BREAKIN’

ISSUE 014

TONY D R.I.P.

KOOL KIM

TONY BUTTONS

LIVE ON SET!

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back to burnspeakerbussin’ up in the bronx...

BY T LA ROCK

The first time I heard any music similar to hip-hop music was

what’s now called break-beats. It was actually my father who

I first heard playing records with breaks on them – though he

wasn’t paying attention to the breaks! But the first time I heard

them in a hip-hop context was through Kool Herc (pictured),

who was from my area of the Bronx. This was in the early ‘70s,

in the community centre of an apartment building. I’d heard

breaks before that, but it was just called funk. But Kool Herc

had that system where you could really hear the pounding of

the drums along with the bass part of the record.

Kool Herc’s system didn’t consist of 10 or 20 speakers – he

just had huge speakers that packed a powerful punch. He also

used to drive around with a speaker sticking out the trunk of

his car. Back then you didn’t have built-in car sound-systems, so

all around the Bronx you had people driving around, blasting

the music from speakers placed in the trunk of their cars. The

other thing we did – and this was before we’d go out to the

parks to play – was I’d put out two big speakers in front of my

building, a two-family house, and play music that way.

A friend of mine at that time was a b-boy named Vincent

Thompson – he didn’t have a colourful name! – who was a

break-dancer; and also a deejay named Harold Jackson aka

DJ Skeeter: these were people who were playing music in the

neighbourhood. There was also one very well known b-boy

called Sah-Sah who definitely had the biggest local reputation

out of everyone.

I also studied kung-fu at an early age, just like DJ Breakout,

the deejay from the Funky Four [Plus One]. He was a friend of

mine – I believe he lived in Edenmoore projects. We’d hang out,

practice, spar together, and he, like Kool Herc, had speakers

that were so powerful he named them Sasquatch!

Other deejays from that era who never get mentioned are

Prince and Blackjack – who, by the way, was the first ever person

that Kool Herc let on his system outside of his immediate crew.

Blackjack played a lot of break records. There was also a hip-

hop duo named DJ Pee-Wee and DJ Punch who were relevant

at that time. These were all deejays from the Bronx, all from

the section where hip-hop started.

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Tony D R.I.P.

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Recalling the Career of the trenton icon…

By John W McKelvey

On April 4th 2009, word that Anthony Depula had passed

away started to spread across the internet and make roads

throughout the hip-hop community. It looked like a hoax at

first – for reasons we’ll come to later – but finally an article on

NJ.com confirmed the tragic news.

Depula started out as one half of the Partners In Rhyme, as

Grand Poobah Tony D, releasing a two-song 12-inch record with

Cool Gino G in 1987: ‘It’s My Day’ b/w ‘I’m Terrifyin’’ on Body

Rock Records, a division of Tommy Boy. It’s a fun ‘random rap’-

sounding little record, produced by Vandy C, and with a distinct

LL Cool J influence. Later, Tony dropped the Grand Poobah

part from his name, in deference to the Masters Of Ceremony’s

Grand Puba Maxwell.

But while the Partners never made another record, Tony

found his true calling behind the boards. His first production

came out later that same year, YZ & G-Rock’s ‘I Am Who I

Am’, a move which led to the formation of his company, Two

Tone Productions, which produced albums and singles for YZ,

Poor Righteous Teachers, King Sun, Too Kool Posse, Kaaos,

MC Sergio and others. He also co-hosted a Princeton-based

radio show called Raw Deal where he’d debut the artists he

was working with. Tony had crafted a sound that was at once

varied and yet instantly recognizable. When asked by Fat Lace

to describe what he contributed to the game in an interview

shortly before his death, he said, “I think I pioneered the use

of the vocal samples in hip-hop. Think of the Average White

Band for ‘Thinking Of A Masterplan’ and the James Brown one

for ‘In Control Of Things’. No one was really using samples or

loops that had a voice in it until I did that.”

His success as a producer created a demand for his first

mostly instrumental album, released in 1989, entitled ‘Music

Makes You Move’ – that’s ‘mostly’ because it features a cut

by the Too Kool Posse and a sick duet with YZ called ‘Get Off

The Rhythm’, where the two of them rhyme over their hit ‘In

Control Of Things’, going hard at other artists who’d since

jacked the sample: “Who in the hell do you think you are?

A star like me? No, you’re not; so stop. Big Daddy Kane stole it,

Lakim Shabazz stole it, GangStarr stole the whole ‘In Control’

rhythm. Who’s next to do it? I’ma dis who in the hell ever steps;

I’ll break ya neck!”

