Vin Diesel's breakdancing video reminds everybody of his old school hip hop cred. The action star is 51-years old and grew up in New York City, which places him right in the middle of the birth of hip hop. Vin Diesel, aka Mark Sinclair, has often talked about his days growing up as an aspiring break-dancer back in the mid-1980s. Back then, he was dancing in the streets (not like David Bowie and Mick Jagger), performing at Columbus Circle and Washington Square Park, which Diesel fondly calls his first gig.

To get into clubs for free, Vin Diesel started doing security so that he could spend his nights off dancing. He's obviously a kid in the breakdancing video, so some of his moves are a little off, but they're much better than a lot of people can do, and a lot better than his first attempt at rapping. Diesel was actually in the studio with underground music legend Arthur Russell, who was producing a track for him in the 1980s. Little snippets of audio have leaked from the session and it proves that Diesel is a much better breakdancer than MC.

In a 2015 interview, Vin Diesel claimed that he was once a dancer for the Beastie Boys back in the 1980s. However, Adam Horovitz, aka Ad-Rock says that it never happened. Horovitz went on to say that Diesel ""Vanilla Ice'd," which is apparently another phrase for bending the truth, something that the Iceman did a lot of back in the early 1990s. What Horovitz thinks happened, is that since Diesel was under age at the time, that possibly his friend and former bandmate, Adam Yauch, aka MCA, snuck him into the club, stating that he was with their crew.

Vin Diesel hasn't addressed the Beastie Boys claims since then, but the group only really ever had a woman dancing on stage in a cage at that time, which is not something that we can really picture Diesel doing. However, that doesn't mean that Diesel wasn't around all of the amazing music that was happening in New York City at that time. The xXx actor even admits that he is still friends with his breakdancing partner from the video.

As for how Vin Diesel made an attempt at rapping, producer/guitarist Gary Lucas set up the recording session because he could tell that Diesel was a star. Even back in the 80s as a kid working at an ice cream parlor, Diesel had the star quality that he has now, though it took Hollywood a while to catch up. However, once he made it into the vocal booth, it was apparent that Diesel's talents had nothing to do with rapping. With that being said, he was only a kid, and he's now one of the biggest action stars on the planet. You can watch Vin Diesel's breakdancing moves and hear his rapping skills below, thanks to the Crazy Laugh Action YouTube channel.