Wutup gangstas. I’m Otis Funkmeyer the PhD of popping! I write regular articles here at WCP about all kinds of hardcore gangsta shit. I have lots of lessons, articles, downloads, and music at my website www.funkmeyers.com! You can also check me on facebook if you got it like that.
And remember kids: keep it gangsta!

For those of us who have been in the game for a while, one thing slowly but surely starts to become unavoidably clear. Popping at its core is deeply intertwined with gang culture. You can argue this or explain why it’s only sort of true or why it’s a good thing or why it’s a bad thing, but basically, it’s just the facts man.

Anyway, things that are gangsta have this kinda feel. It’s like a combination of fuck you, I’m the man, I’m so smooth, I’m hard as hell, your girl is going home with me, with a little dash of goofiness for good measure. The goofiness is what makes the whole thing cool and relatable, rather than just scary and prison-bound.

Now I think it’s safe to say that almost none of us in the new skool come from this background. Sure, there are the exceptions, but that’s what they are, exceptions. Many of us are white and Asian, from suburban backgrounds, with nice parents and nice lives. Even if we came up “hard” it is nothing like the environments where this dance was created and honed.

For a long time, I felt really guilty about this. I was like, who am I, this nerdy white guy from Maine, to be doing this dance. Almost all my teachers are black and most of them are pretty damn hood compared to my college buddies and shit and it’s like, how can I relate to this.

I thought about it a long time. I mean, there is a whole different approach. You can say, well, yes, popping inspires me but I’m an artist. I do my own thing. I’m an innovator. I’m not a clone. I don’t wanna just be like the OGs. To me, Elsewhere epitomizes this approach. It’s an approach I respect and it’s clearly an approach that has commercial appeal. But it is not an approach that appeals to me. I feel like an ambassador of the dance. I feel like the dance is bigger than me. I feel like the feeling I get when I see that beat crack and somebody just lays into a hit like a fuckin semi-truck is what this dance is all about. It’s hard and it’s gangsta.

So like, how does this little white boy ever REALLY be hard and gangsta. Well, I can tell you a few ways you *DON’T* become hard and gangsta. We’ll call them gangsta fails.

Gangsta Fail #1:
Dressing up like a gangsta. Whether it’s your smooth operator Mr. Hush-Puppy and Fedora, Zoot Suit and Black Socks, Bandana under the Hat or it’s the other one, Mr. Shades and Dickies, Chucks and Locs, White Socks and a Flannel Button Up. This is called FAKING THE FUNK. Now, if this is who you really are, then like, go for it. But for most of us, it just ends up looking corny like you are going to a costume party or something.

Gangsta Fail #2:
Talking Hard. The biggest gangsters I know in this dance often speak the softest. They just murder you on the dancefloor. Again, if you really are some kind of hard rock, then talk all you want, but like Gangsta Fail #1, this one usually ends up coming off lame and pathetic and we just talk about you behind your back.

Gangsta Fail #3:
Just Being Yourself. See, up until recently, I would have just given the advice, “just be yourself” like Cameo. And still I think this is the ultimate approach. You have to one day just take a stand for who you are and what you’re about and stop reading my articles and just be yourself. But you have to run before you walk. In the same way you have to learn the Fresno and the dimestop and the arm wave in order to “just be yourself” and actually get props, you have to learn the attitude of the dance before you can really INTERNALIZE that attitude and make it a part of who you are.

For what it’s worth, I want to give credit in this regard to Slick Dogg. I think to me Slick Dogg has given the popping community one of its biggest gifts in the idea of the get down versus the throw down. The gangsta bop is in its own way a restating of this idea. Thanks Slick.

So What the Hell is the Point of All This Talking?
All right. The point is this. The dancers that are REALLY making a mark right now, namely Rashaad and Frantick, with honorable mentions to Green and Devious, have IT. They HAVE it. THEY have IT. Their dance is just gangsta baby. You can feel it when they dance. You can feel it from the moment they step in the circle.

Now, more credit where credit is due. My boys BopNTod and Icon SixtyFour went on a field trip and came back with a revelation. The gangsta bop. Here’s how we were able to break it down.

You have to move quick. A lot of poppers, and I think I’m like WAY UP HIGH on this list, move too slow. There’s not enough contrast. It’s like, move-hit, move-hit, move-hit. It becomes like a lullaby or something. There’s no intensity. You can basically tell where everything is leading. Now with the gangsta bop. You move quick and then hit long. Your movements have pauses. Everything shakes.

The Shake
I’m just gonna let this article go on and on and if you don’t like it, fuck you. Now that’s gangsta. OK so here’s an analogy to what is coming. I realized recently that the way I was taught waving, the way I teach waving, the way every single person I have ever met (except PacMan) teaches the arm wave, is wrong. It’s not how the best wavers wave. Simple as that.

And it got me thinking. The best dancers are the best DANCERS. They aren’t necessarily the best teachers. But eventually, people come along and they go, shit, how do you do that?!!? And so the best dancers are forced to become teachers. But they don’t actually know how they do what they do, so they just try different ways of teaching. Eventually, one of them sticks, and they just run with it. Then their students get good and become teachers and this method, which was not necessarily even a good method, let alone the best method, becomes the standard way that things are taught.

To belabor the point with another analogy, it’s like this story. A girl is watching her mom bake a ham right and the girl’s all like “Hey mom, why do you cut off the ends of the ham?” and the mom’s all like “Cuz that’s the way my mama did it” and so then they go to the grandma and the grandma’s all old and shit and the girl is all like “Damn grandma, you all old and shit. How come you cut the ends off the ham?” and grandma’s all like “Girl watch your mouth. I cut the ends off cuz my mama cut the ends off.” So the saga continues right. So they go to the great-grand-mama who’s like on her death bed and they’re all like “Damn great-grand-mama, how come you cut the ends off the ham way back then?” and great-grand-mama’s reply: “BECAUSE UNLIKE YALL, GREAT-GRAND-MAMA HAD A SMALL ASS PAN AND IT COULDN’T FIT THE WHOLE HAM.”

