by
Detroit saw some love on a recent episode of the "Price is Right" when contestant Andre Cazeno, who grew up watching the show with his grandmother on the city's west side, did the Boss Up Dance on stage in a Tigers jersey.
For the uninitiated, the Boss Up Dance, AKA the Blade Dance, is a downward fist pump popularized by slain rapper Blade Icewood in the video to his early aughts track “Boy Would You (Boss Up).”
Cazeno, 44, calls it an “if you know you know” gesture — a “signature way to recognize someone is really in tune with Detroit culture. Like, no one else is doing that dance ever.”
Detroit recognized. A clip of Cazeno on the show’s May 16 episode went viral after it was picked up by various local meme and culture accounts. We caught Cazeno grinning widely and pulling his arms to his chest on @DetroitRapDaily's Instagram.
It was a welcome “two hours of fame” that prompted calls from old friends, classmates and “cousins I didn’t even know I had,” he said.
Some did throw shade, however: “Whose uncle is this?” “That’s the Shelby Township version.”
True, Cazeno grew up in the suburbs — Southfield specifically. But so, in part, did Blade.
The two were classmates back when the rapper was just Darnell Lindsay, a kid “involved with the streets” who Cazeno says you knew better than to ask too many questions.
“He started to run the world in middle school,” Cazeno recalled. “If you had a girlfriend and she met Darnell Lindsay, you didn’t have a girlfriend anymore.”
By high school, “You don't mess with Darnell, you don't ask Darnell what he and the family do,” said Cazeno. “You just know he’s coming to school in a mink coat and Rolex watch.”
Lindsay was killed in 2004, following beef between his Street Lordz rap crew and the Eastside Chedda Boyz.
Cazeno went on to build a career at Ford, where he's a marketing and sales manager covering the western U.S.
He and his wife live in California and plan to divy up his "Price is Right" winnings. Cazeno gets the boxing gym (shout out to Eastern Market's Jabs, he says), Janille gets the three Yves Saint Laurent bags, and the grill goes in the backyard.
As for the electric guitar, neither knows how to play, but they’ll hold onto it in hopes of eventually taking lessons with the daughter they expect next month.
