INTERVIEW WITH B-BOY SKI JUMP (THE FLOOR MASTERS / HARLEM)




                                                       

B-Boy/MC Ski Jump

                                           conducted by Sir Norin Rad (The Intruders)


SIR NORIN RAD:"Where were you born and raised?"

SKI JUMP:"I was born and raised in East Harlem, New York. When I first entered the Hiphop era I was living in East Harlem but I was staying with my aunt in the Bronx back and forth."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where exactly in the Bronx did your aunt live at?"

SKI JUMP:"183rd Street & Valentine Avenue.... yeah, one block away from the Grand Concourse."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where and when did you encounter B-Boying for the very first time?"

SKI JUMP:"Staying with my auntie.....but before I learnt that type of B-Boying where you hit the floor....my brother who is right over me and his crew they were dancing a lot but they were doing a lot of Uprock B-Boying.  Those were pretty smooth guys, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where would you see your brother and his crew dance at?"

SKI JUMP:"Well, they would dance around, you know, the house and in the neighbourhood and I would follow them to a couple of parties and I was like,"Wow! Those guys are kool as hell!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"I guess that was during the era when the dance was still done mainly on top, correct?"

SKI JUMP:"Right." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"When exactly was that? Around 1973?"

SKI JUMP:"Between 1973 and 1974." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"So these parties that you are referring to were they outside events?"

SKI JUMP:"Yeah, little outside functions and then I'd see him in....it was like a bar scene..and they went there. It wasn't really crowded or anything, they were just playing some music and they would do their thing, you know, until the crowd got there." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"And you said they were really smooth with it?"

SKI JUMP:"Yeah, they were too kool to get down on the floor and get their clothes dirty or anything because they were always dressed real nice."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Could you please describe the way they dressed?"

SKI JUMP:"Most of them used to go to A.J. Lester's on 125th & 8th Avenue and buy their clothes. If you bought clothes there, you know,  you were a baller back in the days. They wore the Overlap pants with Playboy shoes, V-neck sweaters with the mocknecks under them and  they wore brims and Kangol hats."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What kind of effect did watching your brother and his friends have on you? Did it inspire you to become a B-Boy?"

SKI JUMP:"Yes, because, you know, I wanted to be like the guys that were older than me because they looked so kool. I didn't know anything about dancing or anything like that besides what you see the kids on TV doing."

SIR NORIN RAD:"I see. So what was your next step towards becoming a B-Boy? Did you ask your brother to show you the ropes or would you try to imitate what he was doing?"

SKI JUMP:"Right, right. My brother....you know, I didn't hang out too much with them because they were on another level but when they would leave I would sit there and try to imitate what I saw. And then when I went to spend the weekends at my aunt's house in the Bronx...those guys up there they would hit the floor, you know?  They weren't doing too much but the stuff they was doing was pretty kool."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So your brother and his friends would practice at your house? How would that go down?"

SKI JUMP:"Yeah, they'd practice before they would go out and hang out somewhere. My mother had a record player...stuff like that, you know? They would put James Brown on the record player. You know, we had one of them long reord players, the radio was on one side and on the other side was the turntable. The records were kept in the middle in a little cabinet." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"I guess those B-Boys that you encountered in the Bronx had a style that was dfferent from that of your brother and his friends in that they were taking it to the floor?"

SKI JUMP:"Taking it to the floor but they didn't have but so many moves back then, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"When was it that you saw them doing it?"

SKI JUMP:"Around 1974 going into 1975." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"And where did you meet them?"

SKI JUMP:"There was a small park right outside of my auntie's apartment building. Everybody would sit on the benches, you know, somebody would play music out the window of the apartment.  We were outside, doing stuff. We had nothing else to do because we couldn't go nowhere because we were too young to be walking around the neighbourhood."

SIR NORIN RAD:"How old were you at that time in 1974?"

SKI JUMP:"74 I was about 12. I was born in 1962."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Okay, please describe the process that lead to the creation of your crew?"