Ironically, this same album led to one of the most famous beat-

jackings in hip-hop history. In 1991, fellow New Jersey natives

The New Style took the set’s first song, ‘Adam’s Nightmare’,

and used it for their hit debut as Naughty By Nature, ‘OPP’. And

they didn’t just use the same Jackson 5 sample (‘ABC’) that

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TONY D’S SOUNDWAS VARIED YET INSTANTLYRECOGNISABLE

Tony D had discovered; they also laid it over the exact same

‘Substitution’ break; and they took two separate segments

of the J5 song and pieced them together in the same way. It

makes you wonder about Kay Gee’s claim to the Source in ‘92

that they’d never heard ‘Music...’ before crafting ‘OPP’...

But it didn’t slow Tony down – he stayed busy getting genuine

rap classics under his belt. And besides producing, he kept

rhyming, first contributing a killer song to Jazzy Jay’s ‘Cold

Chillin’ In The Studio’ set, ‘Back To The Lab’ (plus producing a

slick number by Ice Cream Tee on there), and then grabbing a

record deal with 4th & Broadway as an emcee and releasing

the album ‘Droppin’ Funky Verses’ with DJ Troy Wonder.

Tony’s beats, of course, were impeccable, but as an emcee the

results were more varied. He had a hard delivery and a cool

voice, his flows were varied and creative, and when he was

on point Tony D was an emcee to be reckoned with; but he

had a serious penchant for some very corny lyrics: “Suckers

be sayin’, ‘Tone, you ain’t nothin’’/But I got more flavor than

Stove Top stuffin’/Nuts! My favorite past time/Forget the last

line ‘cos you can’t gas mine/

Like Sunoco, you go bum

loco/Visit Acapulco with your

girlfriend Yoko… Ono!” The

rhyme scheme’s nice, and

there’s a genuine freestyle

feel – but you weren’t going

to intimidate anyone in your

neighborhood by blasting

those words out of your jeep.

And it was probably that

corniness that kept him from really blowing up as a rapper.

Still, he had two reasonably successful singles off that album:

‘EFFECT’ followed by ‘Check The Elevation’ – and you would

have been hard pressed to miss the videos on Yo! MTV Raps

in those days. (Tony D even has two cards in the Yo! MTV Raps

trading cards deck.)

And it’s here we should pause to touch on his beef with 3rd

Bass, and MC Serch in particular. Here, because he takes

shots at them throughout the album, calling Serch “devil”

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repeatedly and making puns off their song titles. There’s

debate over what exactly drew or maintained Tony’s ire, but it

likely stemmed from the fact that in Serch’s pre-3rd Bass days

he had a deejay who also went by the name of Tony D. On his

blog, Serch said, “I met Tony [Depula] back in the day with

that brother Wise Intelligence and Poor Righteous Teachers,

and he tried to play me. He even put out a record called ‘Don’t

Fall For The Gas Line’...” And he came even harder at Serch on

the antagonistically titled ‘Shoe Polish’, saying, “I stepped to

CBS, they was wit’ it/They said you got another white rapper? I

said ‘Quit it!/I’m not gonna give you suckers what you want/A

replacement for the group that you love to flaunt/Outspoken

drug users drinkin’ beer on stage?’/Now they got you, another

beast in the cage.”

But despite his beefs and his hardcore delivery, Tony was a

conscious lyricist. His content was never gangsta, most of

his verses were freestyle wordplay, and he devoted songs

to issues like police brutality and stopping racism; plus he’s

probably the only rapper to take a stance against product

testing on animals.

4th & Broadway never asked Tony for a follow-up album, but

he stayed busy producing. In 1992 he formed the Crusaders For

Real Hip-Hop and signed with Profile. Two Tone Productions

took full production credit for the album, but he used an alias

to mask his role as lead emcee, switching up to Don Nots. (The

other members were Mr Law and a reggae chanter named

Rahzil Hi-Power, formerly of Blvd Mosse, another group Tony

produced.) Their lead single, ‘That’s How It Is’, got a lot of

play, and it was followed up by a more underground 12-inch

featuring remixes and the exclusive B-side ‘La Cosa Nostra’.

Still, the Crusaders never really caught on with the mainstream,

and the style of the Five Percenter acts he was producing

were going out of vogue – so Tony D went underground. After

producing Wise Intelligent’s first solo effort and a track for

Kwest Tha Madd Lad, it was the independent release of his

next instrumental album on Contract Records that took him to

the next level. Mark Rae credits that record with inspiring his

label, Grand Central Records – and after forming it he signed

Tony, who released a series of instrumental albums and singles

throughout the rest of the ‘90s and into 2001.

After remix work for The Outsidaz’s ‘Who You Be’ though,

production work quietened down, and Tony D became an

online presence, selling beats on forums like The Vinyl Exchange

and UGHH, plus touting records from his collection on eBay.

