Getting Cheated In A Battle

A tale about a battle and the underlying dance conspiracies that affected it. Plus some good news too.

Transcript available at poplockparables.buzzsprout.com

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Transcript

Nicholas Sapp  0:00  
What's going on with y'all good people, man? Welcome back to Poplock Parables, where I tell stories about my adventures in street dance. This is Episode Seven. This episode is transcribed on Poplockparables.buzzsprout.com. Also available on listening platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and the like. Today's episode, we'll be talking about how I got cheated, I got robbed, my victory was stolen from me, how I got cheated in a dance battle. So there is a break this time, I'm gonna split it up. So first part is the battle. And then you've got to have the break. And then after the break is post battle, so what happened afterwards. Outside of that, let's get to it.

Man getting cheated in a battle. And so this battle was at Purdue University. I want to say this was let's say three years ago, four years ago. Right? I'm running with EF, Electric Funketeers. All right. The jam was at Purdue University in Indiana. And it was being thrown by their local dance crew whose name I do not recall at the time. So we take our four hour trip there. It's me, Sid, Jonathan, Rey Ray, and Kenneth I want to say. So it was us five. So you know our took our car ride down to Indiana. I don't remember were Purdue was but wherever it was at the time, that's where we go. So you know, we get there. Right? They have it hosted in like, you know, an auditorium, basically. Fairly spacious. So we come in, hardwood floors, all that good stuff. So we get up in there. And it's we just chillin, you know, say we see some people that we know, from Indiana so we're like "hey wassup y'all," but outside of that we cooling.

So the format of the battle is a 1v1 Popping battle. Right? So prelim format I wanna say it was Cypher style? No, no, ain't no "I want to say" it was it was Cypher style. So for those who have forgotten or just don't remember Cypher style is just like, you know, at a club or at a party and one person goes in a circle at a time and then the next person goes in, same thing. So cypher style. You know, you one person goes up a DJ is playing some music, right? You got you got you about 30 seconds, 45 seconds, depending on the competition, take about 45 seconds, to you know, do your stuff. And then they call the next person, right. And then from that, generally, the judge will pick, you know, judges, if there are multiple will pick, you know, top 16, top eight, depending on a competition, top 32, top 64 depending on how many people you know, stuff like that. So this time, they only had one judge, a dude named Viho. He is from China. So I was like, Alright, cool. Whatever. And he was one of the things where it was like, he was a relatively relatively popular dancer, like, you know, you can type his name and my YouTube, you can find stuff on here, like a viral clip, as well, where he was pretending to be an old man. He was just killing dudes in the battle. So we have so we do we knew of him. Okay, cool. So we do our little, you know, Cypher style prelim, Cypher style prelims. 

Now, here's where it started getting iffy, right? So it was me, and it was Kenneth, who had to go several times. Right. Now normally, that's not an unusual thing, right? Every judge is really struggling to figure out who they want in the battle. Right? Sometimes they'll have another person come up, or they'll have a person that already went though? They'll have them go again. Right? They'll be like, can we see you go again, you know, or sometimes they'll have people who, if they're struggling, they'll have people that they're struggling to make a decision on, they'll have them battle it out, right? So this time, they had me do my prelim again, right? "Now, can you see you come up again?" So I'm gonna do my prelim. Okay? And the thing is, you try to do something different each time, right to show that you have versatility. If you if you go up there and do the same thing. Then it's kind of like you just did the same thing bro and it tends to suggest that you, you you're a one trick pony almost right. So I get up there. I don't remember what I did, but I knew it was different than what I did before. Right? So I do my prelim and then I think he has to do his again. Right and then it's like aight so we sit in there waiting. And then they call me up again. And I'm like, hold on three times I gotta do the prelim three times that don't happen, that don't never happen. They usually if you if you have to do a prelim multiple times, you do it twice this, you will never do it three times. So I come up again. "Can we see Libra Bop?" And I'm like, okay, so I'd do it again. And at this point, I do my third time thinking now I gotta come up with something different. So I'm doing know some different stuff still. And then after I'm like, when I'm tired now, y'all just made me do the prelim three times today. 