SKI JUMP:"Well, I would dance and some friends of mine in East Harlem saw me doing it and they would try to imitate the stuff I was doing because I started going down on the floor, you know? It was only a couple of floor moves that existed at that time. You know, people were doing the split. People would cross one leg behind the other one and your knee would hit the floor and they would spin when they came back up. It was a lot of gestures involved like acting like you hit somebody's head with a baseball bat......disrespectful little gestures, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Doing these gestures was like a remnant of the style of the first generation of B-Boys, right? All these intimidating moves..."

SKI JUMP:"Act like a dog and you walk over and you're peeing on him like he's a fire hydrant or a tree. Little stuff like that, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"When did you form your crew The Floor Lords which later became The Floor Masters?"

SKI JUMP:"I guess it had to be around 1976...somewhere around there 'cause I was coming out of junior high school, ready to go to high school and once I got to high school I met my boy E-Man and then I was in the same 9th grade class with MC Rayvon, MC Johnny Wa, DJ Spivey  (all from The Magnificent Seven from Harlem), DJ Master Don. All of us were in the same 9th grade class." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"The name of that high school was Julia Richman High School, right?"

SKI JUMP:"Yes. Once me and E-Man got together......you know, I wanted a crew and we had a few guys that liked what I was doing with the B-Boy thing and at the same time E-Man was pretty nice so we decided to get a little crew together and I just started calling us the Floor Lords. In fact, E-Man still calls himself "The Imperial Floor Lord". Then we had a little issue with a local gang that was called The Young Lords. Since they called themselves "Lords" they thought we were a gang, too. We didn't want to be associated with being a gang and so we decided to change our name to "Floor Masters" to avoid the beef. It's not that we were afraid of them or anything like that but it's no room for any problems like that. We're B-Boys, not gang members, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did E-Man get his name from that Jimmy Castor song?"

SKI JUMP:"I think so, yeah! E-Man stood for Everything Man. His real name is Eric, but I believe that's where he got this name from." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"How long did you run with that name Floor Lords before you changed it to Floor Masters?"

SKI JUMP:"We ran with that name for about a year or so but then once we started getting a bunch of members we soon had enough members to actually be a gang but we just weren't. We had a nice size crew because guys would come out of the woodwork wanting to be down with us. But we had to pick and choose who would be qualified to be in the crew. " 

SIR NORIN RAD:"What were you as the president and founder of the Floor Masters looking for in potential new members as far as skills and swagger are concerned? What were the criteria that had to be met?"

SKI JUMP:"The way you dressed... also your moves had to be different, we didn't want everybody to be dancing the same. Everybody had to have their own signature look and style. Not being afraid when you see that circle to get in the middle of that circle and throw down." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe E-Man's style of B-Boying!"

SKI JUMP:"He was aggressive with it, he would put it on you. We clicked as friends from the first day we met."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Who were some of the other prominent members of your crew? I think you've already mentioned Ice Man to me  who was the cousin of the legendary B-Boy Sondance from the Rock City Crew."

SKI JUMP:"Yeah, the Ice Man."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Do you recall how you recruited Spivey? Had it something to do with him being your classmate in Julia Richman High School?"

SKI JUMP:"Yeah, that was one of the things but then he also lived in Schomburg Plaza. Him, Rayvon, Johnny Wa....all of them lived in Schomburg Plaza. So we would go over there and hang out. They had this little Plaza Park where they had the benches....it was a big open area. So we would take a Sanyo radio there and somebody would have a little tape. So somebody would play the tape with the beats on it and it was on from right there, you know? Spivey was the DJ of the Magnificent Seven (from Harlem)."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Was Spivey B-Boying before he became a DJ?"

SKI JUMP:"Yes. He was very good in gymnastics........he did the backflip, the frontflip, all kinds of flips. He was very good at that." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"What about Skeeter, Ernie D and Swang? Where were they from?"

SKI  JUMP:"Yeah, Skeeter and Ernie D...they lived in some of the other projects in East Harlem. I got my guys from different projects: Jefferson Projects, East River Projects, Wagner Projects, Schomburg, I lived in UPACA Housing. In East Harlem everybody was everywhere so you got to know people in all projects."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did potential members have to go through some kind of initiation process like battling you or other members of the Floor Masters or would you decide whether they could join your crew from having seen them going off at a jam?"

