Puerto Rican community. We laid the seeds on this ground right here, and we are the fruits of all of this. And people need to understand that. B-boy London, yes sir.

Were there any uh DJs that were down or part of the New York City Breakers that you love to talk about their history with you? Man, I can tell you right now that Kid Capri is someone that grew up with all of us back then. He was known as Poochie. He was a DJ. Uh, I actually had footage of one of his parties from 1981 where you get to see Little Lep in that footage. Kid Nice is in that footage. Icy Ice is in that footage. Charlie Chase is in that footage. Well, Floor Master, uh, Eide Jors, I think, uh, Mr. Ed is in that footage. And I think you might even hear in the background, uh, they mention K Capri's name because he was the DJ. Kid Capri and Glide Master, Matthew Caban, were actually best friends, um, in like elementary school growing up. Um, and then when me and Glide Master connect, that's when like him and I become more best friends. And then that relationship, they're still special. Like Poochie is family, but that's when like he's more going into the music and we're going more into the dance. And then now because my relationship with him is about the dance, I kind of separate the DJ from the dancer and we kind of go our separate ways. But to me, I feel like Kid Capri is part of New York City Breakers even to this day, just because he grew up with us. He knows all of us. He partied with us. So he's he's he's part of us, you know, even though he's not a breaker, but he's he's family. There's no question about it. Right, right, right. And that's not to take anything because Charlie Chase, he has a great relationship with some of us. He's one of the early Puerto Rican DJs that were out back then. You know, there were other people too, you know, that made a significant influence. And, you know, they deserve their their their credit. You know, and it bothers me a little bit that because they're viewed as being Puerto Rican, that they're not mentioned. And I don't even know that people don't realize this, but Smoke, who's before a lot of these people, DJ Smokey and the Smokey Truck, Smokey was Puerto Rican. There's a DJ/MC named DJ Tex Hollywood, who's before all of them, was also Puerto Rican. And he's still alive. And for whatever reason, he doesn't like to talk about the history. I'm not really quite sure. But he was known as the man with the golden voice. But if you get your hand on some early, early interviews, there are one or two people that actually mention him. But when you talk about the early, early days, I'm talking about before K-Hole, before Afrika Bambaataa, before Jazzy Jay, before all of them, this is DJ Tex Hollywood, who was Puerto Rican, who was doing stuff with people like, um, uh, DJ Kool Herc, his brother, the Mythologist. Those are people from like Bronx River. He's a part of all of that. And he never gets mentioned. But if you speak to those early, early pioneers, they all know him. They just never talk about him. But if you bring his name up, they can't deny his place in history.

Got it, got it. Would you talk to us about the clubs that the New York City Breakers frequented? And was there a club that you guys considered this is our spot? Well, I guess, yeah, there's a few clubs. Obviously, First Class was a club in the Bronx that everybody used to go to. NE Grill, which was in Manhattan, that's where Floor Masters, who later become the New York City Breakers, gets invited to battle Rock Steady. So what happens is that Michael Holman, who eventually becomes our manager, was managing the Rock Steady Crew. Sometimes they don't like to admit it, but he was their manager or agent, manager, whatever. He was overseeing in a professional way. So whatever semantics you want to play, he was either their manager or their agent. So there's a lady named Cool Lady Blue, who was a promoter. Michael Holman was getting into that business of promoting parties. So she got this club called The Grill in Manhattan. And I believe it was Thursday nights. And she invited Michael Holman to join her to promote these hip-hop parties. Back then, a lot of the graffiti artists or just aerosol artists or artists in general would do these shows and they needed entertainment, so they would call us to dance. So that's really where the promotion starts to come in. That's what people don't realize. It's a little forgotten part of history. A lot of this energy really comes. That's why when you look at the old photos, you'll see people like, um, Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup designer, like he's there. Fafi, Freddy, you see him being a part of that. Blondie, who did that record, you see it because this is the art world downtown. Right? We're from the Bronx. We're not going to Manhattan really, but now we're starting to go there because we're being invited to go there. And that's where you see again, punk rock was a part of hip-hop culture before it was called hip-hop culture. Rock, Funk, Soul, Latin, all of these things. Again, that's why a group like the Cold Crush Brothers did a record called "Punk Rock Rap." Why would they do punk rock? Because that was a very part, a very impactful part of hip-hop. We go to parties, do a little section where you get a little break and play a little punk rock music. Red Lobster and you, everybody was dancing. That was like just like playing slow music, right? You know, at the end of the night, you play the slow music. Cool, cool. All right, here's a little break. Or play a little punk rock stuff. So that's how Malcolm McLaren and all of those guys, The Sex Pistols, that's how they all kind of get involved because everybody, we're all misfits. We're all outsiders. We're all agitators. All of the misfits come together. That's what Queen, that was that was hip hop. "Another One Bites the Dust." You listen to the early records, they sample it. So the break beat, I'm not that big B-boy. That's why he used to rap. He's a rock record, right? So all of this is a part of the culture. Um, you asked me what was the question and I kind of went sideways. Oh, man, I lost my train of thought. I had asked you about the club. You, oh, right. So The Grill, Michael Holman is managing Rock Steady and he's not from New York. So he's learning this culture and the kids, us kids, are teaching him the culture. So he asked Crazy Legs of Rock Steady, who's the president, like, I like the breaking, you know, but like every Thursday, we're kind of doing the same thing. I'm getting a little bored. The people are getting kind of bored. It's not like, again, there's no real power moves. This is still, this is '82. This is still, it's not like what they're doing today. Back then, a power move was like a backspin. You know, windmill. You had windmills, you were, you know. So this was still the early days. It's only but so many footwork combinations you could do that's going to create excitement. So now, week after week, it's like Michael, Crazy Legs, like, what is this thing called battling? I keep hearing everybody keeps talking about this battle thing. He doesn't know. He's unaware. He just knows that that's supposed to be the exciting part of the dance, seeing two crews or two people go at it. So he