They’d study what the breakers, krumpers, and contemporary dancers were doing, and figure out how to mix that up with their style. Tebza’s of the view that South African dancers should follow the same model, instead of focusing solely on their scenes.

This mix of dance styles is most evident in breakdancing, which has been around in South Africa since the early eighties, when flicks such as the Charlie Ahearn production Wild Style were making in-roads into the country via VHS tapes from family members who'd spent time overseas.

The elements – breaking, emceeing, deejaying, graffiti, and knowledge of self – solidified when groups such as Prophets of Da City and Black Noise started coming to the forefront. POC's Ram1, for example, was foundational to the culture of b-boying, and inspired the next generation of dancers through his infusion of the motions made by Khoi and San people during their rituals. For instance, he found creative ways to incorporate the ‘mantis pose’ often depicted in rock art paintings with popular kung-fu moves he’d see on television. This had the overall effect of setting him apart as one of the livest dancers from South Africa. The response was immediate; people ate it up, and dancers today still hold him in high regard. Nowadays, his heart is set on unearthing talent from rural areas which mostly get overlooked when opportunities arise in the form of dance competitions and so forth.

Whatever difficulties dancers faced during those heady days were compounded by Apartheid-sanctioned policies which sought to keep citizens segregated. Black Noise's Emile YX? speaks of how those years of unrest made it impossible for him to separate his dancing from his student activism.

"Because I b-boy...the main thing about hip-hop is that you throw down. You think and then you do. Now that I'm older, we talk much more, so I want to become an MC too - you can say shit and not be held accountable. But b-boying is about whatever you're thinking, if you say something you have to do it," says Emile YX?.

He continues: "With Black Noise, a lot of what we were saying, we needed to implement, because we were getting [...] a lot of the young people growing up, protesting, had no idea of the depth of the White Supremacy within."

One could argue that the political consciousness and activism ascribed to Cape Town hip hop was a direct result of the state of affairs back then. However, the repression was countrywide, which also means that the consciousness wasn't exclusive to Cape Town hip hop. Cats were catching fumes from spraycans at the same time that they were dodging fumes from teargas in all the major metropoles.

“We would always take the train into the city centre to go battle other crews. At the time the stations and the cars were segregated based on race, and we would go to the white side of the station to battle crews there until the security and police came to chase us away. Then we would move to another part of the city centre and do it all again," says DJ Ready D, himself a POC member who started out breaking before the decks and the raps took over.

Ready D also speaks about the material differences between b-boys when he was starting out, a feature which continues to impact the scene to this day.