(The rap nerd in me is damn proud to have feedback from him

declaring Werner “knows a great record!”) But after forming

the Cha-Ching label to drop PRT’s ‘Rare And Unreleased’ set,

Tony D started selling mix-CDs, and then MP3s of rare ‘random

rap’ – allegedly without compensating the artists – a move

which led to his bootleg ‘The Philly Throwback’ vinyl series.

Unfortunately, the shady rumours don’t stop there: nefarious

chatter abounds about emailing collectors and taking offers

on rare records he didn’t have, and his eBay account was

eventually shut down. (‘Buyer beware’ stories are but a

Google search away from those who claim to have got stuck

for hundreds of dollars – and received conflicting excuses,

including claims that his wife had left him.)

But according to a touching piece in The Trentonian, they were

still together, his wife cooking dinner for them when he got a

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phone call and left his home on the evening of April 4th. On

his way back, he “lost control of his 2002 Suzuki XL wagon

about 6.20 pm and struck the fence of the St John’s Cemetery

on Bunting Avenue near Lalor Street.” He was pronounced

dead on arrival at the Capital Health’s Fuld Campus hospital in

Trenton – a sudden and shocking end to a great artist. He left

behind a wife and two young daughters, Sophia and Olivia,

and the people who knew him personally all describe him as a

sweet, friendly man with a genuine passion for the music.

Tony D leaves us with a large body of great work – much of it

rare and yet to be properly discovered or appreciated. Beyond

that, he apparently had a ton of unreleased music – both his

own and by the artists he produced. On his MySpace page,

he was offering CDs of unreleased Crusaders For Real Hip-Hop

songs “circa 1993”. He had leaked a few tracks already, like

‘Dummy Move’, a track with him, YZ (pictured) and B-Fyne

dissing PRT, and was talking to labels about putting out more.

I hope his wife or the artists he’s worked with can still get this

out, because I for one would love to hear it. Tony D – a man

who recorded more gems than we’ll probably ever know.

THE CONTINUED SEARCHFOR THE FUNKIEST GORGON...

By James McNally

[Last month Ancient Britain went on the trail of Tony Buttons’s

elusive 1994 classic ‘Funky Bumpkin’. After a little bit of

investigation we tracked him down...]

“My name’s Dappa-Dred now or Dap-D. But back when I did

the ‘Funky Bumpkin’ record I did it under the name of Margah

Man Tony Buttons.

“The older generation called me Buttons after my father, who

was off the scene for a while, so the right thing to do was to

fly the flag in his name. And I’ve always been a skinny dude

[Margah is Jamaican for ‘Skinny’] and due to my mother, who

MCNALLY’SANCIENT BRITAIN

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THE CHEF’S BACK IN THE HOUSE!

HHC DIGITAL #002OUT MAY 12THwww.hhcdigital.net

PYBT [Prince’s Youth Business Trust] money, and some o’ my

money and cut a vinyl: my first one.

“I’m still to this day not content with the recording [of ‘Funky

Bumpkin’]; it makes me sound child-like. I bus’ a lot better

in reality than on that record, but it was good to have had

8

is called Margaretta, a clothes designer, I formed the first part

of the name that I made that record under. The label itself was

called Marga records.

“I started rapping when I was ‘bout ten, eleven-years-old

maybe. I chat, I rap, I do alladat – it’s the year 2009 an’ I refuse

to come wack! My father’s side of the family resides up these

sides [London], but my mother’s side reside in the south-west,

and when I was 13 I used to roll wit’ these deejays who’d tour

around the Midlands. They weren’t my age group, but when

my mans and them mans linked up, suttin’ dope was always

set to happen. I remember one time when four of us – me and

my friend Marv, GI Joe and Gary – hijacked one dance in Oxford

and I rapped to 50,000 people over some Ragga Twins joint!

“But, you know how it is, I didn’t want to be here five years

later and say ‘I’m an emcee’ without suttin’ real to back that

statement up wit’. The older generation, especially black

people, make dudes feel like they got no ambition. Maybe I’m

just a dreamer, so I put together a little business plan, ‘cos ‘tings

have to be legit, that’s key. Put together some bank money,

I REMEMBER HIJACKING A DANCE AND RAPPING OVER A RAGGA TWINS

JOINT!the experience of writin’, producin’, recordin’, releasin’ and

performin’ that project. I would have liked to have made a

video for that shit: imagine a group of nikkas with Wellington

boots in the rain in a forest or meadow, you know, just going

crazy, some dirty south lick. But it just didn’t get to that point.

You think that’s it? Nah, Westwood got untold amount

o’dubs that I did after being managed for a brief spell by this

American dude called Rocky Hill. I even rinsed at BBC wit’

Westwood at the controls.

