America’s Best Dance Crew Season 5: Week 1

We are finally into the National competition with the remaining 9 crews competing for a chance to be crowned America's Best Dance Crew. This is where the season would usually kick off in the past, but I'm sure due to the success of the show, we were shown 3 regional episodes before getting to this point, but this is where it all matters. The final 9 crews all performed last night without any sort of assigned challenge, which we'll be seeing in the coming weeks, so this was basically just a "show us your stuff" round. I guess it was a "Chart Topper Challenge, which was basically just having the groups use popular songs. And while some of the groups showed us exactly what they are made of, some of the other groups fell short. I was pretty disappointed in the group that the judges let go last night only because I was such a fan of them in the regional competition, but that's how this show works, if you have a bad performance you're going to be going home. So with that said, let's get to the groups. Since this is the first round I'm going to keep my recap a little shorter for each group, otherwise this post will go on for days.

First up was Hype 5-0 performing to a master mix featuring Imma B by the Black Eyed Peas. They impressed me in the regionals, but only in their battle performance and while they were pretty good last night I didn't think it was anything spectacular. Sure everyone's nervous for the first show, but their moves seemed to be a little simple and while most of their stuff was clean there were definitely a few bobbles throughout the performance. The judges didn't think they were that great either and sent them to the bottom 3 to battle for survival. Check out the other rundowns after the jump.

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Americas Best Dance Crew Season 5: Regionals – The East

Tonight we got to experience the groups from the East coast and personally I was not disappointed. Overall the caliber of groups from the East seemed to be better than the South, but of course not everyone can make it through to the finals, so let's get right to it.

The first group up was Legendary Seven which is actually made up of 2 previous members of Status Quo. They came out and performed to a master mix of "I Can Transform Ya" by Chris Brown featuring Lil Wayne and if you know that song you know that it's pretty high energy with lots of pretty hard beats, but with that said it's a good song to do a high energy routine to and that's exactly what these guys did. Right off the bat I was already more impressed by these guys than any of the groups that went last night. I'm a sucker for the high energy routines though. I thought the idea of transforming into a helicopter at the beginning was really cool and came together perfectly smooth. The whole routine was clean and tight, but apparently the judges didn't think the same and they were sent to the bottom 3.

Next up was Draztik who performed to a master mix featuring Britney Spears' "Shattered Glass". At first they seemed to have a very similar style as Legendary Seven, lots of energy and fast movement, but they seemed to have more actual coreography than Legendary Seven did which the judges seemed to like, and I did too. The only thing they were kind of lacking was in the stunt department and apparently that was enough for the judges to drop them down to the bottom 3 and forced them to battle against Legendary 7.

The rest of the group breakdowns can be found after the jump.

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America’s Best Dance Crew Season 5: Regionals – The South

America's Best Dance Crew is back for it's 5th season which means that we'll be here to comment and critique the competition week by week giving our predictions and thoughts on each of the performances. Last season I got a lot of shit for some of my predictions so hopefully I can stir up just as much conversation this year. So without further adieu lets get to it.

Season 5 instantly starts out a little different than season 4, for one Shane Sparks has been replaced by Omarion. If you're confused as to why Shane was replaced, it may have something to do with the fact that he was charged with 8 counts of child molestation... pretty serious stuff. As far as I know nothing has been proven and his lawyers assure us (as they always do) that the charges are baseless and the truth will come out in the end, but in the meantime MTV apparently didn't feel that it was right to put Shane on the show so they replaced him with Omarion. Before seeing tonight's episode I was open to the change in judges, even though Shane is by far my favorite judge, but after seeing tonight's show, I may actually prefer listening to Lil Mama over him. I guess we'll just have to see how he does, it was the first show so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. The second thing that's a little different is the format of the start of the show. Instead of jumping right into the first week with the final 9 groups already competing, we get to see the top 5 groups from each region battle it out for 3 spots in the finals and tonight was The Dirty South. Once the 5 groups all performed the judges chose the top 2 who automatically move forward and then the remaining 3 had to battle it out for the final spot. Let's get to the performances (after the jump).

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