A Baaaaaad Mother

This is an example of something rare: good academic writing.

From Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York (Oxford, 2009), by Joseph G. Schloss

"B-boying began with the break, the part of a song where all instruments except the rhythm section fall silent and the groove is distilled to its most fundamental elements. In the 1970s, when kids began throwing rebel street parties in the Bronx, people from different neighborhoods came together for the first time since the gangs had taken over, and there was one thing they all agreed on: the break was an opportunity. It was a moment on a record that was so powerful that it could actually overpower day-to-day reality and become an environment unto itself. The power of the break was so evident that DJ Kool Herc even began to play two copies of the same record on separate turntables, repeating the break over and over again, giving the dancers more time to showcase their most devastating moves. Before long, Herc and other pioneering deejays like Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash were playing nothing but breaks. And the dancers responded by creating a new dance form that was nothing but devastating moves: b-boying. Some even began dropping to the ground and spinning around. Hip-hop music and b-boying were born as twins, and their mother was the break."