B-Boy DJs

This is a very simple fact that many don't seem to be aware of. It is commonplace at events for dancers and audiences to stand in front of the DJ booth and block the DJ's view, either forgetting or being unaware that the DJ needs to see the battle.

A lot of breakers might not know that the individuals DJing their battles are fire on the dance floor as well as on the decks. A lot of DJs are actually B-boys and B-girls who are highly respected for their skills in the art of breaking.

Long before organised hip-hop culture dance battles, it was actually the DJs who battled! In the '70s, when hip-hop parties were taking off, and even before that in Jamaica, a place heavily linked to the birth of hip-hop culture, when the urban music scene was growing, DJs would have crews and spend money on massive, room-shaking sound systems and speakers. It then became a regular thing to have two DJs, with their crews, set up their sound systems at a party and see who could blast out the other with their sound. Partygoers would come to hear, see and dance to this DJ soundclash.

Party DJs play tracks that audiences know and want to party to, but to be a battle DJ is to find tracks that other DJs aren't playing and dancers might not have heard yet. So, true DJs do what's known as digging. This term refers to when DJs go to record stores and dig through crates of records, searching for new music to add to their sets when spinning. To be a good, fresh DJ with your own tracks you had to dig to find music that would set you apart from the other Disc Jockeys. True DJs are always digging, now both in record stores and online.

Before DJ programs like Serato and track-identifying apps, DJs still had to bring all their records to events to spin. And to make sure that no one knew the tracks from which they got their breaks, they'd cover the labels of their records. This kept the origins of their breaks secret and meant that they were the only ones playing that particular breakbeat, keeping their DJ sets fresh and unique, and making them famous for the tracks that only they played.

It was DJs (Kool Herc credited as the first) who inspired B-Boys and B-Girls to create the breaking dance form. Spinning two copies of the same record to extend the breakdown of the track (the break) is what sent partygoers in the Bronx crazy back in the '70s, and got them to start breaking. If the DJs didn't mix and extend those breakbeats, breaking would never have started.

B-Boy DJs updated their business hours.

B-Boy DJs updated their address.

This might seem obvious, but it's an important fact that dancers might rarely pay attention to. Think about it like this: have you ever been to an event when everything is still being set up and the public haven't been let in yet? Any dancers in the place are usually sitting around, stretching, chatting and waiting for one thing; the DJ to drop that first track. And when the DJ does, the whole mood of the place suddenly changes and it comes to life with dancers getting down.