Welcome to Plug ‘n Play

The term B-Boy actually stands for “Break Boy,” a member of NYC Breakers, the Rock Steady Crew, or any of several dance crews during the rise of hip-hop. Dancers derived moves from existing phenoms like Strutting, Popping, Locking, and of course James Brown. Break-dancing doesn’t refer to extreme athleticism and potential for injury -- originally, it meant dancing to the break, which the DJ created. According to Kool Herc, who also reportedly coined the terms B-Boy and B-Girl, "breaking" was also street slang for "getting excited" and "acting energetically." Wearing athletic tracksuits and blazing fashion trails, these dance teams brought the ancient together with the new, by forging tribal and robotic maneuvers into a groundbreakingly innovative form of dance. Even for hip-hop fans who couldn’t possibly breakdance, this pillar of hip-hop reminds the listener to engage in physicality, to feel the beat and express it within one’s own body. Dance represents the physical manifestation of sound.

Since song “breaks” (minimal drum’n’bass breakdowns in between verses) seemed to get the crowds jumping, DJs adopted the habit of playing the same song on both turntables and alternately re-cueing the instrumental breaks, to craft extended jams for crowds to enjoy and for dance teams to battle to. Kool Herc, a famous New York DJ who originated these parties, coined the term hip-hop. Grand Wizard Theodore is credited with inventing the scratch, and artists like Grandmaster Flash helped make scratching famous. Today, as mainstream hip-hop joins rock and country in becoming bland enough to stand around fanning itself with money, the refreshing and surprisingly complicated art of turntablism, performed on vinyl records, stays true as an art form unto itself.

While writing on walls is as old as walls, the student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans expressed in painted graffiti, poster art, and stencil art. Graffiti became the de facto way for youth in urban settings to express themselves visually. Graffiti also became associated with the anti-establishment punk rock movement beginning in the 1970s. Meanwhile, in the South Bronx and other neglected urban neighborhoods, as the genre of hip-hop arose, aerosol artists were battling out turf wars, tagging, and painting murals on the sides of buildings and subway train cars. In 1979, Lee Quinones and Fab 5 Freddy were booked in the world’s first graffiti-based art show, in Paris. Fab 5 Freddy and friends influenced the video for Blondie’s “Rapture,” the first-ever top-40 single with rapping in it, as well as art by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Graffiti’s rise to cultural prominence in America is archived in 1983’s PBS documentary Style Wars, and fictionalized in the classic 1983 movie Wild Style.