wants to see it. So an invitation is sent out and is delivered, and they want to invite the Floor Masters to battle Rock Steady at Club NE Grill. Now, Michael Holman comes to New York because he wants to make movies. That's really what his objective is. And he has a camera. So Legs invites the Floor Masters to battle Rock Steady, not to give them an opportunity, like he likes to say, right, but to embarrass us so that he can look good on camera. See how great my crew is, look how we embarrass those guys, so let's get an easy target, someone that we can beat up on so we can look good. This guy, Michael Holman, gonna film it, we're gonna look great. But little did he know that the Floor Masters were not a bunch of street bums, that the Floor Masters had some stuff. And in that battle, which was recorded, it was documented, that's what changed everything. Because after that battle, the Floor Masters walk away laughing. We we smoked them. We killed them. You saw that? You saw how we took the crowd? Everybody loved us. Now, as everybody's walking away, who's running behind them? Yo, don't leave yet. Yo, yo, I'm Michael Holman. I like to manage you guys. Please let me help you. Here's my number. That's the beginning of him leaving Rock Steady and now saying, I'm going to go with these guys. Why? Because he saw the future. He saw, like he said, quote unquote, the Floor Masters spun longer, spun harder, were more athletic. Rock Steady would may have been more polished in the footwork, but these guys were doing something that everybody was amazed. That was the beginning of the change. And in fact, what I like to tell people, because they don't really fully understand, because Michael Holman has a tendency to say that he created the New York City Breakers, that's like saying Columbus discovered America. You didn't create something that already existed. They do that a lot, huh? They do that all the time. So just to be clear for the record, the New York City Breakers was created by Noel Manuel, aka Kid Nice. He's the one that said, I want to start a crew. He's the one that said, let's get all these guys together with his best friend, Chino Lopez. That is the creation of the New York City Breakers, who were at the time known as the Floor Masters. Now, when Michael Holman gets involved, he gets involved because there's a famous graffiti writer named Phase Two, who has a brilliant idea of making an All-Star crew. So when he hooks up with Michael Holman, who says, hey, I like that idea. I got the same idea, wink wink, let's work together. So when he sees that battle between the Floor Masters and Rock Steady, he drops Rock Steady like a bad habit, jumps onto the Floor Master team and says, I'll do whatever it takes, but I want to manage you guys. Now, keep in mind, he's one of the promoters at Club NE Grill along with Lady Blue. Now, Lady Blue, her time runs out of NE Grill. They they don't longer have NE Grill. She has a new spot. You know what the name of that new spot is called? Roxy. The Roxies. So now she says, Michael, I got a new club. It's called the Roxies. Do you want to partner up with me over here? His reply was, you know, Lady Blue, we had a good run together, but I'm going to focus on the Floor Masters. I see something special in this group. And I think that as much as this club, again, brand new, called the Roxies, sounds great, I'm sure you'll be successful at it. I'm gonna stay with this. The Roxy becomes the biggest club on the planet. Nobody even talks about Lady Blue. She becomes the manager of Rock Steady. She has significance, but no one ever talks about her, but they talk about Michael Holman. Right? She helps him. Nobody even talks about her, but they talk about him. Why? Because he's smart. He said, in my view, the Floor Masters are like the Yankees. If you, man, let me manage Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, all these all-time greats, I may not know what I'm doing, but I can win a World Series with that team. Well, to me, he had the Yankees. So the way I see it is when he comes on board, Phase Two, to me, does not get the proper respect. He played a big role. He's the one that comes up with the name, the New York City Breakers, not Michael Holman. It's actually Phase Two. So Michael Holman does not come up with the name. Takes a crew that's already together. The original five members of the New York City Breakers are Kid Nice, the founder, Action, the leader, because he did all of the talking for the most part, Glide Master, who was the glue, the heart and soul, Powerful Pex, who was the logo. All of them are Floor Masters from Kingsbridge. The fifth person was Little Lep from the Seven Deadly Sins, but he was from the neighborhood. All five are Puerto Rican. All five are from Kingsbridge. But when you hear Michael Holman, you hear him say, I wanted to start a crew, an All-Star crew from every crew, all boroughs. So I recruited everyone from everywhere. But how could that be accurate if all five people come from the same neighborhood? It's not even like I'm from the South Bronx. He's from the North Bronx. He's from the East. Everybody's on the same neighborhood, Kingsbridge, whether you're a block away or two blocks away. Most of everybody was on the same block, University in Kingsbridge. So with that being said, to me, I I think that a lot of people are just stretching it a little bit because they want to feel more significant, more important, but they're doing a disservice to the people. I mean, think about it. Kids came up. Noel is a kid. He started something as a kid. It's the kids that changed the world. It's the kids that made the difference. It's the kids that did the inspiring. It's the kids that paid the dues, that did the hard work. It's the adults that messed everything up. It's the adults that exploited the kids. It's the adults that put the money over the people, over the concerns of the community. They did that. They exploited it. They ruined it. When the kids were in control, it was popular, it was exciting, it was dynamic. When the adults got involved, it became a business. It got cold. It became worthless, heartless. So I don't subscribe to the adults. If you look at history, it's the kids that change the world. As much as we give credit to Dr. King and Malcolm X and everybody else, it was the kids that they sicced the dogs on in Alabama. It's the kids that the fire department shot with the water hoses. It wasn't the adults. It was the kids. And when the American people and in the world saw it on TV, they said, oh my God, look what they're doing to the kids. Not what they're doing to the adults. Not what they're doing to Rosa Parks. Look what they're doing to the kids. The water hoses, the beatings, the dogs chewing on them, this that's what led to the civil rights legislation. That's not to discredit everything else, but anytime you do damage to a child, it hits different. It's not the same. So talk about that because that's the real truth of it. It's the kids. Stop taking credit away from the kids. It's wrong. And they all do it. I don't hear anybody talking about these kids. Nobody. And if I'm wrong, please show me. I'll be more than happy to say, I apologize. I take that back. Until then, you're wrong. It's the kids. And I stand by that.