SKI JUMP:"Seeing them going off at a jam, basically. We had a couple of guys who had to battle somebody to get in.  Like my boy Prince Haji. He battled Skeeter for his spot and he beat Skeeter but you know Skeeter was still our man so he was still down with us. It was just that Prince Haji came in the mix, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"How would you describe Prince Haji's style?"

SKI JUMP:"He was a kool cat. Originally his B-Boy name was Drac 'cause he had those fang teeth. His would stand out more than a lot of people's fang teeth....like a vampire. But he would dress really nice. He would dress in suits like Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours or whatever. He would wear those slim suits with the skinny ties. He was one of the best dressed kids in high school."

B-Boy Drac aka Prince Haji (The Floor Masters)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please name those spots that you and the Floor Masters would go to and dance at?"

SKI JUMP:"Chuck Center was one of the main spots when it came to B-Boys in Harlem. Mr. Souls, Clinton Center, down there by 1199...... Club 300. Then we would go to the project centers, we'd do something in UPACA, Wagner Projects, Johnson Projects...they threw a lot of parties.....Foster Projects really threw a lot of nice parties! That's Martin Luther King Projects but they called it Foster Projects. Taft, Jefferson....I mean there were a lot of spots. They would also jam in the parks in the same projects. Somebody would bring their equipment out and it was on from there."  

SIR NORIN RAD:"To hear all this about Harlem is really amazing to me because obviously there was a B-Boy scene as well in the mid- to late 1970ies."

SKI JUMP:"Right, you had other crews that started forming at that time. Then we would go to the Westside sometimes, they would have B-Boys over there, too. They would have the Renaissance Ballroom, the Audubon Ballroom....I mean they had a lot of places over there. The B-Boys from the projects of the Westside had a whole 'nother style. So we had to get in there and we had to prove ourselves 'cause them guys over there they didn't play games with you."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Let's talk about Chuck Center for a minute. Poison aka Clark Kent from the Herculords told me that he used to go there with the  (Ni**er )Twins and dance. It seems that place must have been one of the major spots in B-Boying back then."

SKI JUMP:"Yeah. Chuck used to have football teams for the youth to stay out of trouble. He gave them some place to go. Chuck won championships in every division. It was like sandlot football. He had the center afterwards and you didn't go to his center acting up. You had to respect the place, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe that place!"

SKI JUMP:"It was on the ground and it had enough room to fit a couple hundred people in there. You didn't have to go up or down no stairs, you would go straight in and when you went in there, you know, the DJ was on point. He was not cutting it up or nothing like that because that technique  hadn't developed at that time. The DJs at that time were still using the Disco style of mixing. The younger kids couldn't go into the nightclubs where the older people were 'cause the older people didn't want to see us dancing on the floor. They considered us to be cleaning the floor. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"Who were the DJs that played the music at Chuck Center?"

SKI JUMP:"I can't remember a lot of the names.  I only know one guy named White Cloud that used to play in there."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Were there also females in that Chuck Center party crowd or was it mainly males gathering there to test each others B-Boy skills?"

SKI JUMP:"There were a lot of girls in there!!! A lot of girls! That's what made the guys wanna compete and get in the middle of that ring! When you got the young teenage girls they were more impressed with B-Boying than the older girls." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"So trying to impress the girls was also an important part of B-Boying back then?"

SKI JUMP:"Yeah....It was about how you dressed, the way you carried yourself...that swag, you know? You had to make them girls wanna come get you."  

SIR NORIN RAD:"What happened when a cat got destroyed in front of the girls? Did that lead to violence at times?"

SKI JUMP:"Every now and then you would get one of them guys, you know? Because anybody that got burnt.....that's what it was called back in the days...."burning somebody"..... if you got burnt, yeah, your pride was hurt. That would tell you that you needed to go back to your practice spot and develop your skills some more or get back on the floor and come up with something else."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe the influence that James Brown had on the B-Boys in your era!"