So finally do my third prelim and then we chillin. Then finally they decide. Okay, this is this. These are the contestants, right? So my first battle is against this dude who, I don't know if he still goes by this name, but at the time his name was Sir Limitless, right? It's like, Okay, cool. I've never seen him dance before. But I was like, Alright, cool. So, song comes on. Right? Come out. Right now at this time I was training with Tea-Buggz. For those who don't know, I may or may not have mentioned it in prior episodes, but Tea-Buggz was my second popping teacher. Right. So at first it was Chuck. And then I moved on to Tea-Buggz. Well, not I moved on. I was learning from Chuck still at the same time, but I started learning from Tea-Buggz as well. You know how I'll do an episode explaining about Tea-Buggz. The mystery and the mystique that is Tea-Buggz. Oh, but I was training with T at the time. And T is a master at Tutting, and waving, and snaking and animation. He's good. He cold right. 

So, you know, I come out tutting and I'm training under Tea at this time. So obviously my tuts is gonna be cold. So I come out tutting, boom, boom, boom, and not tutting like, like, I just stand there. And, you know, I stand in the same spot. Like I got concrete blocks around my feet. And I'm just you know, moving my arms around, hitting with my tuts. I'm doing different poses. I'm moving around the entire round just tutting Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right. Then I finish. So then here comes Sir Limitless. Instantly, I'm like, "Oh, this dude can't pop." I got it in the bag, right. Now, when I say he can't pop what I meant was he was a beginner, you know, he ain't really have, his positions wasn't that clean at the time? You know? He could be better now. You know, for example, lately he could be better now. But at the time he wasn't as good. You know, his positions wasn't as clean. His hit was a little you know, it was a little off. It just, you know, I just I had it in the bag. I had it in the bag man. Had it in the bag. So limitless comes out Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, well not really. But he comes out and doe his thing. And then it's like okay, "three-two-one!" Viho point towards him. Everybody go, huh? You sitting there like hold on, how did I lose? I destroyed this man. And it was just one round by the way. Now some some battles are multiple round but this? One round. I say Hold on, hold on how did I lose to a dude that just just learned how to pop? I've been learning about you know, two, three years at this point. But to a dude that just now learning how to pop? Come on, man. How do I lose? And I hit them tuts? Man come on, man. 

So we sit in there. So I go back and go back to my, you know, my crew. And they look at me like, Yeah, man, that was wild, man. We don't know how you lost that. I was like y'all saw it too! Then they're like, "Hey, you gotta go and ask him. You know, you got to go and ask him. What's up? Like, why do you Why did you lose?" Right? Okay, cool. You know, I'll do that. I'll do that eventually. Right? Now one thing about losing the battle is a lot of times you'd be happy. I'm the type of person that be kind of happy when you lose because now you get to Cypher freely instead of trying to save your energy for the battles. So but anyway, I know I lose, and then Sid is like man I got you I got you and I'm like, What is he about to do? So you know next round Sid beats his opponent or whatever and then after that, you know Sid's next round he got to face Sir Limitless right? So Sid destroy him right. Now at a time and I will say Sid? Sid was a better popper than me. Well Sid was like The Popping Man in Chicago. :ike like it was for a long time. It was Critical. And then after Critical, it was Sid. Sid was like the popping dude. You go to Chicago and want to know about the popping scene and you're like "Oh, you're in NSiDS I heard about you man. Yeah, Chicago, yeah that dude nice!" Man Sid was the man at popping in Chicago. So Sid come out, I don't even remember what Sid did. I just know he won, that's all I know. He just killed he killed dude, it was bad. Right? So he tore him up, basically. And then Viho voted for him, voted for Sid and he was like. Okay, aight. And Sid come back to me and say he's like, "that's for you." At this point, I'm cool. So you know, I appreciate it. So then I let them know "Aight y'all Imma try to go ask him. What's up? Why did I lose?"

Right? So I walk over to Viho and I'm going Oh, hey, what's up, man? How you doing? I you know, you know, "I liked your round doodoodoodoo". Okay, cool. And I just wanted to ask you why you felt that I lost that. So he basically said, he was like, "Oh, you know, your tuts is really nice. Your waves are really nice. But you did you know too many tricks and not enough popping." And I'm sitting here in my head and I'm like, but my entire round was tutting. And I was hitting my tuts. I was old school you know King King Tut, where you hit with your tuts. So I'm popping. "You know, you do too many tricks. You didn't do enough popping." So I'm sitting there like Oh, I'm a victim of the Electric Boogaloo school of thought. Now, I'm about to get into it right now. 

