The Freshest Kids Page #3

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I used to always go to Mom and Pops

Social club, or night club whatever you want to call it, it was a basement really

On Crotona Ave. and I used to go there a lot to try and see Spy

And then one day I saw Spy there

I'll never forget he had this red hat on and his Afro was just like poofing right out the side

His hat was to the side, just like this

And that's why whenever I go down right now, whenever I start breaking

And I got a hat on, you know this is just like straight Spy, this is the Spy in me, you know what I mean?

When they would tell me stories about Spy

I would look in the sky and be like, trying to picture myself with it, trying to put myself there

You know? Like in the gymnasium in the church

And when I saw him break I was like "Wooow!"

He was just, he just, there's like this energy around a person you know what I'm saying

There's an energy around people that, you know the stories, all the stories

There's a reason why they are being said, there was an energy around him

He was mad clean and mad smooth, it was just like he didn't have to do anything really incredible

Whatever he did, it looked sweet

Trac2 was like a little ladies man back then

You know Trac2 that, at one point they say he was the best

Jojo and them you know, used to be off the hook! For real!

They used to be like traveling!

They was like Gypsies in a way because they used to find out wherever they jamming at, go there

And whoever was dancing over there they would knock them off, for real!

Them boys were just so incredible, they were like stars coming out

These brothers would come out dressed, you know, not like bums like a Bboy was usually all bummy dressed

These guys would be dressed nice, they would come out and they were like stars!

"Yo, there goes Jojo, there goes Spy, there goes Jimmy D...there goes Trac2 right there..."

With his big old track name plate

Those are the brothers that made up the moves, all the moves you see nowadays, come from the root of those people

It was like '79, late '78

By then, you know, a lot of Black brothers weren't really dancing anymore

The Disco scene killed Break Dancing.

In the Disco scene the DJ couldn't throw in no beats, he had to keep that..

He had to keep that, so for him to throw in Apache would disrupt the dance floor and he'd get fired

You couldn't really ask a girl to dance and she'd be like "Yeah"

And then you'd be like...You know what I'm saying?! She ain't trying to feel that!

When I started doing my sh*t in '77, by time '79 came around

I had brothers looking at me like "Yo, why you doing that, that's played out!"

I used to hustle and I used to practice by myself

Because I didn't dare to cut in with the girls thinking that a girl might be like "Ooh, who's you?" you know?

So I used to just take to the floor and I took all of my aggression

If they didn't notice me for my hustling abilities, they were going to notice me for my Breaking abilties

Rock Steady Crew started in '77, a lot of it's members were like All Star Bboys

From the Bronx

The guys that started, Jimmy D and Jojo they hung out at 115 Park at the Bronx

We came up with the word Rock Steady, we started thinking, because we wanted to continue dancing

We wanted to keep it at a steady pace

You know when they started doing it, a lot of people called it "Rocking", "Going off"

And what they wanted to do, you know, they noticed that a lot of people were stopping around '76, '77

And you know, they wanted to keep it going on you know what I'm saying?

They wanted to keep the "Rock", "Steady"

And when they started getting too old, and it started dieing down with them, they passed it along to Legs

In '79 I moved to Manhattan. In 1979 a lot of Bboys were locked down

Doing stick ups, whatever, murders or went away to the job core

Or just got regular jobs

Retirement age for a Bboy back then was like 16, 17 years old

When I moved to Manhattan I used to always try to come back to the Bronx and go over to jams

Do whatever I can to get back on a weekend, stay on Crotona Ave.

Between the summer of '76 to '77, me and my friends, we had a crew called the Rock City Crew

And then like, around '79 the dance started fadeing out

I still kept on, but the only time I would go down is if I seen somebody else

And then my cousin TyFly, he introduced me to Ken Swift and his crew called the Young City Boys

My crew, were just like, mischievous, we used to do things like

Go and throw, there's a, down the alley there's a precinct right straight there

And we would throw eggs at the police and run

They was like, you know, 3-4 years younger than me or so, I looked like a big kid to them

But, you know I told them any time y'all have any battles coming up, you know

I'll take your side

I got down with Rock Steady when I battled Legs and then a lot of my crew got down with Rock Steady

And Mr. Freeze was part of Rock Steady in the Bronx already

The only white boy that I knew that was a Bboy, was Mr. Freeze

And he was the only White boy, the first White boy in the Bronx with juice

He could go to any Black, Puerto Rican neighborhood and walk through and say

"I'm Mr. Freeze, Rock Steady Crew" and they was like "Ooh, Yo, you cool man..."

Me and my cousin Lenny Len, we was traveling all over the place!

Battling people, and then just like start hanging out with them

When you hang out with those people they might know someone that might be breaking in another area

Like, alright cool let's go over there, I want to battle them

It's like the martial arts films where it's like..

I heard your style is good! But mine is better!

And you go there and you test their style, and that was my way of recruiting.

Our crew was called the Rock City Rockers man

From the 173rd St. area

We were battling, we would do it for fun because there were really nobody in our area that were..

really involved, until we met up with a guy called Crazy Legs

I was like "Ohh man, I want to adapt that style"

That's why my name is Little Crazy Legs

That's basically how I met everyone else that ended up being in Rock Steady

You know I met up with Frosty Freeze, he knew people that would take new people

Ken Swift, Mr. Wiggles, then you had my peeps from our Crotona

Toxic, A. One, we just had like 500 members of Rock Steady

Johnny J is my name

Frosty Freeze, please

Rip Ski, please

What happened?

Dualism

Crazy Legs

Lenny

Kenny

Robski

Mr. Freeze

Toprock Can't Be Stopped

One of the first times I met Rock Steady and we did something together

Henry Chalfant, legendary Graffiti photographer and documentarian

Got together with the Rock Steady Crew because so many Graffiti artists used to come in his studio

To look at his photos of the trains

He began to realize that a lot of these guys were also breakdancers

Hence, they were the Rock Steady Crew

Henry knew me, he knew a bunch of other heads

He said "Listen I wanted to have a, put together like a show"

They projected the slides up of the Graffiti

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