Battle of the Boroughs, wow. How did that come to your mind? Tell me about the beginnings of Battle of the Boroughs. So as we come back in the 90s, I see something called Battle of the Year. That's in Europe, in Germany. There's a guy named Thomas that puts it together. That's when I realized, whoa, this is huge over there. Like they do Battle of the Year. It's not like a couple of hundred people. It's like a couple of thousand people. It's like an arena. It's like WWE or WWF now, you know? I'm like, whoa. So that's why I tell people, you gotta credit the Europeans, man. You can't stop, stop disrespecting them, man. They kept this thing going. That's they kept your legacy going. If they didn't do that, maybe we're not here today talking about this. Stop disrespecting. LA, California held that down. If they're not doing that, we're probably not here talking about it. So when I saw Battle of the Year, I was like, whoa, whoa, man. Shoot, how come we can't do that here? Someone said, oh yeah, they do something like that here. I'm like, they do? Where? In California. I said, no way. What do they call it? B-boy Summit. I said, oh, then they show me the footage. I said, wow, it wasn't as big as the one in Germany, but at least somebody's doing something here in America. I tip my hat. That is dope. I love it. I I want to do something like that. So I invite a person by the name of Zulu Gremlin, who is from LA, at the time was relocated to Florida. I tell him, I want to do these events. I want to start producing events and I want to talk some history because people are misinformed. He says, London, I did an event called the B-boy Masters Pro-Am. I just did it. Like, I don't know how many months ago. I didn't even hear about it. I didn't know because again, I'm not in touch like that. I just took his word for it. Okay, well, cool. Listen, I'm doing something over here in New York. I have this apartment. I would love for you to relocate, come up here, help me out. Like, I'm trying to make some history. I'm trying to do something. I promise you, we're gonna do something special. So he said, all right, cool. I meet a person by the name of Fever One from Seattle. He's white. He tells me when I first meet him, oh yeah, I used to practice with Icy Ice from New York City Breakers. No way. Get he used to live in Seattle? Yeah. Well, during the time he lived in Seattle in '86, '87, he would come and practice with us. I said, oh, man, this is beautiful. So you're like New York City, you're part of the family. You're part of the family tree. I'm gonna be doing these events. I've invited this guy named Zulu Gremlin to come stay with us. Why don't you come and move in? So he packs his bags and he moves into the Bronx. And we're all living in the same, my apartment, my lease. We all move in together. And now we to create something called Breakbeat Assassins. And there's four of us. There's Speedy D, who's Puerto Rican, but he looks white, so we used to call him White Boy Speedy. There's Zulu Gremlin, who I'm not sure, he's he's Spanish, but I'm not sure what Spanish. It might be like half Ecuadorian, maybe half, I don't know, be Spanish. There's Fever, whose name is Carter, he's white. And it's myself. We create the Breakbeat Assassins. And I'm producing music and we're producing break beats. And we just want to kill it. So we're the break, we assassinate all break beats musically, dance-wise. So now we start performing. We bring in a guy named Ray Boogie, who did that record, "Puerto Rico." So he becomes our rapper. We meet a a group by the name of Terror Squad. So they do a couple demos with us. And now there's new energy coming out. Again, this is in the mid-90s. So now it's not just breaking. Now we're producing events, we're producing shows, we're producing music, we're producing ideas, concepts. We're acting. We're doing everything because you don't know where life takes you. So now let's prepare to do everything. So the house, there's no furniture. There's the music equipment and mirrors. That's it. You want to eat, eat on the floor because that's what we practice. You can't, I'm not gonna move the dining table. I'm not gonna move any sfers. Like this is work. We're here to do a job. This is our life. We're gonna eat it, drink it, sleep it. There's, that's, you either all in or you're all out. You, you, there's no, once you jump off the cliff, there ain't no reverse. You're committed. There's no going back. You move into the Bronx, there ain't no going back. That's a commitment. So from that, the energy is great. We're doing music, we're doing shows. We do Zulu Nation anniversary. We're doing what everywhere. Now, now we have a buzz. At this time, you know, I'm big into basketball. So I've worked with MSG. I've worked with Nike. I was with MSG for, I don't know how many years. Nike, 16 years, a long time. So I see a flyer one day, um, that Nike is putting together a basketball tournament. And in this flyer, they call this basketball tournament Battle of the Boroughs. So when I saw that, I said, oh, man, that's really freaking cool. How cool would that be if we could do a breaking event called Battle of the Boroughs? So that's where that concept really comes from. The real truth, like that's really what it stems from. So it wasn't like I created it, but I kind of did. I just got inspired by what the basketball community was doing because I was a big part of the basketball community and I incorporated it into the B-boy community. But before I did Battle of the Boroughs, I did Back to Mecca. And the reason why Back to Mecca came out was because I wanted to tell the history of it. And I felt like if I'm gonna do this, I would love to do it at the Garden, the mecca of basketball, the mecca of boxing, and now it's going to be known as the mecca of hip-hop culture. So now I reach out to Curtis Blow and all the people I used to know. And I start putting videos together. I start promoting it. Curtis, can you? Do you know? I started doing little commercials. And then I just started inviting everybody. I pay for everybody to go out to California to go back and meet these people so that they can tell them, yo, come down to New York. We do a three-day event. It was September of 1998. And that's where all walks of life come. People from Europe came. People from California came. Boston, Miami, all over. I was very fortunate that reporters from all over the world came. They wrote articles on it. I kept those articles, saved them. Um, even Wyclef, you know, like everybody, you know, so it made me very proud. That led to, you know, me knocking on doors looking for money because like they didn't have sponsors back then. So I became the sponsor. So not only was I the producer, the director, the writer, but I was also the sponsor because everywhere I turned around, nobody was really trying to support the hip-hop community or the B-boy community because there was no blueprint. It wasn't like they had something that they can compare it to. I mean, you had the Zulu Nation anniversary, you had the Rock Steady anniversary, but those were not B-boy events. They were not focused on the dance. Zulu Nation was focused on their history, which predominately was the MC and the DJ. Rock Steady was getting money from the record labels, so on stage, it was all rap. And if you were a dancer, okay, we throw some noolum on the floor, you guys could dance, but the B-boy wasn't the center. He wasn't the highlight until Back to Mecca came. That was a B-boy event. The MC did not get top billing. The DJ did not get top billing. New York City Breakers and the B-boy community got top billing. And everybody comes after. And the highlight were the battles, the panels where everybody got to speak on their history. So there was nothing more satisfying to me than to see on stage New York City Breakers, Magnificent Force, Rock Steady, like all of the OGs. Now let me see you lie because now everybody's there. It ain't he said this, she said that, and I'mma go. No, everybody's on stage at the same time answering the same question. Now there is no misunderstanding. Same thing with the poppers and the lockers, all the OGs. Let's let's clear the air because they're not listening to me. So I'm gonna bring all these guys in, all the DJs, let's go share your history. So that was the beginning of me bumping heads a little bit because everything wants to be, they, whoever they are, the powers that be, wanted a consistent story. If you really study this, you can see this. If you really connect the dots, you can actually literally see where everything starts to change. Just go back and listen to all the interviews. Go back and see how everything is put together. You can see the shift. So I say all that to say that again, breaking comes from the rock community, meaning rock dance, that comes out of the Latin Boogaloo era, the Puerto Rican, the Latino community. Rapping goes back, I can't begin to tell you how many rap records that came out before 1979. Don't listen to me, I got the records. You can just listen to it now. You can argue, well, that's not a hip-hop beat. Well, there was no hip-hop in the 60s, 50s, 30s, 20s. There was no hip-hop in '70, '71, '73. That word did not exist until the late 70s. So what do you mean hip-hop beat? What does that mean? There are documentations, there are records, there are things. If you just do your homework, you can trace everything. People want to say Muhammad Ali was a rapper.