So for y'all who don't know, I may have mentioned it before. So the Electric Boogaloos. Right. Were the ones this this group out of Los Angeles, they were the ones that really put popping on the map globally. Right. So they was like the first I want to say they were the first popping group on Soul Train. They was several they was in the, you know, the Breakin movies, Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo, right. Because there's somebody mentioned this in the movie. They was like the first, to my knowledge, the first popping group that did tour globally. Right. So So as far as putting popping on a map, and teaching everybody they will they are like the most prominent ones to do that. And as you know, you spreading the knowledge spreading that knowledge to the game, right. And so what happened is, and this is a this is a conspiracy at this point, this is this is partially why a lot of people don't like Electric Boogaloo as a style. A lot of people don't like the, the members of the Electric Boogaloo crew slash organization is because when they went touring around the world, right, you had to remember that this is pre internet, right? So a lot of them they was doing this, you know, in the 80s, and then going into the 90s. So there wasn't really a way of verifying the truth or not know, certain statements they made. But essentially, you know, I don't have any names to say. Not because I'm trying to withhold names. It's just I don't have many to say, I can't say who to who to blame. But essentially, what happened was, and this how the conspiracy works. 

Now what happened was, that is somewhere along the way, while they was touring, Electric Boogaloos, members of the organization essentially say that the Electric Boogaloo style was the truest form of the dance, so to speak in that early, you know, you might have other styles. And that's cool. But other styles are, are generally one or two things, other styles really just kind of amount to tricks to spice up, you know, the dance, right? And/or the other styles are cool, and you know, you can respect them and whatnot, but they're not really popping. They're different dances. Alright. So it is basically it is a binary semantic argument that makes a distinction between popping as an umbrella of connected dances, versus popping as one dance. And other styles are seen as different dances. I know there's there's truth to both statements, depending on the perspective and depending on who you're looking at. But basically, you know, where When all that happened, particularly in the 90s, from what I've seen and read and been told, essentially caused this schism and popping right where you was either in the Electric Boogaloo camp, where you thought the Electric Boogaloo was, was the best poppers that was the best form of popping. Everything else wasn't really worth learning the Electric Boogaloo. So you might as well just learn that, right. That's the best form of popping for you. OR you were in what they call it the animation camp, which is robot and a style called animation, well there's styles of animation, waving, so on and so forth. Right.

And, yes, it was set up and basically so what happened with them touring internationally, it was such that you know, they was people's primary frame of reference, like oh you want to learn to dance popping, and you got these folks tourin the world. And they are the only ones you see on TV popping. And they come to your studio and teach you popping, and the popping that they teach you is their style Electric Boogaloo style, you can be like, oh, okay, I mean, I guess this is popping. And if they say, Oh, yeah, you might think some other stuff, but that's not popping. Or you might hear some other stuff. And, you know, it's related to popping, but this is like, this is the popping you should learn, right? You just, you know, whatever. School of schools of thought, right, this is this is the Electric Boogaloo School of popping, and this is what you need to learn. Right? So naturally, people come to that. Okay, cool. Yeah. Cool. Okay, let's begin with this. And that's all I know, as far as popping is concerned with Electric Boogaloo. So it is such to the point now, that pretty much almost everywhere in the world that is not the United States is a legit Boogaloo Nation. Right? So if somebody from Latin America, they do Boogaloo, they Electric Boogaloo. If somebody is from Europe, they do Electric, France, they do Electric Boogaloo. England, England depends a little bit but a lot of em? Electric Boogaloo. If they're from China? Guaranteed Electric Boogaloo. Ain't no question. They do Electric Boogaloo, right. If they're from Japan, Japan is a little different. Japan got a lot of people from that that did animation, right? Because a lot of the animation folks visited Japan. So Japan is a little different. They did they do got something to do got some Boogaloo folks. But they got a lot of animation people too.