SKI JUMP:"He was a huge influence because everybody wanted to know how to do the Split and stuff like that. James Brown, you know, he had the footwork! Nobody had better footwork than James!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"When you speak of footwork you don't refer to a three step or a six step which are done from a crouching position though, right?" 

SKI JUMP:"Dancing on top...it was about how slinky your legs can be, you know? Your feet moving at the same time.......You had to catch people's attention, you know? They would make a circle around you."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What's the story behind the inception of the Floormaster Tots? Well, first of all what is the correct name? Floormaster Tots or Tops?"

SKI JUMP:"Floormaster Tots! We had a bunch of younger guys that would follow us like Donald D, Dice and a couple of young latino guys like Lil Johnny Zip, Chino Chan.......they would always be around us because they lived in the same neighbourhood but they weren't old enough to hang out with us. They couldn't get into no parties so they couldn't go represent with us. You became a Floormaster if you were 13 or older....if you were qualified. I created the Floormaster Tots so that the younger guys had something going on and we could take our younger crew and battle other younger guys. You don't want to be no older teenager battling some 10-year-old kid, you know? So I got my Tots. Tots was more like when you eat tater tots. Like kids, you know? Some of them I guess they got the expression wrong and they started calling it the Floormaster Tops."

B-Boy Lil Zip (The Floor Master Tots) RIP

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you were also the one that created the Floormaster Tots?"

SKI JUMP:"Yeah, I created that myself."
 
SIR NORIN RAD:"Did you also pick their members?"

SKI JUMP:"In the beginning I selected the members.....all the guys I just named. My cousin Dice, Lil Johnny Zip and Donald D were like the top guys of the crew.  Johnny Zip....he lived in my building...he was more advanced than a lot of them because the boy can dance!!! He learnt real quick, you know? He became like the president of the crew. Some of their older brothers were some of the gang members in the neighbourhood but they was trying to do something to get away from the gang era, so you know they got their little crew." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Do you recall what made you recruit Lil Johnny Zip and Chino Chan?"

SKI JUMP:"Well, most of them would live in the same block and the same building. So we  outside just chilling in the block, they're in the block, too. I know a lot of them since they were in diapers. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"What were the hang out spots of your crew? And how did you spnd your time together besides dancing?"

SKI JUMP:"We had a couple of little spots, we would hang out in the projects....over in Jefferson Projects and Johnson, you know? Jefferson Projects had this cement bench that was half a circle. Everybody called it the half moon. We would go over there, you know, sit down as young boys, drink some beer, smoke a little bit and we would be in that half moon and breakdance. On my block on 119th Street & Lexington Avenue they had a building called 1800, they had a little area that you could sit upon that was gated in. They had a few tables and benches, we would sit in there and practice sometimes because everybody lived right there in the same block. So if you got tired all you had to do is go home. You didn't have to travel nowhere."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What are your top 5 B-Boy breakbeats?"

SKI JUMP:"I would say "It's Just Begun"....."Apache" of course, "Rock Steady" by Aretha Franklin, "Blow Your Head" by Fred Wesley & The J.B.'s, "Give It Up Or Turn It Aloose".

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe the feeling that you had when you walked into a party back then and heard these beats?"

SKI JUMP:"That would get your heart pumping. You would try to see who's in there first, you don't even start dancing, you will go around and see who's there first. Seeing certain people there you knew you would wind up in a battle. When they would see the brother with the ski goggles and the wide brim walk in, they knew he was coming in to do it. They knew me just by that because a lot of guys didn't wear the wide brim and especially didn't wear goggles. People saw me, they knew it was gonna go down because I was always in the spotlight with dancing. I used to do the Hustle as well and I was very good at that. I used to teach the Hustle. You know, you had the guys in the black neighbourhoods that would do the Hustle, then you had the latino guys, they were always good at that. That was always their thing but after a while a lot of the blacks started to learn how to do the Hustle and we had a whole 'nother style than them. And the Eastside Hustle differed from the Westside Hustle  'cause the Westside had this bounce when they were doing it. It was a pretty nice style."

SIR NORIN RAD:"I was told by Chip that at Kool Herc's parties they did a specific type of the Hustle, too. They even did that to some of the breakbeats like "The Mexican". To what kind of songs did you do your version of the Hustle in Harlem?"

