“I’m not clinically tested, but my friends and my man tell me I have OCD because I can’t stop cleaning,” she says, laughing. “I have to have a clean environment.”
It might come as a surprise to fans of A-B-Girl – the same super-gangsta A-B-Girl who has had a reputation of roasting b-boys and b-girls alike worldwide for the past 11 years.
“I set goals with breaking. Part of it was, to be the illest, you have to practice and put it down hard. In order to blow up, you have to rep everywhere you go.”
Most b-boys and b-girls can remember the first time they saw A-B-Girl, whether it was on a video or at a battle, the same way they can remember the first time they saw b-boying. That moment of A-B-Girl-consciousness usually entails some kind of a “Damn, I didn’t know girls could move like that” vocalization followed by some kind of a silent, guilt-driven thought along the lines of “Damn, I need to practice more.”
So it can be hard to imagine A-B-Girl scrubbing a floor with anything other than powermoves.
Then again, it explains a lot. How else, other than with an abnormal attention to detail and a near-obsessive determination, would some short suburban Filipino kid with nicknames like Brattygail and Slavigail end up being one of the most respected and inspiring b-girls in the world?
“I put in a lot of time and effort and passion from the beginning,” A-B-Girl says. “I set goals with breaking. Part of it was, to be the illest, you have to practice and put it down hard. In order to blow up, you have to rep everywhere you go.”
Going hard. Keeping it clean. Cliché as they may sound, they’re values that A-B-Girl lives out every day, and it shows in everything from her passion to her goals – and her footwork.
A-B-Girl, known to friends and family as Abigail Pinili, was born on September 4, 1978 .
Growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey, she had little exposure to hip-hop, much less b-boying. However, she found her niche in house dancing – a dance that A-B-Girl says taught her how to battle in clubs by representing and rocking hard, regardless of the time, place, or opponent.
Over three years of battling in the house scene, A-B-Girl slowly gained insight into the underground hip-hop scene, eventually leading her to a New York club – then called Vinyl – where the Rock Steady Crew was battling. It was 1996, and A-B-Girl was 18.
“My friend introduced me, and [Crazy] Legs happened to start teaching,” A-B-Girl says. “I lucked out and fell into the hands of the right people.”
As fate would have it, it only made sense that Kinetic of the Arsonists would provide her with the quintessential name that would help define her identity for the next decade.
“At the time, I didn’t have a b-girl name and I was taught that people got their name for a reason in the breaking scene,” A-B-Girl recalls. “And I didn’t want to just come up with any name. And I heard ‘A-B-Girl,’ and I was like, ‘Oh shit, that made sense.’ I break. I’m a b-girl. My name is Abigail. And that’s pretty much it.”
But even with a picture-perfect entry into the b-boy and b-girl community, A-B-Girl still found herself on the grind, scraping up any free time and money she had and devoting it to practicing and buying gas and plane tickets.
Working fulltime at a Holiday Inn for four years while attending college fulltime at the County College of Morris in Randolph, she traveled to battles on the weekends to further her experience – and reputation.
“B-Boy Summit was the first event I went to,” A-B-Girl recalls. “I was starting to see how breaking was nationwide and worldwide. I wanted to be one of the illest. You have to travel, and that’s what I did. I didn’t want to get props just as a girl. Even battling in house clubs, I fucking brought it. I was kind of tomboyish growing up already. Not that you have to be a tomboy to be a good b-girl, but I brought it to people hard.”
Tomboy or not, now edging near the age of 30, it’s evident that A-B-Girl’s dedication to bringing it hard has paid off.
Her YouTube trailer from 2006 has been favorited over 1,000 times and viewed over 350,000 times, and her newest clip has brought her back into worldwide b-boy and b-girl consciousness.
She’s a 2008 recipient of the Rock Steady Crew’s Spy Award, an honor reserved for b-boys and b-girls with outstanding integrity, experience, innovation, and experience.
People from all over the world, both male and female, leave comments for her clips and on her MySpace praising her for everything from her inspirational story to her powermoves to her physical features.
A-B-Girl acknowledges her relative b-girl fame, but she shrugs it off as she attributes it to a facet of her personality and a matter of good timing.
“Um, okay, I’ll tell you this much. All that happening is not something I asked for. It just happened,” she says. “I’m just a friendly, charismatic kind of individual. I just befriended so many people in the scene. I didn’t really care for all the bullshit that went on. I was just one of those people who was cool with everybody.
“During the time when I first started coming up, girls weren’t doing what I was doing,” A-B-Girl continues. “Of b-girls, very, very few had the strength that I had. There wasn’t really girls around doing hard shit. I’ve always tried to humble myself. People always talk about ‘A-B-Girl, world renowned b-girl,’ but I always tell myself it’s not even like that. But I know I’ve been an influence worldwide.”
That influential reputation was tangibly manifested in a significant way in 2002, when A-B-Girl suddenly found that she had achieved professional international b-girl status, literally living off of dancing.
She was sponsored by Tribal. She was getting paid by Maxim and Bud Light to travel the world, dancing alongside Full Force’s Ronnie and Street Masters Crew’s Elmo, her b-boyfriend. Her travels were taking her across the globe, from Canada to Spain to Norway to Australia, and almost everywhere in between – including the Middle East.
On her 2002 tour, A-B-Girl found herself traveling across Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kuwait performing with Kurtis Blow for the US Army, Navy, and Air Force. Because 9/11 had occurred only nine months earlier, high security measures required that she and the other performers be escorted everywhere.
“I loved doing what I was doing,” A-B-Girl says. “Being a part of the scene. What we’re doing reminds them of home. Even if you’re a white boy from the country, and if you bring hip-hop they’ll know that. I’d do it again.”
Successful as she’s been, A-B-Girl is still hungry for more.
Though grateful for the opportunity to live off of b-boying for years and travel around the world for free, A-B-Girl says she’s passionate about striving to accomplish new goals that have arisen.
“It’s a hustle kind of thing. You do you one gig one time, and the next second it’s over. It’s not a regular 9 to 5 with regular pay,” A-B-Girl says. “If I could live off breaking for years and years, I would do it. I’m always going to break, until my legs fall off. But as I get older, I realize I have to take care of priorities.”
The priorities to which A-B-Girl refers are the same types of goals anyone else might have: Regular work. Health insurance. Job stability. A family.
Oh, and maybe a prodigy.
“I still give myself a good two or three years. But if my kids would like to do it, I’d train my kids,” A-B-Girl says. “Or maybe some b-girl or b-boy that I can bring up from scratch and them wind up being someone nasty. Maybe I’ll be teaching or something too. I can see myself evolving the scene.”
And indeed, A-B-Girl has the authority to speak about influencing and being influenced by the scene after having paid dues worldwide since she first emerged over a decade ago.
Like Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth, she reminisces and about the memories she’s accumulated since the good ol’ days – back before the Internet was blowing up, back when heads scrambled to get their dirty hands on VHS tapes. Memories of rocking ciphers with Style Elements and HaviKoro when they were first emerging on the scene. Memories of representing with her crew – then Problemz Kru and Supernaturalz, now Domestic Apes – in ciphers all across the country, meeting b-boys and b-girls everywhere she went. And especially memories of her family getting to see her perform on TV, letting them see dancing as a sustainable vocational option.
Even from a sheer technical perspective, A-B-Girl says she has noticed that the dance itself has fluctuated with several waves of different influences, and she suspects that it will continue to change.
“I think that breaking has never stopped evolving,” A-B-Girl says. “It was more of a simple kind of new style in the ‘80s, and power moves come up, which were still ill. Our generation in the late ‘90s until now, around when I first started, California was blowing up and evolving the dance. The East Coast tradition never changed. Then Texas blew up, and that helped evolved the dance.
“If I know you and you are a b-boy, and if you practice hard and cipher, then I’ll respect you.”
“Then it started to go back in a way that people started getting sick of seeing all that, going back to keeping it traditional, which is now. Now you see people that are well-rounded in so many other aspects. People are gonna get sick of all that foundation. Next, people are gonna start doing crazy blow-up shit, but more well evolved.”
But past and future aside, there’s plenty to keep A-B-Girl preoccupied in the present.
After all, not all the changes taking place in the b-boy scene in the past 11 years have been positive ones. Take, for instance, the explosion in popularity of b-boy related shit-talking online, from which A-B-Girl tries to stay away – though she admits it’s interesting.
“Why you gonna put your business all out there online?” she says. “I hate seeing that shit at jams. People have big mouths nowadays. I just wanna see what you got on the floor. People who talk the most shit will come to shake your hands after the battle. Depending on what part of the country you’re at or whatever, some people don’t take that lightly. You can get smacked in your face. B-boys have a certain character, but that doesn’t mean you have to put up a front or be somebody else. You’re acting fake.