But outside of that is just the whole world is like Electric Boogaloo. outside of the United States. I mean, even in the United States is such a thing that, you know, you still have a lot of people that do Boogaloo. Just because this is popular, right is popular, or at one point, some people felt you couldn't win battles if you didn't do it, and some people still feel that's the way. The Electric Boogaloo conspiracy, man it did it did a lot to the game. So I at the time, going back to the battle, I was like, Oh, I am a victim to the Electric Boogaloo conspiracy, conspiracy. I'm a victim of the Electric Boogaloo school of thought, where if I had to not do Electric Boogaloo, in some form of fashioning, I lost even though to me as I was taught, popping. It's just you know, the rhythmic muscle contraction of your arms. If not your arms, your body, right? So even if I'm hitting the whole time, it'll matter even if I'm tutting. If I'm waving as long as I'm hitting. I'm still popping. Right? But no some people don't see it that way. So that's why I said I got cheated. And that's why all my friends said, I got cheated. And I see. I got told I was doing tricks instead of popping. I said, You know what? Okay. All right. You know, what? Just mean, it's not cool, but, you know, whatever. It is what it is, right now. 

Now, let me say what happens when a lot of people feel that they've been wronged in a battle. Many times they will go and challenge the judge. Now, whether or not that's a good idea. It depends, right? Sometimes people go challenge the judge and it's kind of like, Why Why are you challenging them? Right? Because it's like, Are you challenging for the purpose of your ego? You challenge it like, like, if the judge beats you. They just kind of like I mean, they they beat you bro so so what do you what do you? I guess this is one of the things was the question was like, What do people try to achieve when they battle judges? A lot of different things. I'll probably cover it in a in a in a future episode. more in depth, but I did not feel like challenging him. I was just like, whatever. Power to you. Alright, well, time. For me, it's time for me to Cypher and take a break, which is what I'm about to do right now. So after this break, we're gonna get back into one. We're not gonna get into the battle, we're gonna get into what happened after the battle after I got cheated. Yes, sir.

We back. So we better get into post battle what happened after the battle? So I'm stepping off to the side and I'm cooling at this point. And this dude walks up to me. He says, Hey, where'd you learn that? Like, what do you mean? "That chest, that Bopping stuff. Where'd you learn that?" Right? And I'm like, oh, guy named Poppin Chuck taught me. He's like okay, yeah yeah yeah I know Chuck. mm ago, okay. And he's like "my name is OG Mike G. Okay, cool. Uh, you know, from from the Bay. And, you know, in the Bay Area. We used to call it the heart. heartbeat. Yeah, that's called the heartbeat. I want to say, yeah, we used to call it the heartbeat". Okay, cool. Now, this is where you know, post battle everything started perking up for me. Because you know, you know a lot of I will say like, I can't speak on them, I can  speak on me. You know, you did good slash you know, you you know you special you caught people eye when the OG's approached you. Out of all the poppers at the jam. Right getting down. And OG's approach you? Out of all the people there and want to know your background? Oh, yeah. That's how you know you're doing something right, man. You're doing something right. Even if you lose he, you could lose all the time. You can never make finals ever. You can never make finals. And OG's be like, aye man. You got some nice stuff, man. Or Or even better. They want to teach you something. Man. It's a wrap, bro. Oh, yeah. You're doing something, right? You're doing something right. 

So OG Mike G approached me. He said, Where you learn how to bop and I was like, okay, no, I thought I thought I told him I learned from Chuck. He's okay. He started spreading some wisdom with me. I said issa wrap. Now. Now my day is met. The OG noticed me, I ain't even noticed the OG  but he noticed me. Yes, sir. Oh, yeah. Like you know, your, your peers, when your peers say, Man, you shouldn't have lost man you cold. Like it's cool. If you know, it's like, you know, part of it is like people being nice to you or people. I mean, I don't necessarily mean people wrong. Like "you shouldn't have lost that, I thought you won". But when OG's do it man, you're different because in they done seen a lot of people come and go. And you know, they got wisdom. Not at all you know some OG's it's just like who are you? I ain't never heard of you bro. What, you know, some but you know, a lot of OG's, particularly particularly OG's that are good? When they come up to you and be like "How are you? You good, man. Yeah, you're nice. "And when they when they notice you all it just they just do something to you. Validation something serious here. So that was that was the first big thing that made the battle like okay, you know what this ain't so bad. 