SKI JUMP:"A lot of the times it was original Hustle records until they started coming out with breakbeats that would go along with it, you know?"

SIR NORIN RAD:"What kind of relationship did you have with the Executioners? Did you ever go against them?"

SKI JUMP:"The Floor Masters originally used to battle them and the Crusaders. The head of the Crusaders was actually my brother-in-law. A lot of us went to Julia Richman....as I said Julia Richman had a whole lot of Hiphop history. After a while Lil Zip and them they started having their own little battles and their own little things going on 'cause, you know, they were younger than us so they were more outgoing than us. After a while we started to lay back a little bit and we started travelling going to parties outside of East Harlem. We would go to the Bronx, go to the Westside. The Floor Master Tots would travel in a whole 'nother circle and they would get into all kind of battles."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Could you please elaborate on the Crusaders?"

SKI JUMP:"They came from Carver Projects and Washington Projects.....stuff like that. They had this one guy, his name was Rock....he had a child by my younger sister. Him, his brother Smoke, they used to drive this van around, full of them guys. They would go somewhere and they would come out of this van and breakdance against people. They were pretty good though I'm not gonna take any credit from them. Just like I have seen a lot of clips where a lot of latino brothers trying to act like people weren't recognizing them back in the b-boy days. Yes, a lot of them were there but my thing is: What year were you there?  I'm not gonna say no crew didn't exist because you don't know every crew that's out. There may be a crew somewhere that didn't have a big reputation but they were there kicking butt, you know?  But they weren't there in the early 70ies. They came along during 1977....somewhere around that time. That's when a  lot of latinos started coming in and them boys were real nice! Before that they used to do what you would call a latin style of Uprock and of course they would also do the Hustle."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did the Floor Masters wear specific crew colors? Like sweatshirts with the name of your crew on them in Old English letters or regular letters?"
  
SKI JUMP:"We had that back in the days because our colors were black and gold. When we got the sweatshirts...of course you can't find no gold sweatshirts....we had yellow sweatshirts with black letters on them that said, "THE FLOOR MASTERS" and they would have our name on them and we would have on black jeans."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What mad you quit B-Boying and pick up MCing?"

SKI JUMP:"A lot of us wanted to switch over because you already done proved yourself on the floor. So basically you wanted to get into MCing and get your rhyming on because you had DJ Lovebug Starski and DJ Hollywood and DJ Donald D (The Sapphire Crew) and all of them. Harlem was doing the MC thing and a lot of guys were afraid to go to the Bronx back in those days. A lot of guys that claim that they hung out in the Bronx actually did not. It was a handful that did. When you went up in the Bronx it was a whole 'nother flava!!!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Who were your major influences as far as MCing is concerned?"

SKI JUMP:"The Furious Four! I went to all the Flash parties! I would travel to the Bronx to see them. They were like The Temptations of Hiphop. Mele Mel was the baddest MC of the game! Everybody wanted to sound like Mele Mel! The whole Furious Four and then later the Furious Five was tight like that! You went to see the whole crew.  They were the first to do the steps, they were the first to have the five mics lined up on the stage. They just had a bad ass crew!  I also went to see The L-Brothers...before they became The Fantastic Romantic Five MCs.....Busy Bee, Master Rob, Kevie Kev and a girl named Smiley. And then I used to go to see DJ Breakout, DJ Baron and The Funky Four before they turned into the Funky Four Plus One More. Rahiem was down with the Funky Four. Those were my top three places to go."

June 6th, 1980: Ski Jump and his crew, The Gangster Five, compete in the "Battle of the Project DJs" at I.S. 201 (Shout outs to the flyer king Sureshot La Rock for hooking me up with the flyer!!)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Do you wish to give any shout outs at the end of this interview?"

SKI JUMP:"Shout outs to my crew.... the original Floor Masters and the Floor Master Tots and you know my Gangster Five MCs! Shout outs to all the guys that contributed to the whole Hiphop era! I don't care what color you were or what neighbourhood you came from. I wanna thank everybody for contributing to what we call Hiphop today."