Transcription
[Music] foreign [Music] do yeah um probably Pete. I'm from uh from Fresno, California, where popping and boogaloo uh was invented by my brother and created by my brother Boogaloo Sam. I started popping in 1977. My brother um told me about this dance over the phone because uh we had moved our way to another city called Long Beach. That's where we moved to and uh and he came down and showed me this incredible dance that he was doing called the boogaloo, and I went crazy. Um, I practiced over and over because I all I wanted to do is pop. That is my specialty. I mean, like Skeet says, we boogaloo, we call it boogaloo pop and pop style now, but I mean, originally we just called it popping, but it was still from the boogaloo. But now it's Electric Boogaloo style popping. About 16.
[Music] Um, then um, I basically was doing the robot first, and then I got into the uh a little bit tangent locking, and got into the uh snaking. And they were called, we were actually at that time called the Mysterious Poppers. Daryl, George, Kent, and me, which we recall, I was at the time, I was still Popping Taco, but I was King Snake. And that's kind of what my forte is, a lot of snaking and the waving and dime stops. And uh, in which I learned how to boogaloo from Popin' Pete, the whole, the original style, basically how to do it. Yeah, the forward is, I kind of contributed with the forward popping your knees forward to give a a different another dime stop. And yeah, I started dancing locking when I was uh 11, '71. From then, just locking and robot. James Brown, I've always danced, always. But uh, my most popular dance was uh locking. And from it, it was a move called a Skeet Skeeter Rabbit, which they named, which they named me after the dance. Get a rabbit. It was a a uh another guy and watch called a Skeeter Rabbit. It's called Skeeter Rapping. I used to do Skittle Rap, so they named me Skeeter Rabbit. And uh, from then, I was dancing until I got with uh Electric Boogaloos with uh Boogaloo Sam and Poppin' Pete and Taking Decks, my cousins. And they picked me up from the gutter. The gutter is the trash. I was bad. I was in the gang and fighting and everything. That's where I got my scars from. Then Pete and I said, let's get the Electric Boogaloos back together. And it started with Popping Pete, Boogaloo Sam, and I. And the three of us, we came and toured in Japan. And we came back and Pete said, why, why stop with here? Let's put them all together. We gave the first person we called was Taco. So Taco, then it was four. And then we got Mr. Wiggles in, and we got another member called uh Sugarpop. And so it's really six Electric Boogaloos. And uh, all together, we've worked with different artists, David Bowie, George Michael from Wham. We just recently did a Gap commercial. We have between us about 50, 60 commercials and another 30 videos, about six, seven movies. And uh, we work with other artists like MJ and stuff like that.
The music is everything. Yeah, everything makes sense. It makes sense. I'll give you an example. Example two dancer. This dancer, we say dancer B. A dancer B. Dancer B. Dancer, no move, but rhythm. Very, very smooth, cocky, big dancer. Right? A dancer, move it by, but no rhythm. He's number one. He's no hogakide. No hogakide. I know, I know. This guy is technique, no rhythm. This is a dance move. Music go together. Not, not betsu. It's together. So to, to Electric Boogaloo, I think it is every single thing. We have to do to the music. Combination is two things together. This combination, that meaning, right? Oh, yeah. Music, move is married. Married together. So we, and, and we dance inside, like say, inside of heart, in our heads. But nothing we do on stage is choreographed. But when we're doing solos, I mean, you can, of course, you can make up moves because we all made up moves, you know, from Twisted Flex, uh, uh, Crazy Legs, you know, uh, uh, Sleepy Style, uh, Taking all that. But to, to know how to dance to the to the music and dance to the beat is one thing. And a lot of people don't understand that. Um, that's why the Boogaloos are uh, are different from a lot of uh, poppers. A dance uh, style called the the Crazy Legs. Crazy Legs. The uh, breaker from Rock City Crew. Um, I seen him dance on television show. Legs breaking, laying fast. So I said, you know, I can pop, and I pop fast. So I can, I try, I try to make my legs go crazy. So that's why I call Crazy Legs. And it's like my pants don't fall down. Crazy Legs. Our style, I made up. Oh, yeah. A lot of a different kind of my style in the waves. Kind of like what I, and you'd only want pop with your weight. Yeah. First one, like like the wave. And there's like a pop in my ways. When I see everybody else just wait, he popped and waved to the beach. Yeah. And uh, that's what I do. But I also uh, I lock and robot and stuff like that. So I'm basically uh, they say it's old school, but it's the real dance style. Every freestyling is a little bit of breaking, a little bit of cap wetter, a little bit of popping, a little bit of locking. And they named it freestyle. New school is all these other dances mixed up. But the real dances are popping, locking, and breaking. Those the three real dances. And everything else, everybody else just take a little bit, take, take that and name it another dance. Freestyle, new school, house. It's all from other dances. But this generation is from the true street dance generation. Street dance, not hip-hop street dance. Now it's considered hip-hop, but it was street dance first. And we from the funk era. We only danced the funk. Old school funk. And then, oh, oh, I gotta say this. I'm gonna keep it short and sweet. When my lips rusty, but I'm gonna talk anything now. Popping, a lot of people of the world think popping is the name, the big name. Oh, I popped. Another pop is waving. Taking popping is a style. So when you have a popping contest, you look for popping. That's what I look for. When you have an, you say, well, I wave. What do you wave? But when you're having a pop bean contest, and when you say, I'm a popper, that is a style. That's a style. My brother came up with it. It is not a name. Big universal name. And everyone think it is. Popping is just one style of many. We, we're trying to keep it true like that. Pop it. Don't mix it all up. You know, because it's not true. It's not. Don't put it in your name. It's not pure. You can mix it up. Yeah. Don't give it one name. That's what I mean. Don't say it's poppy. Yeah. It's not pure. We're trying to keep the dance pure. Like locking is just, it's not two styles of lock. And it's one, one rule, one way to lock. Then you can have flavor your own way, your flavor. But it's only one rule. And for popping, it's popping rule, it's waving rule, it's strutting rule, ticking. And we want to keep it like that. We don't just want to give everything one name. You know, it's not, it's not true.
Oh, you know, like you guys. So like if you if you're standing there and you go like with your, I could go with this arm or this arm and go like that. But my neck's also working too. You got like from watching Pete, everything's isometric and everything's going in different, you know, you're making each part of your muscles move to the beat, you know, you're like, see how cool that looks? That looks cool. That looks like, you know, keep dancing and practice and practice and, you know, practice on your muscle controls. Yeah, just go with the, go where the music takes you now. But just uh, make sure you just keep um, keep the dance funky, you know, um, express yourself. Don't get in the mirror and and learn, you know, I'm gonna do this and that. Just uh, dance freestyle from the head, from the mind. And get on that bottom of my bike, dance to the music and keep it in the heart. We're here just to try to continue the history, continue the dance, you know, far, you know, like like uh, Taco have said, uh, it's the past, the present, the future, and then some. We want to go, you know, take it higher. So that's what it's all about. To show in the back, see Boogaloo style developed and created in 1976 from Fresno, California to Long Beach, California to the world. Yeah, Electric Boogaloo. That's that's.
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