Up Rock music

New to the dance? Start with What is Up Rock? This page is about the records.

What music do rockers dance to?

Funk and soul records, and certain rock songs. Hip hop came later, in the 1980s.

Not every record is for a battle. “Sex Machine,” “Give It Up or Turn It Loose,” “Willie Chase” and “Castles in the Sky” are battle records; “Blow Your Head” is a record for the cypher. Dancing Up Rock to a breaking record does not make an Up Rock battle.

At one 2019 battle each rocker picked a song and a third person picked one for both, so that it was fair.

The whole record

Rockers dance the whole record, from beginning to end. That takes stamina. A record can run from three or four minutes to ten or fifteen, and rockers may go through several records in a row.

In the rockers’ own accounts this is the line against breaking: Up Rock uses the music in its entirety, while breaking is danced to the break of a song.

On the break

The break is the drum or instrumental passage of a record, and it is where an Up Rock battle heats up. Rockers freestyle or do routines until the break comes in. Then the two try to burn each other, with the jerk or the burn. Through the rest of the music the rocker is free to freestyle or burn.

The music is the guideline for when to execute a jerk, burn, or freestyle.

The fundamentals page shows how the moves sit on the record.

Acting out the song

Rockers act out the lyrics and the sounds of a record, and turn them against the opponent. Even a sound like a spaceship can become a burn. So can anything a rocker picks up from a sound or a word on the record.

Sometimes rockers dance to the words more than to the music.

Some rockers hold that the ones who know the music best are the best dancers.

The DJs

Because rockers danced complete songs, the Brooklyn DJs who played for them blended and mixed instead of scratching just the break, by the account of one crew’s members.

Many rockers were DJs themselves, and many rock crews were also DJ crews or production companies. One rocker who DJed would put on “Just Begun” to find out whether there were any breakers or up rockers in the room. As one rocker remembers the old jams, the night ran from disco to funk and salsa, then a set for uprocking, and slow jams to close.

Uprock songs

The classic is “It’s Just Begun” by the Jimmy Castor Bunch (1972). Some records stick to the dance: when “The Mexican” played, by one account, dancers in the crowd began uprocking within five seconds.

Each of these records is named for rocking by at least two sources.

Artist	Title
James Brown	“Give It Up or Turn It Loose”
James Brown	“Sex Machine”
The Jimmy Castor Bunch	“It’s Just Begun”
Incredible Bongo Band	“Apache”
Babe Ruth	“The Mexican”
The Blackbyrds	“Rock Creek Park”
Herman Kelly & Life	“Dance to the Drummer’s Beat”
Booker T. & the MG’s	“Melting Pot”
Yellow Sunshine	“Yellow Sunshine”
Rare Earth	“Get Ready”
Soundtrack (one list files it under Isaac Hayes)	“Shaft in Africa”
Baby Huey & the Babysitters	“Listen to Me”
Not named	“Castles in the Sky”
The Temptations	“Cloud Nine”
Soul Searchers	“We the People”
Archie Bell & the Drells	“Tighten Up”
Soul Searchers	“Get a Whistle & Blow”
The Jackson 5	“Hum Along and Dance”
The Jackson 5	“Life of the Party”
James Brown	“Get on the Good Foot”
Cymande (listed as “Cyamide”)	“Bra”
Manu Dibango	“Soul Makossa”
ESG	“UFO”
Gil Scott-Heron	“In the Bottle”
Rufus Thomas	“Funky Penguin”