“Since then, I was on loud.com [in Steve Rifkind’s online emcee

competition]. I brought my mic to the table and I represented!

I did that due to being in a court dispute pertaining to a record

I cut in 2005 called ‘Nuff-a-Dese’/’Real-Toppa’. To cut a long

story short my professional integrity was in question and had

yet to be resolved at that point, which meant that recording

was put on pause.

“The Loud competition? Obviously people wanna get brave

when they see you down; maybe I had retired or some shit.

I just had to do it. This nigga stood up and guess what? This

nigga still standin’. I shot everyt’ing that moved. You’ll be

hearing more from me soon, a lot more; and trus’ me they

ain’t heard shit yet.”

(Check out www.myspace.com/dappa-dred and

www.hitmanrekordz.webs.com for more on Dappa-Dred.)

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5. KOOL KIM

AFFILIATIONS: Kim and Hass G began as the UMCs

(The Universal MCs), a duo from Staten Island. Their Wild

Pitch debut was co-produced by RNS, who would later work

on projects for Shyheim and GP-Wu. Hass went on to produce

‘Apollo Kids’ for Ghostface and ‘Magic Stick’ for 50 Cent.

CLAIM TO FAME: Gave us the hit single ‘Blue Cheese’ and

the under-appreciated ‘Fruits Ov Nature’ album, plus a UMCs

poster was a regular fixture on the lounge room wall on Martin

Lawrence’s character on his popular ‘90s sitcom, Martin.

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THE ‘90SFILESBy Robbie Ettelson Photography by Kristina Hill

“Now I’ma telI you a funny story about Shyheim and them GP-

Wu cats. I used to live on Cedar Street, which is adjacent to

Broad Street, which is where most of them cats is from. They

walked by, and they knew I was living there so they’d try to

tease at us, on some ol’, ‘Wooooo-Tang!’ You know, try to start

some shit. They think I would not come out! It’s so funny, man,

I was watchin’ this interview that G-Dep or one of those dudes

was givin’, and he used to box, so he was like, ‘Yo, I like when

cats try and came at me thinkin’ that I’m just some rappin’

dude, and y’all be all loose – ya arms be all loose, ya neck be all

loose – riffin’ with me like I’m a herb. But of course you don’t

know I box – I’ll knock your ass out!’

“And that shit is so true, ‘cos as a rapper it’s the same thing.

Dude’s be swearin’ I’ma say some ‘Blue Cheese’ shit, man! They

be swearin’ that’s what’s gonna come out my mouth! And I’m

like, ‘Aight!’

“I remember one time I came outside, yo – me, my cousin who

was called C-Strangles, and his dude Prezzie – who was his

rhyming partner at the time – we came outside... Man, I like

ENTER THE WU:

“We used to all work at the Statue Of Liberty – it was me,

U-God, Method Man, Deck and Hass – and that’s where I met

Hass. Me and Meth used to go to public school together, back

when he was just Clifford Smith and I was just Kim Sharpton.

Me and him used to play trumpet together – he modeled his

trumpeting style on Clifford Smith, the trumpeter, ‘cos our

band teacher used to say he reminded him of him – which was

pure bullshit. When I heard the real Clifford Smith I was like,

‘Get the fuck outta here!’

“Son used to enjoy Clifford The Big Red Dog books… I’ma

show you how well I know this cat. But son was in Stapleton

– I wasn’t no hood dude like that, so I wasn’t gonna rock with

him in Stapleton. And I knew Rakeem [RZA] from back when

he used to rock with this dude Forest, who calls himself Ishem

now. Rakeem and Forest, they used to have they thing, ‘cos

Rakeem ain’t no emcee. He wack! He a wack rapper, kid. But

Cappadonna, who used to be called Original God at the time,

he was ridiculous. Back then, Cappadonna was the Slick Rick

of Staten Island.

UMCS ‘SWING IT TO THE AREA’

The way the track shifts gears mid-way through from breezy

to hardcore is priceless.

UMCS ‘SOME SPEAK ILL THOUGHTS’

The highlight of their troubled second album – with a beat

that’s crack-rock catchy.

NYOIL ‘WHAT UP MY WIGGER, WIGGER’

A sobering lesson in race relations set to an immense break.

NYOIL ‘SHOUT IT IN THE STREETS’

A superb showcase of how sharp his vocal technique has

remained after all this time.

CURRENT STATUS: Evolved into the rap superhero known as

NYOIL to eliminate sell-outs and weak rappers. His excellent

‘Hood Treason’ was recently re-issued as a double CD by the

folks at Babygrande.