The second part is this dude came up to me. And he was good. He could. I saw he was he was killing it. He might he might have been in the finals. I don't remember he was. So he came up to me. And he was like, "Hey, man, you look like Tempo?" And I'm sitting there like Tempo? He like yeah, you know, Tempo. And that's and I'm I was just drawing a blank over. I don't who is Tempo? What are you talking about? He's likeTempo, you know, G-Style. And I was like Tempo. Oh, yeah. So for those who don't know, G-Style was a crew slash movements. And like the 2000s and 2010s formed by this group, this dude named Slick Dogg. Right. He was teaching several students his style, partially to try to you know, combat the Electric Boogaloo supremacy, if you will. So Tempo, you can say, was one of Slick's like master students, basically, right? Tempo. That dude is cold. Cold. Oh my goodness. He's so cold. So dude say aye man you look like Tempo and I'm like, Oh, okay. Right. At the time. It was one of those things where I wasn't familiar with how he moved. So for him saying like Tempo it was just like, Okay, this is this is a circumstantial thing. It's not a thing where I'm like, looking at Tempo's footage like Yo, I'm trying to bite. I'm trying. I'm trying to look like Tempo, I gotta bite this man because he good. It was a thing where he's just, I didn't know who he was. So he said, I'm like Tempo. I don't know who that is. 

And they found out later like, oh, okay, and so it ends up being a great compliment. Right? Because I was learning from T and eventually I found out why I look like Tempo is because the type of waves that Tempo is doing, where you can say it's a school like Pomona Waves, right out of Pomona, California. So to the OG's out there have a certain type of waving; Slick Dogg, Darryl Stokes, Boardman, Stretch, No Bone Tyrone, all of them. So they got a certain type of waving and it's you know, peepers, colloquially known as you know, Pomona Waves, Pomona Waving.. So Tempo learned how to do that. And so eventually I learned that Tea-Buggz  was also in G-Style at a certain point. And Tea and Slick is cool. And I don't know how Tea learned Pomona waves. I'm guessing he might've learned from Slick, I don't know. But the waves that Tea were teaching me were Pomona waves and I just didn't know it at the time. So you know, when we finally get back to Chicago, I'm at T's place practicing and you know, every now and then, just the other OG's will come through. So Chuck would come through. Tea. I mean, he was at his house where he would already be there. And it was a dude named Kobra. Mr. Kobra or Kidd Kobra, depending on the year that you talked about. But Kobra was there as well. Right? Not Kobra out of California. This is Kobra out of Chicago. It's different. There's different Kobras. 

They all sitting there. And I'm like, oh, and they're like, Oh, you know, how was the battle? I'm like, Oh, yeah, you know, it was I mean, I got cheated, but it was whatever. But this dude came up to me and he said, he said I liked Tempo. And it's crazy. Because all the OG's. They was like, Oh, snap! Oh! They said you look like Tempo! Like, they are getting excited and everything. And I'm sitting there. I'm like, What was going on? I don't understand this. Man.They said you looked like Tempo. That's that's a good thing. Because it was essentially a sign that I was mastering the waves that Tea and Kobra were teaching me. Right. I was mastering them to the extent that I started to resemble Tempo, right? Because they just had such high praise of Tempo. So it's like, if you get if you get like a glimpse of that, of that skill, that talent, you know, you start to resemble him a little even if it's circumstantially right? Yeah, that means you starting to really master the techniques, you start to get it down. So for so for somebody I didn't know, just a random person say Hey, man, you like Tempo, to them that was like, Oh, man. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Our student our student, yeah, Tempo the Great. He's one of the greats. And our students starting to look like Tempo. Oh, man. Oh, man. He getting it down. Oh, so it was just it was just one of those things where it was like, No, it's just a great it was just a compliment to know. It was like y'all doing a good job, y'all. Y'all y'all teaching me right. I guess if if I just looked like Tempo circumstantially. And you're like, Oh, snap. Oh, so. So that was the that was the second thing. First thing was you know, meeting OG Mike G and him giving me props and teaching me on the side. And the second thing was dude who said I look like Tempo, which was an indication of how well I was progressing and learning the stuff that T and Kobra and Chuck was teaching me. You know, I got cheated in the battle, but it ended up being not too bad. Still got cheated though. Oh. Hey, I'mma stop right there. Oh, man.

Just want to thank you all again for checking out Poplock Parables. Hope you enjoyed this episode. You can find me Nicholas, on Twitter and Instagram at Poplock Parables. You can also email me at Poplockparables@gmail.com, let me know what you think any concerns, suggestions, things you like to hear? Stuff like that? You let me know, at the aforementioned links. Outside of that. I ain't got nothing to say. Other than I hope y'all have a great day. Yes, sir.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai