J-Pete is on the Mic

B-Boy Rules for Hip Hop Intellectuals:
The Heads that Don't Get Mention
by Dr. James Peterson

I grew up in the Bricks. Newark New Jersey. Growing up in the hood, just as Hip Hop germinated in the post-industrial ghetto, was an acculturating and intellectually developmental experience. I heard Rappers Delight at the tender age of 8 and from that moment forward I owned the culture as a fully vested acolyte of the combination of Hip Hop's fundamental components, including (the four languages of Hip Hop) and others. I was consciously cognizant of the intellectualizing forces at work in my lived experiences with Hip Hop. The culture just sort of crept up on me in Newark. But after the success of Rappers Delight a chain reaction of radio acceptable singles exploded from the culture. I can remember when Kurtis Blow's The Breaks was a hit. Black/Urban radio in NYC played The Breaks only once or twice a day, but it was always at the same time and my brothers, sisters, and cousins when they were visiting would all gather together in the kitchen; that was where the loudest radio in our house was. And we would party around that one song. We engaged in this daily ritual not only because this was the hottest joint out at the time; not only because we could feel the power of a music and culture that belonged exclusively to us; but because Kurtis Blow's 'The Breaks,' much like Grandmaster Flash's 'The Message' were the first intellectual moments that the culture produced and projected at the national level. The ritualistic fervor with which we approached these listenings, memorized the words, and talked about the songs and the artists merely hinted at the signifying force of this moment. Consider the subtle theoretical abstractions from Kurtis Blow's first hit single that speak to the form of Hip Hop culture i.e., it is organized around break beats literally and the content of the lived experiences within the urban settings for Hip Hop culture at that time. "These are the Breaks!" although not a popular saying in any of speech communities of The Bricks, was the first codification of these lived experiences gesturing towards the nihilism that has so often been referred to in Hip Hop culture. An early intellectual moment to be sure: not simply because of the philosophical and theoretical potential of the tune, but because of its multifaceted aural-readability. Its ability to blur the boundaries of content and form even as it coerced us to move our bodies (dance) to its music suggests the multiple intellects that cohere around a thorough comprehension of The Breaks. The multiplicity of intelligences applies here as one considers the intellectual dexterity necessary to dance to this music even as one contemplates the breaks of inner city living in the 1980s.

This is an important point of entry for a discussion on the intellectuals of Hip Hop Culture because it produces the intersections between popular culture and academic theory, social critique, and community that are necessary for most of the intellectual litmus tests detailed to date (Cruse and others). Moreover, it points to a thesis around which the "B-Boy rules for Hip Hop Intellectuals" emerges. B-Boys or B-girls are those essential performers from sui generis moments of hip hop culture who danced to the manually-looped breaks of old soul and disco records. Breakin (or Break dancing) along with poppin/pop locking were early foundational forms of dance deriving from the culture itself. Break Dancing derives its name from the break beats that drove the music and culture at the outset. But B-Boying and B-girling came to take on more meaning and significance within the culture of Hip Hop than that singular meaning attached to those early performers who drove the kinesthetic energy of early Hip Hop jams. B-boys (in 2005) are known as guardians of the culture. They have earned this distinction over the decades because of the ascribed rules to b-boy-dom. B-boys had to be proficient in at least two elements of the culture. Authentic B-boys were participants in many aspects of the culture. A b-boy would not only break dance, but would also write graffiti and or MC and or DJ. Many embodied combinations of two or three elements. These rules were simple and only loosely patrolled, but the ideology that produces them demands multilevel engagement with the culture across elemental comfort zones. In this essay I simply want to extend these rules (through an intellectual transformation) to those figures who would/could be considered Hip Hop Intellectuals. First, some clarification of the B-Boy rules is necessary. By most conventional definitions B-boys are simply break dancers who embody the cultural roots of Hip Hop: i.e. they dress a certain way usually harkening back to hip hop style circa 1980, and they dance to the breaks recreating settings that reflect the original impulses of the culture. The only rule for B-boys is that they "live the lifestyle of b-boying."

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