Ok this this the meat and potatoes for those of you who don't have a clue on what this dance is about. Poppin is basically a dance where the muscles are contracting and relaxing to the beat of the music. With this technique with the muscles, the outcome is a jerky illusion effect. The dance itself, if done correctly, is intended to come off as a funky robot dancer to the audience. It's earliest origins derive from the robot, mime, and a dance called locking. It is often commonly called pop lockin as more of a familiar slang term that started in the 70's. Poppin's base location in which it was born is California. To be more specific, Its roots date all the way back to the late 60's out of the northern California area(bay area), in areas such as San Francisco, Oakland, and Richmond. Now as you are reading this section the overall term known as "poppin" was not originally the term for the dance in the Bay area. See different areas in the bay called it different names and it wasn't labeled as the term "poppin" until 1976. Pre-dating 1976, the dance was known as boogaloo, robot, and strut which were the main names that came straight from the Bay. In relation to those names they were different variations of the dance but all had the same effect. Fact is that when money and politics got involved, the dance was coined the name "poppin" by a dancer named Sam Soloman aka Boogaloo Sam. Sam is from Fresno, Ca but moved to long beach in 1978. There is a lot of controversial confusion with Boogaloo Sam being the creator of this dance. He is mainly responsible for innovating the dance and taking it to new levels with his VERSION of what was already being done in the Bay. He is also responsible for the being the first to call the dance "poppin." However he did not create the dance and that's where the controversy began to surface across the culture. The starting point of the controversy began as Sam started his first group known as the Electronic Boogaloo Lockers. The name was later on shortened as "Electric Boogaloos" when Sam and the group made their debut on the hit tv show "Soul Train." The year was 1978 and the history of dance coming from bay area in the late 1960's was pretty much non existent due to Sam's success with the Electric Boogaloos.
There are many different sub styles of poppin that took affect in the late 70's going into the early 80's.Styles such as waving, animation, tuttin, scarecrow, and strobing are just to name a few. Sam's success with the eb's(Electric Boogaloos) began to die down after the explosion of break dancing in New York. New York started dominating the scene when they came up with their version of poppin better known as "electric boogie." The name itself is like I said THEIR version of poppin. Under the direction of marketing electric boogie, the east coast decided to coin it under break dancing to make money. The thought of it sounded clever as it did reach the mainstream more but overall demolished the dance in years to come later. Poppin was now seen in movies, commercials, and music videos. Movies such as "Breakin," "Breakin 2," and "Beat Street" became popular in 1984 amongst households. Dancers such as Boogaloo Shrimp, Poppin Pete, Skeeter Rabbit, Cooley Jaxson, Poppin Taco and Shabba Doo were the big names from Cali that represented that era in poppin. As the success with mainstream attention began to take poppin to new heights, it died down quickly in the late 80's going into the early 90's.
For a while poppin was pretty much played out going into the 90's. All the street cred was stashed away yet to be found. It was shown on tv rarely and soul train pretty much moved on to the next big dance at that time. Many of the OG's had regular 9 to 5 jobs as opposed to living a flashy celebrity lifestyle. It even got to the point where if you were caught poppin somewhere you would get clowned. A drastic downfall indeed but Sam decided to do something about it. In the late 90's Sam and the EB's made the ultimate attempt to revive poppin by re-introducing the dance to the world. It was a huge task to take on but it didn't go un-noticed. With the revival, EB's member, Poppin Pete, put poppin and lockin under a new term called funk styles in 2000. The term itself is supposed to describe the dances being put in the genre of funk era music instead of hip hop. Pete felt it was necessary to do due to the confusion New York caused with break dancing and poppin being in under the same category. The idea of it was clear cut and dry but it also falsely re-introduced the eb's as the primary poppin source and therefore not acknowledging the bay area. In addition to that, it was a method for the EB's to make money off the dance. Poppin now remains predominately underground but it has slowly reached it tv again. Poppin has spread across the world especially in target areas such as Japan, Canada, Sweden, France, and Korea. Its revival has reached tv programs such as MTV's Americas Best Dance Crew and So You Think You Can Dance. Even theaters are showing poppin in movies again. This may sound like the ultimate comeback for the dance, but it's true roots still remain underground as the Bay created it.
