Charity Shoppin' #1: Break Dance - Electric Boogie

The West Street Mob are another one of these which have just vanished. It's pretty much only Grandmaster Flash off this album that's had any lasting significance, which is strange really; I guess these acts were just a snapshot of their time and place which seemed to sum a zeitgeist up. This couldn't be more true in the case of Break Dance/Electric Boogie. If you're under a certain age (I'm close), you could be forgiven for thinking breakdancing has always been a major deal, and in some ways it has. But until Jason Nevins' remix of Run DMC's It's Like That of just a few years ago, the scene had largely gone underground.

Now, of course, there's b-boy contests in student unions, and Westwood bigging it up large, or some such, and the dance has never been bigger. This track is pretty much the epitome, the anthem of what a good dancing tune was back in '83. It's got everything: a rapped intro, vocoded vocals, a sparse beat (a predecessor of today's heavily compressed loops) and self-referential lyrics. I guess (there's little to no information out there) that the piece was written in this vain, almost to summarise the sound (the clue's in the title, I suppose...), so, for your perusal: Break Dance 101, West Street Mob and the video for Run DMC's It's Like That.

West Street Mob - Break Dance - Electric Boogie
Grandmaster Flash/West Street Mob - Wheels Of Steel/Electric Boogie (from Hexstatic: Pick'n'Mix)



Buy West Street Mob/Grandmaster Flash/Hexstatic

Tags: hip hop; rap; break dance; B-Boy; West Street Mob; Grandmaster Flash; Hexstatic; Sugar Hill; Electric Boogie