“I think it’s not even breaking. It’s anywhere you go. If I’ma talk shit, I’ll do it among my friends,” A-B-Girl continues, laughing. “I won’t be out there talking smack in front of everybody.
And then there’s that hot button issue about “selling out” – the question of whether b-boys and b-girls should compromise their talents for popular media forms that might not portray the artform accurately.
Take, for instance, Step Up 2 The Streets, which shows respected b-boys like Crumbs and K-Mel as street dancers who vandalize studios and attack rival dancers.
A-B-Girl argues that it’s all about respect. In fact, the only reason she wasn’t in that particular movie, she says, was because of scheduling conflicts.
“I recognize all the b-boys and b-girls in there, and that makes me happy,” she says. “If people I know and others know are getting the work, then they’re doing something they love and they’re doing something great. If I know you and you are a b-boy, and if you practice hard and cipher, then I’ll respect you.
“I think [critics] are just hating, I’m sorry,” A-B-Girl continues. “Breaking has evolved now. Overseas, in Korea and Europe, b-boys and b-girls and poppers and lockers get paid to teach from the government. Over here in America, it’s not that easy. There’s good and bad to it, but I see more good out of it. I wouldn’t want it to be exploited, but people are more educated now about not getting jerked and all that.”
Then again, as much as times are changing, some things never change, even in the versatile b-boy scene. As fresh as many b-girls are nowadays, females are still likely to be targets of what some might consider sexist behavior and comments in ciphers or battles.
As with everything else, A-B-Girl continues to take it in stride and focuses on her dancing and her goals, giving everything she has.
“It’s up to the girl how you’re gonna handle it,” A-B-Girl says. “Anybody’s fair game whether you’re a girl or guy, as long as they don’t touch you. You have to know how to handle it in a cipher or a competition. When people did that to me, I’d say, ‘Fuck that,’ and burn him right back. Don’t cry and don’t take so much offense unless it does effect you by touching you. A girl can easily clown a guy right back.”
But hating, shit-talking, and clowning aside, A-B-Girl still maintains a personal determination and passion to be the best by her own standards.
She practices at least four or five times a week at one of several practice spots across New Jersey and Queens.
“I’m a foundational b-girl, and I also have power and can also do style and hard shit,” she explains. “I’m not a trick kind of b-girl. I’m well rounded in everything else. Because I’m strong the way I practice, I practice power really hard. And I started with foundation.”
She pauses to think.
“I have hard moves. I don’t know how to describe it,” she concludes.
And years of sessioning, battling, and touring hasn’t slowed A-B-Girl from focusing in on her passion of dancing, whether it’s on or off the dance floor. She usually takes vitamins, eats healthily, stays hydrated and tells herself to do her stretches to keep her body in prime b-girling condition.
But then again, she plays as hard as she trains.
It’s not just her training that she keeps simple and clean – she carries the same mindset to her other hobbies and activities, whether it’s kicking it with her friends and family or with her two dwarf hamsters, Bill Murray and Carl Lewis.
“We keep it very simple,” she says. “We ain’t that old. We do it while we can.”
And occasionally, she admits, she does splurge. During her downtime on the weekends, she’ll probably be chilling with her friends or family, watching movies, or going out to eat.
“I do try to watch what I eat, but I do eat,” A-B-Girl admits. “Some days I eat whatever I want because I’m fat like that. I’m a little person but I’m a fat girl inside. Fried chicken, candy, cookies.”
But then again, even on weekends, maybe it’s that suspected OCD that pushes A-B-Girl to work a little overtime, still dancing at clubs or lounges.
And though being obsessively compulsive about anything carries some negative connotations, perhaps for A-B-Girl, it’s a blessing that gives her the drive to pursue what she loves. After all, at the end of the weekend, it always comes back to the same things: keeping things clean, dancing – and keeping her dancing clean.
“During the week, it’s all about breaking,” A-B-Girl says. “Practicing is my workout. When I work, I train. I don’t dillydally at practice. I train hard with my people. If you’re a true hardcore b-boy or a b-girl, it really is a break life.”
A-B-Girl sends shout-outs and thanks to Domestic Apes, Elmo from Street Masters, Problemz Kru, Supernaturalz, and Rock Steady Crew.
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San Francisco Preview Screening of B-Girl. Saturday January 23rd, 2010 http://bit.ly/7KlrZo
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