Cassie Traun

Melisa Riviére

Anth 3980

Hip-Hop Pioneer Paper

2/23/08

            The Last B-Boy Standing

            As a young ten year old living in the Bronx, Crazy Legs, who acquired his name from a girl in junior high who saw him dancing and exclaimed, “Ohh, he got some crazy legs!,”^[1] got his first taste of hip-hop and b-boying when his cousin, Lenny Len, took him to his first jam on Crotana Avenue and 180th Street in 1977.^[2] “Ah, I was just blown away. […] I just immediately became a part of it,” Crazy Legs remembered.^[3]

            Crazy Legs, born Richard Colón on January 1, 1966, became the individual to revive the art of b-boying, not once, but twice as the leader of the Rock Steady Crew. Crazy Legs began dancing with Lenny Len, his cousin, and they both joined Rock Steady in 1979, two years after the formation of the group in the Bronx by Jimmy D, JoJo, and JoJo’s brother, Easy Mike, in 1977.^[4] At that time, Crazy Legs was living in Manhattan^[5], most likely because, as he has noted, his family moved around a lot due to being on welfare and getting evicted frequently.^[6] Crazy Legs started going out to the Bronx on a regular basis to hang out with Rock Steady, but doing so became much too expensive, so he stopped going to the Bronx and lost touch with the b-boys from that area. Wanting to start a Rock Steady Crew chapter in Manhattan, Crazy Legs went looking for Jimmy D in the Bronx, but was unable to find him to get permission to use the Rock Steady name; he then joined a b-boy group in Manhattan called Rockwell Association, which was a competitor to Rock Steady Crew.^[7] Crazy Legs fostered a large following in Rockwell, and finally found Jimmy D in 1981, when Rock Steady Crew officially became Crazy Legs’ group. He recounts the passing of the torch in Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop:

            Jimmy Dee had seen that I had so many people down and I kept it going and a lot of the other b-boys weren’t still as active. It was a humble stance he took. He reduced his own rank and gave me everything and never got in the way of doing things, but was still there to give me guidance at being a crew leader.^[8]

Chang sees this as the beginning of the Rock Steady Crew as we know it today, “The new Rock Steady Crew became a magnet for isolated Bronx-styling youths across the city, a second-generation supergroup, the last b-boys standing.”^[9] The transition of Rock Steady from Jimmy D to Crazy Legs marks the first time Crazy Legs saved the crew from extinction, and the art of b-boying would get its due attention in the coming years.

            1981 was a turning point in Crazy Legs’ life, and for Rock Steady Crew as well. Take One introduced Crazy Legs and Frosty Freeze, another member of Rock Steady, to meet Henry Chalfant, a sculptor and photographer who had become interested in the growing hip-hop scene in the Bronx. Chalfant asked if they would like to perform at an upcoming graffiti show he was putting on called “Graffiti Rock.”^[10] Crazy Legs said that this was Rock Steady Crew’s first show, and “it was the first time hip-hop was presented as a culture,”^[11] which is obviously a monumental event in the history of hip-hop, and Crazy Legs was fortunate enough to be a part of the show. His crew’s performance at Graffiti Rock was featured in The Village Voice called “To the Beat Y’all: Breaking is Hard to Do,” and it was the crew’s and b-boying’s first major press story. Chang points out the article was, conceivably, “the first to link graffiti, rapping, and b-boying.”^[12] Hip-hop was beginning to take shape as a culture (or counterculture), especially through the media’s stories about the four elements, though b-boying and dance certainly garnered the most press attention.

            From this onslaught of media attention came the acceptance of b-boys into the eccentric downtown scene. In 1982, Crazy Legs, along with Rock Steady Crew, was invited to perform at the Ritz nightclub, and he was on the bill with Afrika Bambaataa and others. After this performance, Crazy Legs became more involved in the club culture, where diversity was a key element of the scene.^[13] As Chang points out, “Crazy Legs, a true believer in the power of hip-hop, saw what many others saw -- a bit of magic happening. ‘It was the beginning of the breaking down of racial barriers,’ he says, “’82 was the beginning of the worldwide understanding.’”^[14]

            Throughout this time, Crazy Legs was placing his mark on the b-boy scene on his own, developing new moves, and evolving b-boying from what it was when the African-Americans were mostly involved in it to what it became once the Puerto Ricans took over the art form. As seen in Style Wars, Crazy Legs developed his own move called the backspin, about which he said: “It was an accident. My accident though.”^[15] In an interview with Davey D, Crazy Legs talks about the differences between African-American b-boying and Puerto Rican b-boying: “I think the difference is when the brothas first started doing and it was at its infancy they weren't doing acrobatic moves. That didn't come into play until more Puerto Ricans got involved in the mid ‘70s. We then took the dance, evolved it and kept it alive.”^[16]

            Like many of the other pioneers of hip-hop, Crazy Legs appeared in the first movies to expose the culture, including Style Wars, Wild Style, Beat Street, and he also appeared in Flashdance, both as a part of Rock Steady and as Jennifer Beals’ body double in the famous audition scene. These videos helped commodify the culture and make it reproducible through fast-forward and rewind.^[17] Today his involvement in those movies would likely earn him the title of a sellout, but as Crazy Legs explains,

            There wasn't anything about selling out back then. We had no concept of what was going on and what we were getting into. There was no conscious effort by anyone to say 'Yo! Forget these people, I'm gonna go get paid'. […] Yes, Flashdance created opportunities for us. But we never had to hear anything about us selling out. It probably had a lot to do with the way we did it.^[18]

After appearing in the introductory movies, Crazy Legs and Rock Steady Crew somewhat fell off the map because it was now possible to find b-boys for cheaper prices to appear in videos or television.^[19] But, another reason was that Rock Steady Crew was taken advantage of through this commodification, and the group opted to go into hiatus in 1984.

            In 1991, after lobbying from several different people, Crazy Legs decided to revive Rock Steady Crew once again, and their official return came at the Source Magazine Show. In 1992, he performed with Rock Steady at the Kennedy Center Honors, gaining a standing ovation.^[20] Since the revival, Crazy Legs and Rock Steady have enjoyed new success, staging annual Rock Steady anniversaries, curated and organized by Crazy Legs. In 1994, Crazy Legs won the Hip Hop Pioneer award from The Source. In 2002, he was inducted into the Hip Hop Hall of Fame, and in 2004, he was honored as a part of Rock Steady Crew at the first VH1 Hip Hop Honors ceremony. Today, Crazy Legs donates his time as his schedule permits to teach the art of b-boying.^[21] Running along the same vein as his teaching of younger generations, Crazy Legs also wants to “continue to develop new members of Rock Steady Crew so that one of the pillars of Hip Hop will continue to last for generations to come.”^[22]

            From the first time he saw b-boys at ten years old to the present day, Crazy Legs has put his heart and soul into breakdancing, and in that time has re-shaped b-boying several times. He was at the forefront when hip-hop first garnered media attention, and he was able to travel the world through his art. For his contributions to the art of b-boying, Crazy Legs will forever be remembered as a hip-hop pioneer and one of the last original b-boys standing.