FIVE ESSENTIAL KOOL KIM TRACKS:

UMCS ‘ONE TO GROW ON’

Silenced the critics who mistook them

for a happy rap novelty act. The 12-inch

version is essential.

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to eat a whole chuck outta all three of they asses! They got

rocked so bad, that after that motherfuckers was comin’ by

just givin’ me love, yo. They got demo’d – all of ‘em! Shyheim

is my son, B. He can’t front on me! I remember when he was

literally knee-high to me! It’s like, ‘Come on, stop playin’, pa.

You wanna come and battle me? And you ain’t even got no

lyrics other than what…’ Come on, man.

“In New York there’s great love and appreciation for the Asian

culture because we grew up watching kung-fu movies all day!

The Master Killer, The Five Deadly Venoms – this is all shit we

grew up watching. So everybody was on it like that, but they

[Wu-Tang] was calling theyself, ‘Yo, it’s that Wu-Tang slang.’

So we was like, cool, them brothers is comin’, so we’d say stuff

like, ‘I flip my style and start to flow Tang Wu,’ out of respect,

and in our minds they was comin’ soon so we was gonna pave

the way for them, and when they got on, they would holler

back. Except… Well, that wasn’t the case. Power corrupts and

absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that’s pretty much

the long and the short of it. It was real unfortunate, ‘cos we

thought it was gonna go that way.”

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BIG CHEESE AND FRUIT BASKETS:

“[The first UMCs single] ‘Invaders Of My Fruit Basket’ came out

the same time as De La Soul came out, and Red [Alert] would

not play the song, ‘cos he didn’t want us to be competition

with them. He held us back. A lotta people don’t know that. We

weren’t on some Daisy Age shit – we weren’t abstract. We just

made some weird titles so people got confused. Like ‘Fruits

Ov Nature’ – everybody thought that was some fruity shit,

right? But the ‘Ov’ was meant to be spelt ‘Uv’ so that it spelled

out F-U-N! We was on some 5 Percenter shit right before then,

which is what it correlates to as well. Fruit Of Islam will fuck

you up!

“I’ll tell you why the ‘Blue Cheese’ video was one of the worst

videos in hip-hop ever – because it was so campy and cheesy,

and they did it so cheap. The budget that they had for it was

not the budget that we thought. I made the concept of the

video – however, it was supposed to be this phantasmagorical,

visual cornucopia of eye-candy that was supposed to blow the

minds of the hip-hop world away! It was supposed to be the

equivalent of how a Michael Jackson video is like, ‘Pow!’

“There was cereal back in the day called Oh’s and a puppet

would come out of the cereal and be like [singing], ‘Oh’s cereal!’

That was the same puppet! They just put a gold tooth on the

mouth! I was sitting there thinking, ‘These wack bastards…’

UNLEASHED:

“Admittedly, the [follow up] ‘Unleashed’ album was not as

honest as the first album. I say that because I honestly would’ve

liked to have done a different album. But at the time it was

sincerely the album we could deliver – that was the UMCs in

that situation. Two years after the first album, I’d done lost

my house, my grandmother done passed, my mother been at

war, my brother moved away, I had a child and another on the

way. I never drank or smoked, but now that I’ve been under so

much duress because my record label won’t pay me – now I’m

drinking and smoking and buggin’ out. Now you’re this totally

different dude, and you’re going into the studio after two years

of experience: you’ve been around the world, you’ve done

slept with groupies, you’ve done been disappointed seeing

how much sharks this industry is, motherfuckers disrespected

you, got jumped, beat, fought, win, loss...

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“So now you’re in the studio making this album, that had

nothing to do with the kid you was when you was 19 and at

home with no responsibilities.

“The last things your fans heard was, ‘We are the kids from

Never, Never Land!’ The next they know, they hear you talkin’

about, ‘Ay yo, I be the rough, rugged!’ ‘Oh, these niggas are full’a

shit! They tryin’ to act hard!’ Do you know how many people,

right now, walk around with the stigmata of, ‘I got fucked-up

by them UMCs dudes!’ Because of that very statement. It’s

awful, B! You know who told me about this years ago? It was

De La Soul! They going outta town and cats be like, ‘Oh, De La

is soft!’ Then they see the dudes is towering infernos and they

gotta think twice!”

DON’T WANNA MAKE A PITCH THAT’S WILD:

“We got deaded from Wild Pitch because Stu Fine got beat-up.

At the time, Stu was making us do ten songs a week, and we

weren’t getting paid anything. Our apartment only had two

windows, and both of them were facing each other – that was

the most depressing place you could imagine being in. We’re

“Now the shit that was so hurtful was that me and Hass

would’ve did anything for Stu. I mean, honestly, we were like

two pit-fighters – no one did a better show than UMCs! You got

on the bill with us, you were getting rocked! KRS-One? Rocked

by us! Naughty? Rocked by us! Black Sheep, Main Source, Greg

Nice? Rocked by us! And you know what this cock-sucker did?