I can go with that. People want to say the Last Poets. I can go with that. By the way, Feliciano was the last poet. I don't hear his name a lot. Why is it? Because he's Puerto Rican, right? Right. He's dark-skinned. He had an afro before people really understood what a Puerto Rican was. I'm sure they probably said, "Oh, they were all black." But now you're speaking Spanish, you're talking, you know, Latin history. Like, "Oh, he's Puerto Rican." Okay, well, you know what? He wasn't the original Last Poet. My man, he played a significant role, not just in the Last Poets, but as a Young Lord, as a historian, as someone that fought for free lunches, for someone that fought for us to be treated equally, for us to receive the services that we were denied as children. He fought for that. How dare you disrespect this man's name? All the Young Lords who did a lot. You know how much courage it took for them to take over a church? You know how much courage it took for them to set fire to the street because sanitation didn't want to pick up the garbage? Like, do you understand what they did? Go back and look at history. Young Lords, Black Panthers, Jews, all of them are marching because what they were doing to us was unjust. It was criminal, and nobody was doing anything about it. We had to fight and fend for ourselves. That's the truth. Go back and look at what happened. Go back and look at the documents. Go back and look at the footage. These are factual things that happened. Please do not change what made us who we are because once you take milk and you drop just a pinch of chocolate in it, it ain't milk. You may say it's light-skinned chocolate, dark-skinned chocolate, meat. It ain't never gonna be pure. And when we come to this country, it ain't never going to be the same. It'll always be influenced by what we brought to this community, to this country, whether you want to acknowledge it or not. It's in the record books. You're just not talking about it, so let's talk about it.

Awesome project. Roots, what does Roots stand for? And tell me a little bit about Project Roots. So, Roots is something that I did not create the concept for. There's a famous B-boy named Track 2 who told me about a Latino that was doing a project and unfortunately he committed suicide. And he told me that he was doing something called Roots. I had told Track that I wanted to do a documentary called Roots and based it on our roots. And I said, "Don't you remember back in the '70s, Alex Haley did that miniseries called Roots?" And of course, he said, "Of course." I mean, that was huge. Everybody saw it. I mean, it was that was the talk of every day. We went to school, we talked about Roots. You see the episode where they did this? Oh man, did you see Kunta? When he cut his foot off? Like, oh my God. Like that was the first time we were exposed to what we viewed as the real truth. Even if they put Hollywood to it, but to us, we were kids. That was, I think, 1977, '76. I don't remember. It's the '70s. All I know is that every single day we talked about it. The teacher, everybody. It was that impactful. So I felt like I wanted to do something like that, but trace the roots back down to how we really got here. And in my opinion, that that comes back to the '98 War, the Spanish-American War, where that really changed the landscape of things, which is what led to the Great Migration, which is the Puerto Ricans coming over here. So with that being said, when I explained that to him, he said, "Oh, this is somebody I know that's doing." And I forgot his name right now, and I apologize, but I'll try to get it to you. But he said, "Yeah, he said he's doing something called." He wanted to do something called Roots, which stood for, um, "Respect Our Original Tradition and Style." And I said, "Oh man, what a nice accent." You know what? I like that because I was just gonna call it Roots just because I felt like we're part of the root of all of this. And I'm gonna trace it back to the root. But then when he put that to it, I said, you know what? I kind of like that. So maybe I'll flip it. Maybe I'll keep it the same. But, you know what? I want to incorporate that. But for me, I felt like I want to do what Alex Haley did. I don't want to do a one-hour documentary. I feel like there's so much information that's all connected that this is going to take like a miniseries, like Shogun back in the days, like Rich Man, Poor Man back in the days, like Roots back in the days. Like it had to. Like Michael Jordan did a documentary and did a six-part series. Or the Kanye West did a, you know, whatever three, five-part series. Like at this point, there's so much information that I feel like you really need to get into the root of it. So that people can't argue. If I show you this document, how can you argue with it? If I show you this footage, how can you argue with it? If I bring out this book that was published in this year, how can you argue with that? These are the roots of what all of this comes from. So where the root, you got the trunk, you got the branches, you got the leaves, you got all these different elements. But you can't talk about the leaves without talking about the branch. You can't talk about the branch without talking about the trunk. You can't talk about the trunk without talking about the root. So before you do anything, let's just factually document everything. Let's make sure that we get all the records that we can possibly get. That includes spoken testimony. But I don't want to rely on that. You know how many times people see something and they were wrong? I mean, I tell people, I don't want to base this on opinion. It's like boxing. We can both see the same fight and it goes to distance, and you can say, "Oh man, this guy won." "What crazy, this guy won." "Nah, he got more hits in." "Yeah, but his hits were harder." You can debate unless you get knocked out. It's subjective. It's not baseball. Who scores the most runs? It's not basketball. Who gets the most points? It's not football. Who has the most touchdowns? There's no way of justifying what you're seeing. It's all going to be opinion-based. I don't want to do a documentary like that. I want to do something that's based on the DNA, on the evidence that we uncover, and use the oral testimony to just validate. I can't use the oral as the basis of the documentary, which is what everybody's doing. "Oh, let me interview so-and-so." Whatever he says is got to be right. Come on. I think we've already demonstrated that everything he says is not 100% right. All I'm saying is is that if you're going to make a statement, let's back it up with evidence. If it's not backed up with evidence, then I don't think we can make that statement or we should use that statement. And if you are going to use that statement, then you have to put in there that this is not a factual or this is subjective or this is just opinion-based or this is her. Whatever. You can't go out there and say that this is factual if you have no documentation or evidence to back that up. That's why people say "allegedly" to protect themselves, right? Well, it's all alleged unless you bring me the documentation, the video, the movie, the poster, the flyer. Unless you bring me that, I'm not really trying to hear it. I can't see any. There's a gazillion flyers out. How many flyers have hip hop in 1973? Zero. '74? Zero. '75? Zero. '76? I think that might be '02. I think the first time you see the word "hip hop" might be '79 at the earliest. '78. Shit, hell, I could be wrong. I haven't seen a flyer in 1975 that says "hip hop" on it. If I'm wrong, please produce it. Somebody out there that's listening, please. Somebody bring me a flyer that says "hip hop" from 1973 on it. I'm asking everybody around the planet. I'm not gonna leave it from New York, even though it started here. I'm saying anybody on the planet, if you could produce something that says "hip hop" in 1973, '74, '75, I'm gonna keep my mouth shut. Until then, you can't call it hip hop.

