Breakdancing...Love, Props and the T.Dot!

I started DJing when I was 13.  A cheap radio shack mixer placed between 2 different all-in-one turntable/radio/cassette stereos with no pitch control was all I had to "mix" the records my partner and I used to scrounge to buy from the local record store.

Years before that though in the early 80s my favorite past time was taking a piece of cardboard from the garage, flattening it, drawing graffitti all over it and with a ghetto blaster blasting... breakdancing!  I can remember a few songs from back then that I loved to street dance to... "Roxanne Roxanne" UTFO,  "Beat Box" Art of Noise, "Jam On It" Nukleus and a few gems by Grandmaster Flash come to mind.  My signature move was the windmill.  I could do it at least 10 different ways...hold the knees, the crotch, arms in, arms out...  Me and my cousins would perform at every wedding we attended as a family and with my cousin living in the Jane / Finch area we would enter competitions at the local community center.  I barely can remember that far back but I think being involved in breakdancing and early hip hop music is probably why I started getting into DJing in the first place.  Plus being the dude playing music at the roller skating rink seemed really cool!

Last night a friend of mine Stevie Whiteshoes posted a link to a documentary on my facebook page called "Love, Props & The T.Dot."  It is a documentary celebrating 25 years of the Toronto Hip Hop scene which talked about the difficulties of local rap artists back in the day had breaking into the hip hop scene in.  It also talked about how these early artists paved the way for some of the world reknown Canadian Hip Hop superstars we have today.

I truely enjoyed watching this documentary.  It brought back so many memories of my early teens and reminded me of so much music that I had totally forgotten about.  In conjunction with the documentary, the CBC also had a concert series called the "Hip Hop Summit" in which they brought all these Canadian Hip Hop artists, old and new, together for a fantastic show.  The documentary included footage from this concert as well as old video footage and interviews with all the major players in the Canadian Hip Hop scene.  Michee Mee, Maestro Fresh Wes, The Dream Warriors, Ghetto Concept, K-Os, Kardinall Offishall, Drake and much more all made an appearance.

Here are the links to the documentary and a page with video links from the concert:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52_M2SNI5sI or http://www.cbc.ca/toronto/community/hiphop.html
http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/cod/concerts/20110329hiphop

I only wish I had my old records from back in the day.  I would frame them and hang them all on the wall.  I now live in a digital world and will definitely need to go back and do some track searches to find some of this music! 

Oh and if you see me at a party and I look a little tipsy ask me to do a windmill. I have been known in the recent past to give it a spin...