He brought a cake to the studio session! Knowing that we were

literally hungry at that very moment – hungry like we hadn’t

eaten in a couple of days because we didn’t have no money!

living in squalor, we’re very frustrated and angry – things aren’t

going well. So we got into the studio, it’s Hass’s birthday, and

we’re begging Stu to give our publishing back so we could get

a publishing deal and get a couple of hundred thousand dollars

and get it together.

Hass kicked the cake over, and our team took a ride with that

cat on the elevator when they seen that. There wasn’t any

words traded between us and them – I seen the look on them

cats’ face, and I knew what was gonna happen. When he got

on that elevator, you could just hear the sounds of the tussle

and him just screaming. It was some rough brothers that was

in there with that dude – he had to be hospitalised. It was an

awful thing, man. I really regret that. And then after that we

got black-listed and nobody would fuck with us, so we had to

lay low for a while.

“To be honest, I’ve never made a dime from selling records. If I

had started working in McDonalds – part time – from the time

I signed with Wild Pitch until the time that it was truly over, I

would have made way more money than I did. When I got my

first number one plaque I had to hop the train. A number one

plaque from Billboard, and I had to hop the train to get home!

Unbelievable. We sold over 250,000 records, easy. We’ll never

know how many we really sold... One time I got a letter from

the IRS, said we owed them a million dollars. I was like, ‘Word?

For what?’”

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Boy did George Orwell get it wrong with Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Sure, his 1949 tome kicked some prescient predictions about

surveillance society and the erosion of the individual, but across

the globe b-boys hardly suffered the novel’s eponymous year

as mental slaves in a dire dystopia. Nope, they were too busy

freaking the wildly expressionistic dance moves birthed by a

futuristic culture called hip-hop – and if ol’ Big Brother was

watching over them, he did so slack-jawed at their funky fresh

manoeuvres.

Actually, Big Bro was probably busy peeping the flick that

helped cover the world in lino. Made on a shoestring, Breakin’

transplanted the culture clash musical melodrama of West

Side Story to the Cali streets, where promising jazz hoofer

Kelly (Lucinda Dickey) befriends street dancers Turbo (Michael

‘Boogaloo Shrimp’ Chambers) and Ozone (Alfonso ‘Shabba-

Doo’ Quinones). So popular was Joel Silberg’s movie that

no sooner had TKO triumphed over both rival dance crew

Electrorock and the stuffy dance establishment than Breakin 2:

Electric Boogaloo hit cinemas. Here Shabba-Doo reflects back

on his part in the movement...

25 YEARS AGO, THE BREAKIN’ MOVIES

MADE THEIR MARK ON POP CULTURE.

SHABBA-DOO TAKES US BACK TO THE

DAYS WHEN TURBO AND OZONE HAD THE

GAME ON LOCK... By Richard Watson

MOVER AND BREAKER

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Where were you career-wise when Breakin’ came along?

“I’d already had a pretty significant career. I started out circa

1971, ‘72 as one of the original Soul Train gang before becoming

one of the founding members of The Original Lockers, who

were headed and managed by Toni Basil. We did countless

television shows and tours with the likes of Frank Sinatra,

Dean Martin and Bill Cosby. If you went to Las Vegas you

wouldn’t see us dancing on a street corner – we were in the

main showroom, on the marquee level. The group disbanded

around 1977, right after we did The Dick Van Dyke Show, and I

went on to headline with Bette Midler on her Divine Madness

tour on Broadway. I brought this brand of street dancing to

that show, garnered a lot of publicity, and was eventually

given my own series, called The Big Show, on NBC.”

What was the format of the show?

“I was responsible for putting together huge production

numbers and creating what is now known as ‘musical street

theatre’. I discovered and hired a number of different dancers

including Boogaloo Shrimp, Pop N’ Taco and Poppin’ Pete. So

I had all that under my belt when New World pictures gave me

a contract to star in a film called Body Rock. This was during

the whole breakdance gold-rush when everybody wanted to

make a breakdance movie.

“But then they told me that they were taking me off the

picture because they wanted a guy that girls would like. So

they hired Lorenzo Lamas and I went off and choreographed

a music video that garnered a lot of press – ‘All Night Long’ by

Lionel Richie. I toured with Lionel and put together the other

street dancers that toured with him, namely Boogaloo Shrimp

and Pop N’ Taco.”

So Breakin’ came along next, right?

