Drill history.

DJ Kool Herc, Cindy Campbell

Kool Herc's Sedgwick Avenue party

DJ Kool Herc throws a back-to-school party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx. The breakbeat extends. Hip-hop begins.

Larry Levan

Larry Levan begins residency at Paradise Garage

Levan opens Paradise Garage in Manhattan. Garage house — and the dance that goes with it — has a home.

Crazy Legs, Rock Steady Crew

Rock Steady Crew's first international tour

Crazy Legs and Rock Steady cross the Atlantic. Breaking lands in Europe as a documented form, not a rumor.

Frankie Knuckles, Derrick May, Steve Silk Hurley

House music crosses the Atlantic

Chicago and Detroit producers — Frankie Knuckles, Derrick May — land on UK pop radio. House becomes global.

House of Xtravaganza, House of LaBeija, House of Ninja

Paris Is Burning enters the mainstream

Jennie Livingston's documentary brings the Harlem ballroom scene — and voguing — to a wide audience for the first time.

Crystal Waters, Basement Boys

Crystal Waters releases Gypsy Woman

An underground house track crosses into mainstream pop. The house dancers get a moment on the world stage.

Wu-Tang Clan

Wu-Tang's debut and the b-boy aesthetic

Enter the Wu-Tang lands. Kung-fu films, Staten Island, and b-boy gear all interlock as a coherent visual language.

Lil Jon, Ying Yang Twins, Dem Franchize Boyz

Crunk choreography wave hits MTV

Lil Jon and the Atlanta sound carry a new dance vocabulary — stankee leg, lean wit it rock wit it — onto cable TV.

Chief Keef

Chief Keef's early tracks define Chicago drill

A teenager from the South Side of Chicago — Keith Cozart — starts uploading the music that becomes drill.

Misty Copeland, American Ballet Theatre

Misty Copeland promoted to principal at ABT

American Ballet Theatre promotes Misty Copeland — the first Black woman principal in the company's seventy-five years.

Pop Smoke, 808Melo

Pop Smoke meets 808Melo

A Canarsie teenager named Bashar Jackson sends a recording to a UK producer he found on YouTube. The track that comes back becomes Welcome to the Party.

Fivio Foreign

Fivio Foreign drops Big Drip

A Brownsville rapper turns a viral Instagram clip into the first true mainstream Brooklyn drill record outside Pop Smoke's catalog.

Pop Smoke

Pop Smoke is killed in Los Angeles

Bashar Jackson is murdered at 20. The drill scene loses its loudest voice. The dancers carry it.

Jalaiah Harmon

Jalaiah Harmon credited for Renegade

A fourteen-year-old in Atlanta gets credited for the Renegade dance after weeks of viral uptake by white TikTok creators.

Sheff G, 22Gz, Sleepy Hallow

Sheff G and 22Gz cement the Flatbush sound

No Suburban Pt. 2 lands. The Flatbush wing of Brooklyn drill — Sheff G, 22Gz, Sleepy Hallow — defines its own pocket.

Pop Smoke

Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon

Pop Smoke's posthumous album debuts at number one. The Dior beat becomes a generational dance soundtrack.

(scene-wide)

Block cyphers go viral on TikTok

Phone-camera clips of unnamed dancers from East Flatbush, Brownsville, and ENY hit a global audience for the first time.

Fivio Foreign, Kanye West, Lil Wayne

B.I.B.L.E. — Fivio Foreign's debut album

Fivio's full-length lands with Kanye co-production. The scene's first true major-label moment that lives entirely in the BK pocket.

Sheff G, Sleepy Hallow

Sheff G is indicted

RICO charges land against several Flatbush drill artists. The scene confronts what it costs to make this music.

Camille A. Brown

Camille A. Brown named MacArthur Fellow

Camille A. Brown joins the MacArthur class of 2022. Black social dance gets the country's most public choreography prize.

(scene-wide)

The dance gets a name: sturdy

What was called the BK bounce or just 'the dance' picks up the name sturdy. The label sticks.

(scene-wide)

Sturdy goes international

Dance schools in Paris, London, Lagos, and Johannesburg start teaching Brooklyn sturdy. The diaspora takes it home.

B-Girl Ami, B-Boy Phil Wizard, scene-wide

Breaking debuts at the Paris Olympics

B-boys and b-girls compete for medals at La Concorde. The form goes from playgrounds to the podium in a single summer.

Pop Smoke

Five years since Pop Smoke

The Brooklyn scene marks five years since Bashar Jackson's killing. The catalog plays on a loop across the borough.

The Avenue Lean as Vocabulary

How a single move — the slight knee drop that started in East Flatbush block cyphers — became the foundational vocabulary of Brooklyn drill dance.

Why the Cypher Is the Real Classroom

Dance studios teach steps. Cyphers teach what to do when the steps run out and you are still in the circle with thirty seconds of beat left.