Transcriber: Denise RQ Reviewer: Elisabeth Buffard
Ben(B-Tek) Chung: How's everybody doing today?
It's a blessing to be here
to just be able to share with you guys a piece of inspiration that we have.
I just want to start off by asking: --I even ask myself, you know--
what is possible nowadays?
We were born in the 80s, '80s babies, grew up around that time,
everybody knows kind of what I am talking about.
Obviously, we got a little edge to us,
you know, grew up in the gang violence, seen the drug dealing,
the bad parts and also the good things.
Just because we are from these urban areas,
doesn't necessarily mean that it's all bad,
we just, for some reason, became more creative with what we had,
we became artists,
we became inspired.
So, obviously, myself, I was like the baby of the group.
Growing up around that time, we got to watch, I don't know
if you guys are familiar with the beach streets and the breaking,
and watching out hip-hop... --yeah, please, please, it's a good time!
(Applause)
We were born into this culture
and I didn't realize that we were born into this culture called hip-hop.
And for those of you who don't know,
hip-hop, yes, was birthed and created on the East Coast, in the Bronx,
(Applause)
but it created this ripple effect and it inspired the world.
And we are just one of the many that have been inspired by this movement,
and so that's what we started to do,
we didn't understand what there was out there for us
but we had to keep pushing,
so we became these 'garage kids,' that's what we were called.
We didn't have a dance studio, we didn't have hardwood floors,
we made it work.
And myself, being 10 years old, seeing these guys run around...
We would be at house parties and we would be in the garage,
dancing and fellowshiping...
Joe "Punkee" Larot: ...and oil stains on our shoes!
B.C.: ...on the carpets and things like that, oil stains and...
We used to wear helmets,
because we didn't have the hardwood floors,
we didn't ever dance in front of a mirror,
we didn't go to a performing art school,
I didn't even know those existed at the time.
And what's beautiful is that we had a piece of carpet,
it wasn't red and it wasn't round, but it was a lot dirtier than this,
(Laughter)
because a lot of our cars were leaking and things like that,
and we had to make it work.
But we were these garage kids in this garage,
labbing, creating, having an idea.
He has an idea, he has a philosophy, I have a concept
and we were in the garage and we tried to stay out of trouble.
Try to stay out of trouble but for the most part, obviously we did,
otherwise we wouldn't be here today.
We put this crew together, called The Jabbawockeez, in 2003,
so we are fastforwarding now.
It's a collective of different individuals from up and down California;
different ideas, different dreams, but also very similar.
One person that I would say, Gary Kendall --we call him Gee 1--
he was like our Yoda, and he really believed that...
J. L.: ...make it possible! B.C.:...we can.
He believed that we can take over the world,
he literally said that in a prayer, and I am here in a circle and he's like:
"You guys, you guys need to stop playing around,
I've been working so hard."
This guy, Gee, he used to be a backup dancer for Stevie B.,
he wanted to battle MC Hammer,
so he's a little bit older than myself but he really saw the talent that we had,
and he would just tell us we can take over the world, and we were like,
"That's pretty bold, Gee." (Laughter)
J. L.: I don't know about the world... B.C.: The world, Gee?! The world?
But I had to ride with them, I have to believe the things
that I don't necessarily see in front of me.
I have to sometimes lean on my brother to enlighten me,
I don't know everything, he doesn't know everything, none of us do.
So, ultimately, that's what we leaned on.
I'm like, "OK, Gee. Whatever you want to do. So, let's ride."
I love this, he knows that we love it.
We auditioned for "America's Got Talent," we got shut down in the second round,
J.L.: Lost, lost.
B.C.: We auditioned for ABDC,
Gary Kendall actually realized that he was sick,
passed away after we found out that we made the audition on ABDC.
We got on ABDC and rapped for Gee,
rapped for our history and our family and everybody that supported us,
and we won.
And from there on, it's been a blur.
We've been meeting everybody that we've been looking up to on TV,
our dreams have been coming true, it's alive, it's happening right now,
and that was impossible to us, that was impossible.
Now, we believe that it's possible,
and it would bring us a tremendous amount of joy,
for these underdog stories to be told to us one day,
so that we, together kin, make these things more probable.
From impossible to possible, to probable.
We are The Jabbawockeez, you guys, walk as one!
Thank you so much!
(Applause)