Awesome, awesome. Especially since disco played a huge part of this. It's a foundational rudal. Listen, without disco, there ain't no hip hop. Without the Latin flavor, there ain't no hip hop. Without the soulful sounds, it ain't no hip hop. Just like a Puerto Rican, there are three elements: Indigenous, African, and European. Just like hip hop, you got soul, you got Latin, and you got the disco. That's why everything was disco. Everything. The Fat Boys, their original name, Disco 3. Sal Abbatiello opened up a club, Disco Fever. He didn't call it Rap Fever. He didn't call it Hip Hop Fever. He called it Disco Fever. Who did he have playing there? People that were rapping, DJing. They considered hip hop pioneers. So why is everything disco? Sugarhill Gang, the first rap record, not the first record that has rap on it, because it's not. But it's the first 100% rap-only record by a group. First ever. Now, if you want to say Pigmeat Markham, "Here Comes the Judge," and he was rapping, okay, I got no problem with that. Sugarhill Gang is the first rap record by a group, period, period, period. That's what they are. They use a disco beat. Good Times, disco group. So you can't disregard the place that disco played in this because whatever you do, the one thing that I see on all of those flyers is disco. I can go '74, see your disco flyer with rappers on it, with DJs on it. I don't see anything that says "hip hop." I don't see anything that says "breaking." I don't see anything that says "B-boy" on it. That comes later. So please, if you're gonna repeat history, come with the factual stuff. Leave your own personal opinion out unless you're going to say, "This is my personal opinion." But don't make it as though you're speaking factual because there is no hip hop without this. There is no hip hop without rock. Just like there is no disco without soul. It's all one and the same. And that's really how people should be talking about hip hop.

Awesome, awesome. The largest international venue, uh, I think there is, you know, the Olympics. 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. B-boy London, talk to me. Well, for those that don't know, that concept originates with the New York City Breakers. That is factual. There is no argument about that. I think today, what's today's date? May 8th, May 8th, 2024. I think it's pretty well known, documented that a person by the name of Chino Lopez in 1983 on a show called PM Magazine, for those old enough to know what PM Magazine is, it was like a variety show, a news show, celebrity, kind of like, uh, Hollywood news type stuff. They did an interview with the New York City Breakers where Action says on camera, "We, the New York City Breakers, challenged the 1984 gold medal Olympic team and the floor exercise routine." Now, him and Kid Nice would always talk about, like, "Man, how cool would it be to be in the Olympics?" Prior to all of that, but it was never spoke about publicly until he said that. Action, then January 15th, 1984, Action takes a white piece of paper and writes, "We, the New York City Breakers, see breaking as an Olympic sport and ourselves as pioneers." And tells everybody to sign it. Powerful. Pex takes that and takes a picture with it. It's documented. It has the date on it. So when people go and do the research, nobody ever gives Action that credit. Michael Homan must have did a thousand interviews and never once, just like I said, never. If there's an interview that Michael Homan did, unless it's fairly recently where he mentions Action, he's never done it. He's always made it seem like it was his idea. "I wanted to make this all-star crew. I wanted to make them more athletic. This is something that I could see in the Olympics." But I never hear Action. See, that's the misrepresentation that I'm talking about because you see, you know that he was a kid that brought to you that concept, gave you those ideas and said, "I think, Michael, we should be doing this for the Olympics." Now, you're a manager, so it's your job to sell that. Cool. But you didn't tell the truth. You should have credited him for that, and you never did. And then I hear other people talk about, "Oh, well, we had that idea too." Okay, you guys want to play that game? Okay, let's play that game. Okay, you know what? I tell people, "All right, so I was saying, you want to play that game? Okay, let's play." Uh, what was it? We were talking about before. We were talking about the Olympics. Oh, right. So Action deserves that credit, and he's not given that credit, right? And Michael Homan should have given him that credit because he knows the real truth, and that was stripped of him. And to me, that's part of the reason why I think people don't support the Olympics the way they should have because what they look at it is, "Wait a minute, how can you celebrate the Olympics and not have the New York City Breakers be a part of this?" That would be like celebrating electricity and you don't want to mention Thomas Edison. That would be like celebrating the automobile, but you're putting Henry Ford in the closet, never to be mentioned again. So people are going to feel a certain way, like it's not authentic. You're not keeping it real. Like we don't play a part in this. We created the concept. So when I hear other people try to say, "Oh, we had that idea too." Okay, like I said, let's play that game. All right, show me what the 1984 gold medal Olympic team is wearing. Now go back and look at Soul Train and tell me what the New York City Breakers are wearing. The exact same type of spandex. Now keep in mind, we're B-boys from the Bronx. That's not exactly a look that you want to walk around the Bronx wearing, okay? So when you talk about a commitment, that's a commitment. You got to. We're giving you everything we have. We're dressing like the Olympics. We're performing like we're tumbling. Like they don't get the concept. You make fun of us. You're not B-boys, you're gymnasts because we were doing windmills and headspins, because we were doing power moves. It's all part of breaking. You can't just have the dance be just one tiny element. Man, can you imagine if the only thing you can eat in your life is rice? No beans, no meat, no salad, no nothing, just rice. Can you survive? Yeah, it ain't gonna be the healthiest life you're gonna live. It's the same thing with the culture. We're not healthy because you're not absorbing all the vitamins and minerals that we gave you as kids. You're doing what the American government does. You're stripping all of our food from its nutrients, and you're processing it, and we're dying of cancer and diabetes and Alzheimer's and everything else because there's no value in what we're putting into our mouths. Just like there's no value in the stories that you're telling because you can't tell the story of the Olympics without having the New York City Breakers, at the very least, Action, be a part of