And everybody is stunned. They thought there was some like hygiene reason or taste reason and really, there was no reason at all. And they carried on this tradition just because everybody else had been carrying on this tradition. But it was a stupid tradition that should have been dropped when the first one of them got a bigger pan.

What Are You Trying To Say Otis? You are Losing Me…
What I’m trying to say is this. We all got taught popping wrong. The way I got taught is wrong. The way you got taught is wrong. It’s all wrong. You want the proof??? The way that people teach is NOT the way that people dance. When I was in Calgary in 2004 learning Electric Boogaloo Style Popping from Boogaloo Sam himself, he doesn’t dance like that. He doesn’t just do the fresno. He doesn’t actually dance like that. That’s just some routine he came up with. When you seen him dance, boy, that man was GANGSTA BOPPIN. Hard ass robot. Hard ass dimestops. Clean. Quick. Shakes. Everything HARD. The fresno doesn’t teach you that. It teaches you to be on beat. On rhythm. On time. Loose and funky. But not HARD.

The arm wave is the same way. All the best wavers I know curl their fingers as the wave comes out. Nobody does that dorky upside-down-V thing that is how the wave is always taught. Why? Because it doesn’t look as good. It looks better to curl your fingers on the way out.

The Climax
So what this made me realize is that rather than LISTENING to what people said about their dancing to learn from them, I had to start LOOKING at how they danced. And when you do that, a whole different story begins to emerge. The best dancers are invariably HARD. Pete hits hard. He moves quick. He moves hard. Frantick is, well, hard. Everything about dude is hard. Rashaad is like a damn machine he hits and dimestops so hard. Dude can do the most BASIC things but it all looks nasty. Why? Because of HOW he does the basic things. If you did the basic things the way Rashaad did the basic things, you would be sweating your ass off in like 20 seconds. And to me, the ultimate example of this is Jazzy J. It’s like everything homeboy does looks good and when you really watch, it’s because everything is HARD. Everything is TENSE. Everything is CONTROLLED.

One Last Tangent
See, the way I teach popping, the way I was taught popping, is that you should be loose and relaxed and then when it’s time to hit, you QUICKLY tense and then QUICKLY relax again. See, this is actually a very good way to teach Japanese people who can’t dance and White Americans who can dance even less than that. Because when we see popping, we get so damn tense it looks uncomfortable. But the problem is that the baby gets thrown away with the bathwater. The best dancers ALL have that tension. That’s part of the unreal looking of popping. Even boogaloo at its highest levels is dope because it DOESN’T LOOK REAL. If you don’t have the unreal, robotic, animated, gangsta look with your popping, you are partially missing the point.

What Happened?
Well, what happened is that basically Suga Pop came along and told everyone it was all about being “funky.” You have to be “funky.” Swing those hips, roll those shoulders, keep those feet light on the balls and the heels. And all of a sudden, being “funky” became the only important thing. That lasted about, what, 7 years, and then Chadd came along and made all the dimestop stuff popular. Then a whole generation started biting all that stuff and then you throw J Smooth in the mix and you get everybody trying to be animated and have combos and blowups and ground moves and speed control and warping and what not.

But when you don’t take it back PAST Chadd to Andre and Prince, or PAST J Smooth back through Sally Sly to Taco and Shrimp, you miss that gangsta shit. And that gangsta shit is what the dance is still missing. It’s why at some level a young Boogaloo Shrimp or Robot Prince or Popin Pete or PopNTaco would still be the hardest new skoolers in the game. Because our generation has missed an entire part of the feel of this dance.

So What Do I Do Professor Otis?
YOU GET BUCK BABY. Start getting tense. What you will find is that you immediately start sweating. Most of us are too damn lazy when we dance. It takes us a few minutes, maybe five or ten, to start sweating. You start dancing with that gangsta bop and you will be sweating in like 10 seconds. I’m not kidding.

Now what that also means is that your dance will be MUCH MORE intense. People will not be getting bored watching you dance because they will FEEL you. They will FEEL you working it out. They will FEEL your hit and your passion. It won’t be boring and lazy it will be hard and dynamic and unpredictable.

Where Do I Sign Up
Remember, you have to walk before you run. As should be obvious, this is a fairly high level article. If you don’t know your right foot from your left, most of these concepts are going to be too difficult for you to put into practice yet. But when you see things starting to come together, it’s time to start getting hard.

One Last Example
The Twist-o-Flex might be the best example of all. The way that most people do the twist-o-flex is soft as fuck. it’s like twist, turn, left, right, head, chest, pivot, step. It’s all loosey goosey and there’s pretty much nothing gangsta about it at all. So that might be the best place to start practicing. Start making your twisto’s gangstafied. Hit those twistos. BANG those twistos. Stay tense. Add a robotic animated feel. Keep it all hard. And remember. This *WILL* tire you out. Quickly. But this is how you build stamina.

Most of us have been training for a 5K race thinking that we’re all super hard, when in reality a few people have been training for marathons (I’m looking at Frantick and Rashaad and Future). It’s gonna take a little time to get on the marathon track, but that’s ok. Once you’re on the right path, at least you’re on the right path. Namsayin?! Now that, my friends, my family, my peoples, from the 818 to the 408 to the 714 to the 516 to the 914 and every suburb in between, now that is… gangsta.

An example of the Gangsta Bop… take it away Rashaad
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