Did hip hop crash the step show? (Stomp the Yard review)

Speaker: 00:00:00

Real quick, before we get into it, I need you all to close your eyes for a second.

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You're at historically black university.

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It's step show season.

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The frat that wins gets bragging rights, gets the girl, gets everything.

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And on the floor right now is a kid from LA who doesn't know the first rule of stepping.

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But he can do things with his body that these frat boys have never seen in their lives.

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That's Stomp the Yard.

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And we watched it so you don't have to.

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Except you should because it goes hard.

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Ha ha And I'm gonna say this right off the top.

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Columbus Short had no business at all being that charismatic in 2007.

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Like dude just walked in this movie and just took it.

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My guy has leading man energy from minute one.

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And then real life happened.

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D’ohh!

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Yeah, and then real life happened, but we're not gonna talk about the we're gonna talk

about the performance first.

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But the performance 'cause the performance deserves that.

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And here's the thing about this film that I didn't expect.

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It's not really a dance movie.

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I mean it is a dance movie, but the step sequences are incredible.

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Underneath that it's a movie about what it costs to belong somewhere, what you have to

give up of yourself to fit into an institution, and whether the street and the school can

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ever really coexist.

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Which is a old hip hop argument.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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And today we're stepping into 2007 with Stomp The Yard.

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Let's get into it.

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Yeah, I mean you can have a debate whether

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the the hip hop influence and the traditional like breakdancing, is that does that

contaminate your traditional stepping, which has deep roots in HBCU history and

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Or does it just like kind of fit right in?

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And that's a debate that can go back and forth.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, it's a very, very, very uh tough one to debate.

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And being that I'm not a member, I'm just gonna sit on the sideline and let them hash that

one out.

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hahaha

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it's not my place to say whether or not, but you can point to shared backgrounds or roots

of stepping and more b-boy hip hop sort of moves.

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This goes back to West African rhythms and practices of slaves in North America and so those are facts.

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I mean those are things you can draw without you know being a part of the culture.

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whether they contaminated them or not, I I don't know.

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It's it's hard because they're they're of the same starting material.

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I remember when they were heavily promoting the movie, um, there was a national step competition

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and I think it came around like maybe before I think it was during the filming and it was

on television and I actually watched it on TV and I recognized some of the guys that were

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in the competition because they were some of the guys were from Rider University, members of Phi Beta Sigma, and they won the competition.

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They won the national competition.

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And then this movie comes out and I'm watching the movie and it gets to the end of the

and then the competition.

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And they're doing like a montage of different, you know, from fraternities and sororities

stepping and I see them in the movie.

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And I'm like, Wow.

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Yeah, it's crazy.

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The same exact guys that I saw win on television were in the movie.

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And I recognize them because I used to play basketball with them at Rider after I graduated.

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I specifically recognize like I was calling their names out when I was watching, like, my God.

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And I think another aspect of the movie that I really did appreciate, was when the Mu Sigma Gammas approached DJ after the night at the the Phoenix when

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he the the rep your city and DJ kinda went off and dissed everybody on the dance floor.

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And those guys approached him, was like, Hey, you know

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We we think we could use a guy like you, you know, you might want to consider it, you

know, we make a snip we snap your finger, you're part of our network, yada yada yada yada

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yada, just sell selling them all kinds of hopes and dreams.

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And obviously he did turn them down due to his bumping heads

with Grant.

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And it it was kinda cool too when when he joined and he was like, Yeah, these routines are old, man.

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Let's let's, they took the Neos, the new class guys

and say, Hey, let's try to do something different and and they got caught and slight

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caught them out there and was like, What are you guys doing?

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Like you guys haven't even mastered what our routine you're out here trying to learn

something new and you know, DJ being cocky, DJ ready to battle was like, Let's let's

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battle.

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Yeah. They got humbled.

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They got humbled.

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They really got humbled.

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Like those those prophytes put it on them in the Phoenix.

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And even the neos were like, alright, man, listen, it's not all about you, man.

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It's not all about you.

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It's we're a team.

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Like you can't go out there doing your own thing and leave us stuck in the wind.

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And I think that's what resonated because that was the same thing that Duron told him in

the beginning of the movie before that battle.

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And I think that was what

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kinda brought it all full circle for him.

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'Cause he's got these instances of things that are being reflected to something that happened earlier.

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And I think that's when he got it together and was like, All right, you know what?

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Yeah, let's do this.

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It's got your Little Jon with the I, I, I, I I was like love it.

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I'm like, this is good.

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Yeah.

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I mean, that's like an ultimate hype song, like in um

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could be used for like intros to to football and stuff like that.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, I enjoyed it.

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And Public Enemy had a song on there and um of course Ne-Yo and Chris Brown and Ghostface Killah had a song also.

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pop block and drop it, straight up ATL music.

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You know, walk it out, you know.

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Nah, it's a good soundtrack.

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The days, 2007 when you would literally buy the CD. Physical media.

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All right.

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So let's go around.

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So Boogie for Stomp the Yard.

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Would you bring this funky flick back or leave it in the vault?

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Oh yeah, definitely bring this funky flick back.

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Dyno Wright.

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For Stomp the Yard, would you bring this funky flick back or leave it in the vault?

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I’m bringing this funky flick back.

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I'll probably fast forward through like the non dance parts, but I'm bringing this funky

flick back.

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uh And that will be a clean sweep.

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I will bring this funky flick back.

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I was I was definitely entertained the entire time.

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I know there was no uh no skips and I like, Yeah, this is good.

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Sometimes I get little tired on these films, even watching them late, but no, just just

held my attention.

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I like the dancing, I like the music, yeah.

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All right.

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Thank you for tuning in to the Hip Hop Movie Club, the show for serious hip hop fans who

want to deepen their cultural knowledge.

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I'm Dyno Wright, filmmaker, designer, longtime hip hop fan, and I could really go for a

fried peach pie from The Varsity in Atlanta.

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I'm JB, eighties and nineties nostalgia junkie, longtime hip hop fan, and like the late

great Rob Base I throw my so support behind the whopper.

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Bleep the Big Mac.

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Hey

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Take it off the rack.

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If it's whack, put it back.

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I like the whopper, bleep the big mac

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Yeah.

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Yes, I love the line.

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I don’t know why Burger King

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never adopted that.

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I didn't they didn't want a a big feud with McDonalds, but in some capacity, yeah.

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Yeah.

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Maybe still.

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that line existed in the days of social media, it probably would have popped off.

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Yeah.

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And I and I'm Boogie, a DJ longtime hip hop fan, and I wanna give a rest in peace shout

out to the late Rob Base.

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I mean, really cool guy, man, down to earth, man.

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And I got I was I'm fortunate that I was able to see him perform live.

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But yeah, that one hit me hard when I heard about it.

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'Cause he's a such a cool guy.

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online, interacting with the fans and everything.

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It takes two.

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It was just like that is up in the top tier of dance songs that'll just get you moving.

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Everybody knows it.

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I mean I could recite pretty much every lyric to it 'cause I just played that nonstop.

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It was way ahead of its time.

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Yeah.

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Our next screening is Do the Right Thing, June tenth at the Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas

at Steel Stacks.

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Tickets are free.

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Thanks to ArtsQuest.

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Come hang with us.

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Yes, come hang with us.

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And remember, don't hate, scintillate.

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Ooh.

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Like DJ

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Yeah.

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Nice.

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