that. It's wrong. It's unjust. And the fact that the people that are supporting that behind the scenes know the truth, and because of, for whatever reason, they don't want to speak on that, maybe they're afraid they're going to lose their position. It's history. You should be proud of that. You should be promoting that. You should be holding them accountable. You should be telling them, "You can't do this without them." And it's not until I come back recently that now they're mentioning it. You think they just started the Olympics this year? Think about that. No one has said anything until I come back and I start doing Battle of the B-boys again, till I start doing interviews saying it's Action. Until then, they think it's Michael Homan. Until then, they think the Zulu Nation has something to do with this. This all comes out of the New York City Breaker camp. Michael Homan comes out of that camp. The Olympics come out of that camp. Beat Street comes out of that camp. Graffiti Rock comes out of that camp. Back to Mecca comes out of that camp. Battle of the B-boys comes out of that camp. Freestyle Fridays, as seen on 106 & Park, is what I created. It comes out of that camp. I'm the first artist, not someone that grew up listening to rap music. I'm a hip-hop artist. I'm a real B-boy. I'm the first B-boy artist, rapper, DJ, whatever you want to say, to have his own daily live talk show. Show before LL Cool J, Queen Latifah, whoever. I'm the first. I created Freestyle Fridays. And again, it's all documented because anything you do on television is timestamped. Don't listen to me. Go back and do your research. It all comes from New York City Breakers, whether it's me, whether it's Kid Nice, whether it's Action, IC Ice, who is considered the future, the greatest of all time. It's all from New York City Breakers, and we don't get the acknowledgment that we deserve because of politics. I don't want to lose my position. I think people will respect you more by speaking truth to power. That's why people 500 years from now still talked about because they speak truth to power. It's the David versus Goliath. It's the impossible. Who would have ever thought that someone wanting to spin on his head would be something special? They used to look at it like there's something wrong with that kid. Like, what would make somebody want to spin on their head? Like, were you eating paint chips? Like, are you chemically imbalanced? Do we have to medicate you? That's what it was like in the very, very beginning. They looked at you like there was something wrong with you. This kid has got to be ADD, dyslexic, something's wrong with them. There's a chemical imbalance. That's why I say to people, we were the children, like we're off the red-nosed reindeer. We were the misfits on that island that nobody wanted, that nobody cared about. We raised ourselves. We survived. That's what I tell people. We're survivors, man. And I'm just here to just share my truth, my testimony, because, you know what? There are other people just like me trying to survive. And if they understand this, they can get through it. I wish I met somebody like me back then, man. My life would have been so much easier. But maybe that's the beauty of this, right? I went through this pain and this struggle so that now when I come out, I speak. I speak from experience. So I know what you're going through. I know what your parents went through. So please learn from my experience. You don't have to repeat those mistakes. That's what I want to bring. That's the legacy of New York City Breakers, making positive change. And I think we've done that, and I hope that we continue to do that.

Continuing on that concept, it's a great segue on the positive change you've implemented a lot of things up in Yonkers. Yeah, you know, uh, can you talk to us about the, you know, the Triple A All-Stars, the kids breaking league, the efforts you're doing with the city of Yonkers, you know, and breaking? So when I come back, back again, this is the third round, right? I got the '80s, I got the '90s to 2000, and now here I am back again. I like to think like I sat down with the mail. Right? When I leave breaking in 2000, I have to do my TV show, and I decide, you know what? You know, I could be wrong, but I probably will never make this kind of money again in my life. So I went, bought a house, and said, "I don't want to be like a lot of people that I grew up with, very famous, very rich, and they have nothing to show for it." So I said, "At the very least, at least I want to be able to have a house." So I paid off all my, I paid off my car note, I paid everything off, bought the house. And I told my wife, "I want to start a nonprofit." You know, my kids are playing basketball, our kids are playing basketball, and I want to be a part of that. I don't want to be an absentee father. I was traveling, I was, you know, I was hard. I wasn't really a father. You know, kids just know me from the photograph. It wasn't like I was in there live. So I felt like I want to coach basketball. So I started doing that. But I felt like I was missing something because I was still hip hop. So I started combining those two worlds together, and I created an organization called the AAA All-Stars. And I believe that in order for a child to fully develop, you had to develop the three A's: academics, we help develop the mind, knowledge, it's important. Athletics, we help develop the body, take care of yourself, eat well, exercise, be active. And then the last A, the performing arts, a way to communicate or express yourself. Some people use a pencil, some people use a spray can, some people use a brush. I'm a B-boy, so I use the dance floor, I use movement. But no matter where I go, whether it's China, Vietnam, Germany, I may not speak that language. When I hit that floor or when I go like this, they understand me. So I don't have to speak that language. Dance is a universal language. So if you understand all of that, then you understand that we communicate. We don't have to verbally necessarily communicate verbally, right? And then the way that we receive information, some are visual learners, some are traditional learners. So when you understand all of those things, then you can put together a curriculum or activities that develop the mind, body, and soul, if you will. That's what the Triple A All-Stars. You're going to be the best in the three A's, the best in academics, the best in athletics, and the best in the arts. You are the all-stars of those domains, if you will. So now, because I'm missing hip hop, I'm missing the breaking, I start teaching them how to dribble to the rhythm of the music. They start uprocking behind the legs, between, you know, between the legs, behind the back. They're doing all these tricks. And one day, I go and I'm doing like, you know, "There he is with a dribble, dribble up the middle, pass." I'm stunned. You know, I'm doing everything N.Y.C. is doing. And, um, somebody recognizes that and says, "Listen, you know, the Knicks are filming a TV show, and you know, maybe you should come down and just, you know, I can't guarantee that you can be a part of it, but, you know, at least you get to meet people." So I'm like, "All right, cool." I go down there, and long story short, they don't have an MC for whatever reason. Whoever they hired, whoever was supposed to do it, didn't show up. So now they're like, "Hey, we got B-boy London." You know, they're like, "Who the hell is B-boy London?" "Oh, he used to have a TV show." They're like, "What does it have to do with basketball?" So now I'm hearing like, "This don't sound good." I better go out there and sell myself. I'm like, "Hey, listen, I'm B-boy London." They're like, "Who the hell are you?" You know, like, "Get away." You know, but long story short, I was able to convince them. "Look, what do you have to lose? Give me five minutes. You don't like it? All right. You lose five minutes of entertainment, but you never know." Like, you ain't have anybody. So like, "Just give me an opportunity." So once they gave me the mic, I never put it down. And the rest is history. I wound up becoming part of MSG, the MSG team. I wound up becoming part of the Knicks organization. They wound up saying, "How can we support what you're doing?" I had them come to Yonkers. They would do camps for us for free. They would give us tickets. I would go to the mayor and say, "Listen, can we get a couple of buses?" Like, so we can, like, we had 50 kids, all free, everything was paid for. So it was great because then I start mixing the hip hop, the basketball, all these tricks, music, breaking. And one day we did a halftime show, and I didn't realize that the Nike representative for the East Coast region was in the audience. It was a championship game. We did a performance and knocked it out the box. Again, it's all documented. Everything's on film. And by the time I get to the dressing room, I see this white guy saying, "Man, that was incredible." Now, the next question is, "Who's responsible for all of this?" And as he's saying that, I walk in, and when I walk in, everybody goes, "Yo." They start pointing at me. And then he tells me, "Listen, we would like to work with you. You are exactly what Nike is. Your youth, your sports, and your hip hop." And I wound up joining. I wound up, uh, doing a couple of TV shows called The Last Man Standing, where I was the MC. I did all of the games, hosted. You see me on TV, you see me on all of that. I wound up doing their camps because now I'm mixing hip hop, I'm mixing youth, and I start doing basketball games. This is before the NBA even played music. Because back then, the DJ would play halftime and timeouts. Even in the streetball tournaments, the DJ would never play music during the game. It was just, you're the DJ when the timeout comes, play your thing. When halftime comes, you can go off, scratch, do whatever you want. But to me, I brought B-boy, the culture, the B-boy culture because I didn't see a difference. I looked at it like they're competing, just like B-boys are competing. They got a big circle in the middle floor, just like we were dancing in a circle. So I just looked at it like, I'm gonna make the music speak. Since I don't have the microphone and I'm not getting the visibility or the recognition because I don't have the mic, you got the mic, you're the star. So because I'm just playing the music, I'm in the background. So I made me say, "Well, you can speak with your words, but since I can produce music, I'm gonna sample vocals and I'm gonna let those vocals speak for me." So that's what I started doing. I would just take sound bites of all these hip hop records that I grew up listening to. DMX, "Let's Get It On." Boom. They came. Be-bop-a-lula when they block a shot. No, no, no, no. Flintstones when they would run. I would take all these sound effects, and I just started chopping them up. Then I would take breakbeats, and I would chop those up, and I begin to blend music during the game, which was frowned upon. I got a lot of heat because coaches were like, "I can't hear my team." Like, "This guy's playing music and he's got the sound effects." And people were complaining. This guy named Ray Diaz, who was running the Nike tournaments, he did a pro league that Nike is, well, all the pros would play because they didn't want to play any outdoor tournaments, concrete outside. It wasn't sanctioned. But Nike had a pro league with pro refs, pro players, indoors, air-conditioned. And he said, "London, they don't understand what you're doing. Come to Nike Pro City." I started working with Nike Pro City, and within two years, every single DJ in every single park now had a laptop or with sampling music, with doing the sound effects. And eventually, um, I started to get the recognition. And then, uh, recently, somebody, a former NBA player, reached out to me and wanted to do a documentary because he said, "You know, London, I don't think people realize that you created what every NBA team does in their arena now." I didn't realize that. Again, because I'm in my own bubble. I just go to the park, I do what I do, and then I come back home to my community. Because I'm really involved with my community. I got really involved with social programs. I'm really involved with the public school system. Like, I really believe that the educational system that we have in place today is doing a disservice to our community because we're not really learning American history. Because Latinos and African-Americans are a huge part of that. But when you look at the curriculum structure, it's barely mentioned in there. So I just feel like the education that I'm providing these kids, they're not going to get in school. They might get it in college, but even in college, they're cutting those back with a lot of these crazy super conservative Republicans that are denying freedom of expression, creativity, or just factual information to simmer through because they're embarrassed on how they treated us. And now, because we don't have to rely on anything but computers, we can look things up. Information is accessible now. I can research now. I don't need a teacher. So now that all this information is coming out, it makes America look terrible. It makes him look like a gaslighting, racist country that did nothing but punish anybody that wasn't white. That's what it looks like. And when you travel overseas, that's what it looks like to the rest of the world. I never say I'm American. "Where are you from?" "I'm Puerto Rican." I never say I'm American. I say that with all due respect. I'm born here, I'm raised here. But the truth is is that there's a lot of things that this government and this country has done to harm innocent people, and I'm a survivor of that. And I'm just here to say that as a survivor, you can survive this too.

B-boy London, what does being a B-boy mean to you? I think being a real B-boy means being true to the art form and the culture that made us who we are, and not trying to change it for artificial reasons. Like, I'm not gonna go and make hot dogs out of fake meat and call them hot dogs, you know? I'm not gonna make pasta out of something else and call it pasta. Like, it is what it is. The good, the bad, the ugly, it is. I mean, were people lynched? Yes. Were we deprived of opportunity? Yes. Would I change anything? No, because it made me who I am today. The good, the bad, the ugly. If I change one thing, then I'm different, and I don't want to be different. Even though I struggled and I was confused, like, "Why do all these bad things happen to me?" I feel like I understand it now because it allows me to talk about this differently than most people. And again, I respect everybody, but I'm authentic, and I'm in touch with my spiritual awakening. Like, I'm in tune. Like, I don't think people fully understand. We are energy. Your heart dies, but you can still live. Your mind dies, you can still live. But when the energy dies, it's over. So if you understand that, then all of us are connected because we're all energy. But just like a magnet, sometimes you can attract, but if you flip it over, it doesn't come. So I'm viable for energy. You don't have to speak to me. I'm already reading you because I'm on a different level. I'm about the energy. I see through all of that. It doesn't matter to me. Doesn't matter what you're wearing. I don't care. Today you can be dressed like a clown, tomorrow you can be dressed like a football player, you could be dressed like whoever. That superficial doesn't matter. Who are you? I'm seeing. I see your soul. I feel your energy. That's why sometimes when people walk in, they're like, "Oh, I don't like." "Oh, this guy got." "Oh, I don't like that." It's something wrong. It's the energy. It's telling you who you really are. Sometimes people walk in the room, "Wow, who's that?" "I don't know." "You introduce me." It's the energy you have. Positive energy, good things are going to happen. I never fail. I always learn. What people look as failure, I look at as opportunity. It gives me an opportunity to be better, to be smarter, to be stronger. Life has a funny way of making you repeat mistakes over and over and over and over again until you learn. So it's better that you learn so you don't keep making those mistakes. That's what I'm about. And the sooner that we teach these kids that lesson, the easier life becomes. So don't complicate it. Make it easy. Life is already hard being raised in this country that's not a person that's white, if you will. It's gonna be tough, period. It's gonna be tough. So don't complicate it. Don't make it worse. We're always going to start way back. That's why our story is so beautiful because we might have started 500 rows back, but we're neck and neck. That takes a lot, a lot of resilience. You should be commended for that. You shouldn't be put down for that. You should be rewarded for that. That's what I'm about. And that to me is what hip hop is. That to me is what a real B-boy is. Real B-boys look for solutions. They don't just talk about the problem. That's why when you battle, you think about what winning, how do I get an advantage, how do I overcome that? That's the mentality of a B-boy. That's how you survive. That's how you win. And that's why everybody should be a B-boy or B-girl.

B-boy London, what does the Bronx mean to you? Bronx means home. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm proud to be Puerto Rican. I love the island, but the truth is, I'm born and raised here. If I'm born and raised in PR or California or Europe, my life is totally different. So I can never feel more proud to know that being of Puerto Rican descent and knowing what we did with little resources, really no opportunity, man, have we come a long way? Like, what a beautiful story. Like a bunch of Taínos being conquered, if you will. And yet, here we are, hundreds of years later, and we changed the world. The kids from the Bronx. I mean, think about this. Hip hop was known as a fad. That all changed when the New York City Breakers, the first artists, I don't care, rapper, do whatever, to go into the White House. That's when America says, "Okay, we were wrong. It's not a fad." We're sitting, performing for not the 1%, the 1% of the 1%. These are the people that are running the United States of America. These are the people that are running the world. That's who the New York City Breakers is performing in front of. The elite of the elite. They don't just take anybody. They don't just accept anybody. So to them to accept us, a bunch of street kids from the Bronx that really don't have proper education, do you understand what that is? I mean, this is the elite, and we're there, shaking hands, rubbing elbows. The New York City Breakers was so powerful and so impactful. I'm thinking about the impact for a minute. Anybody that does a movie, whoever the star of the movie is, receives top billing. Saturday Night Fever, starring John Travolta. Tom Cruise will get top billing. Michael Jackson would get top billing. If I did a movie and Michael Jackson got a five-minute role, guess whose name is going up first? Him. Why? Because he's a megastar. Now, go get the poster for Beat Street. Look who gets top billing. The New York City Breakers. Not the stars, not the director, not the producer. Kids that got a little cameo experience over everybody. The actors, the DJs, the rappers. Beat Street starring the incredible New York City Breakers, top billing. That's the impact. New York City Breakers releases an album. Nobody sings, nobody raps, nobody produces the music, but because it's a New York City Breakers album, BAM, View-Master. No problem. That demonstrates the impact. Now, I'm not saying that we had a 10-year run, but you can't tell me that at one point, New York City Breakers was bigger than Michael Jackson at one point. Because we're everywhere. At least Michael Jackson had a career when he was a little kid. They knew who he was. When he did "Beat It," he was already a megastar. He was already a megastar when he did the album *Off the Wall*. We were nobodies that became somebody's with nothing, no money, no backing, no support system. Even our parents, they did the best that they could. You think they know how to read and write contracts? Come on. They didn't even speak English. So did we get taken advantage of? Absolutely. But we made history, and we should be rewarded and recognized for that, and we shouldn't be put down for that because what we did took a lot. It took a lot. It wasn't easy. We went through some stuff, and people should understand that and appreciate our story and not try to rewrite history because we played a huge role in this, even if it's for a short period of time in this thing that we call life. But still, that's what I would like to change. Just be honest, man, because we all, all of us are special in our own way, and we should all celebrate each other. And I hope that that's what happens for the rest of my life here on this Earth.

Awesome, B-boy London. Thank you for taking time out of your day to meet with us here at the Bronx County Historical Society and speak your peace about B-boying. Thank you. Really, thank you, man. This is like, really cool. You know, again, it's been a long time since I really spoke out and poured out my heart and told people how I've really felt about a lot of things. And, you know, I just wanted to try to make positive change because, like I said, life is already difficult, man. Let's not complicate it. Let's support each other. I support what you guys do here. I'm so fortunate and blessed. I've met you. I'm glad that you're documenting all of the history in the Bronx because the Bronx really plays a special place in this world. And 10,000 years from now, they're gonna talk about the Bronx, and part of that is because of us. And I'm proud to be a part of that, even if it's just for five seconds. I'm very proud of that. B-boy London, New York City Breakers, let's go, baby. You know what it is. Come on. Peace.