“Right. I’m unemployed when I get a phone call from Cannon

Films saying they want me to choreograph a movie called

Breakin’. I showed up there in full Shabba-Doo regalia, you

know: the ear-ring, the red hat, the long coat – I came as is.

“I’m sitting there meeting with [exec producer] Menahem

Golan regarding the choreography, and he said, ‘Are you an

actor? Can you act?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m from Chicago.’ I don’t

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know what that really meant, but he was like, ‘Okay, Shabba

Doo from Chicago, why don’t you go and audition for [Pamela]

Basker and [Fern] Champion, the casting agents for the film,

and tell me what they think.’ So I did and during that audition I

said that one famous line: ‘I’m Ozone, street dancer,’ and was

given the part. I had to play an 18-year-old and at the time I

was about 30.”

Did you bring Boogaloo Shrimp on board?

“Shrimp, Pop N’ Taco, Ana ‘Lollipop’ Sanchez, Poppin’ Pete

and all of the main street dancers in the film aside from Lucinda

Dickey were recommended by me. They were all part of my

dance crew in some way.”

Director Joel Silberg and the producers weren’t from hip-hop

backgrounds. Were you constantly being consulted on how

scenes should be played?

“Absolutely, from day one. From my meetings with Joel Silberg

I knew that he wanted to create a film that really felt real from

a dancer’s perspective and I think the first conversation we

had, he wanted to know why we do what we do. I thought that

was a really important question – most people just wanted us

to do it and they pretty much didn’t care how it came about or

what the feeling was or any of that stuff. To be honest, I was

a kind of walking, on-set street dance aficionado and historian

in residence, so I did lend them that expertise, yes.”

Presumably you and Boogaloo Shrimp already had your

chemistry down pat...

“Oh yeah, absolutely. That relationship was not created on set;

we brought that to the table. At the time, I was Shrimp’s legal

guardian. His parents signed a document allowing him to tour

with me. Right from day one, Shrimp and I had a chemistry

reminiscent of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. If you look at the

film you’ll see that Shrimp takes on the Jerry Lewis persona

and I became more of the Dean Martin character, the straight

guy. That was in terms of on camera.

THE ORIGINAL LOCKERSWERE HEADED AND MANAGED BY

TONI BASIL!

“Now, we know in retrospect that Jerry Lewis was really the

genius behind the two of those guys, but unlike them, I was

really the guy who kind of masterminded things behind the

scenes. Shrimp didn’t have that knowledge; he was only about

15-years-old at the time.”

What do you remember about filming the dance showdowns

in the Radiotron?

“I fractured my rib filming the first dance scene and it was

towards the beginning of the shooting schedule so I didn’t

ever mention it. I wrapped up my wrist for the whole movie

and people just thought it was part of the costume, but I was

dancing really with one arm. I couldn’t really roll my wrist, and

to this day, because it didn’t heal properly, it will hurt at certain

times. But, yeah, they were difficult to do, with the on-set fog

that they made with oil or whatever.”

In his big screen debut, Ice-T gives a glimpse of the charisma

he’d build a career on. What are your memories of him?

“I was very good friends with Ice-T, and he always exuded that

sort of star power and personality. I was having a conversation

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not so long ago with the writer of the original Breakin’, and he

brought up something that I wasn’t really aware of. He said,

‘Before you were really finalised as Ozone, we had approached

Ice-T ’cos he had the same kind of leadership qualities that

we thought the character needed to possess.’ He said that

Ice-T told him, ‘Hey, you know the better one to have for

that role would be Shabba-Doo because he is that guy. To all

of us Shabba-Doo is the leader, so he is Ozone.’ I was kind of

surprised but not that much, because Ice-T’s the kind of guy

who’s gonna do what he thinks is right for the movement.”

One of the movie’s highlights is the scene where, ordered by

Ozone to sweep the street, Turbo dances with the broom...

“There’s been a lot of talk about how that scene came about,

but I’ll tell you in all honesty: that scene right there was due

to the genius of Hymie Rogers, one of the original members

of the West Side Story Broadway cast and a choreographer on

our film.

“This idea didn’t meet well with Shrimp. I remember very clearly

that he did not want to do it. If you watch closely while he’s

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dancing with the broom, at some point he unceremoniously

throws it to the ground. Now I tell you, editing saved him, but

the reason he threw it down was because he was frustrated

with it. He was uncomfortable; he just wanted to dance with

the thing.

“He didn’t want to do any of the moves that became the

trademark stuff. It wasn’t his idea to put the metal plate in the

broom bristles. The way the camera was positioned mid-thigh,

you couldn’t see his foot, so he gestured as if he was magically

making the broom rise up, but it was fitted with this metal

piece for him to step on. Then it looked like he was magically

controlling the broom when it was being moved with a fishing

line – of course everybody could see it, but that kind of added

to the charm!

“You have to credit to Michael Chambers for brilliantly doing

it, but it was Hymie Rogers who instigated those ideas.”

While Breakin’ was filming, Beat Street was being made in

New York. Was there any rivalry between the productions?

“There was a sense of rivalry that existed between the

production companies, but that didn’t really exist between

us, the dancers in the films. Even though our film was called

Breakin’, we weren’t really breakers in that real sense.

Breaking is a really specific form of dance. For instance, let’s

look at martial arts being the kind of umbrella term for all

forms of Asian-influenced combat. Hip-hop dance or street

dance would be that umbrella term, and then under that let’s

say locking would be karate, popping would be kung-fu, and

breaking would be ju-jitsu, more ground oriented. So any

rivalry was between the production companies vying for the

same consumer dollar.”

Were you surprised at all by the movie’s success?

“I personally took on the attitude like, ‘See, I told you so.’ You

gotta understand, I had been with The Lockers on Soul Train

and we were a famous group so I had already been around

town beating that drum before Hollywood decided to make

the movie. So when Breakin’ became a success, I just kind of

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yawned my way through it because, you know, I already knew

what was up.”

After the summer success of Breakin’, the sequel was in

cinemas by Christmas that year. How did production compare

to the first movie?

“It was the same sort of market-sensitive attitude towards

the release of the second film; more so, in fact. It was kind of

like, ‘Let’s get all we can and not really care anything about

quality or any of that stuff. It had a larger cast and many more

dance numbers but we produced the second film for the same

amount of money.”

From the start, the sequel felt much more flamboyant, more

like a straight musical...

“It did, it did. I think creatively it took the wrong sort of turn.

Rather than get more expansive in terms of the larger musical

numbers and all that stuff, I think it probably would have been

best served if they had gone more inside and said, ‘Let’s go into

the characters, dig deeper into the motivations and have some

of that stuff become a little bit more real and more raw.’

“In a lot of ways, Breakin’ kind of scratched the surface of

being almost a reality movie. Reality TV is so popular these

days and Breakin’ kind of scratched the surface of that. Aside

from the cast having different names we were pretty much

playing ourselves. There was no character development there.

I mean, Ozone is Shabba-Doo and Turbo is Boogaloo Shrimp

and Special K is Lucinda.”

The scene in which you teach Turbo how to woo a girl with

the help of a doll is funny but also genuinely bizarre...

“That was kind of new but we also knew there was this comedic

chemistry between us. Now get this: that wasn’t written. In the

ICE-T WAS ORIGINALLY APPROACHED TO PLAY THE CHARACTER

OF OZONE

script, I think it was a line: ‘Ozone shows Turbo how to get it

on with a girl,’ then the next line was, ‘Ozone and Turbo dance

with a doll.’ That was it. There was no lines, no direction, and so

literally, on the set, Shrimp and I improvised that whole thing,

like, ‘Hey, just look in her eyes and do what I do and just smile.’

We knew what we were doing. We played up the whole Dean

Martin, Jerry Lewis aspect of our characters’ relationship.”

You co-choreographed Three 6 Mafia’s performance at the

2006 Oscars. Having starred in one of hip-hop’s earliest flicks,

was it a thrill to help put the culture centre stage at the

Academy Awards?

“I remember Three 6 Mafia showing up to rehearsals with

their entourage. They come in ten deep, okay, with the Gucci

sunglasses and watches with faces the size of trashcan lids.

They walk into the room and of course everybody was like,

‘Ooh, Three 6 Mafia!’

“The one guy turns around and he looks at me and his jaw

drops. All of this big, gangsta, dangerous-looking crew started

acting like they were all ten-years-old, saying how if it wasn’t

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for me they wouldn’t have what they’re enjoying today. The

whole of the room was just stood there with their mouths

gaping open.”

Was that a typical reaction? Presumably the success of the

movies changed your day-to-day life...

“I had fame going in, but what the Breakin’ films did was elevate

me to a mythological state of being. I could go anywhere. To

this very day, people see me and they cry. When I conduct my

House Of Shway workshops around the world, kids actually

line up and they fall into my arms and they cry. I’ve kind of

taken on almost this sort of Ghandi, Dalai Lama persona within

this movement. People wanna go back to when hip-hop felt

good. Hip-hop entered a very dark episode in its life with the

Biggie Smalls and 2Pac killings and the shootings and the

negativity associated with that world. But even now, in the

Obama era, people want to go back to feeling good and they

want hip-hop to be what it always was meant to be – bringing

people together in harmony.”

(For more on Shabba-Doo hit up www.shabba-doo.com and

www.myspace.com/onqmedia)

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