Songfacts®:

• "Breakin'... There's No Stopping Us" is the theme song to the 1984 movie Breakin', the first feature film centered on breakdancing, which along with rap music, was a pillar of hip-hop culture. This was a time when both rap and breakdancing were bleeding into the mainstream but still considered by many to be a passing fads. Breakin' helped establish breakdancing as an evolution in modern dance that was here to stay - it helped that Michael Jackson did a dazzling moonwalk on national TV a year earlier.
  
  Breakdancing was often done to rap music, but most radio stations wouldn't play rap, so "Breakin'... There's No Stopping Us" avoided it, with melodic singing over electronic beats and keyboards (it is infused with scratching and Vocoder stabs that are markers of hip-hop). This helped earn the song airplay and make it a hit, rising to #9 in the US and #5 in the UK. It built a lot of buzz for the movie, which became a cultural touchstone.
• Ollie & Jerry are drummer Ollie Brown and R&B singer Jerry Knight; they wrote the song specifically for Breakin' after the film was shot. The subtitle, "There's No Stopping Us," comes from a scene when the star, Shabba Doo (Adolfo Quiñones), says, "They're not gonna stop us now." Brown and Knight built from there, making it a song about overcoming obstacles with bold confidence.
  
  "We were writing that song about us," Knight told Billboard. "The music business is full of hardships. It may be the title track of the movie, but we can relate to it."
• Jean-Claude Van Damme was an extra in the movie, showing up as a muscle-bound spectator during a dance scene. That scene landed in the music video, so you can see him in the background. He became an action star a few years later with the movie Bloodsport.
• Ollie Brown and Jerry Knight were recruited separately to work on the song, but they had known each other a while - the pair had previously worked together in the R&B group Raydio; Knight was a founding member, singing vocals on their 1977 hit "Jack and Jill," while Brown was a session drummer on all of Raydio's albums. Knight was also a solo artist, best known for the R&B hits "Overnight Sensation" (1980) and "Perfect Fit."
• The song helped the Breakin' soundtrack go Platinum, selling over a million copies. The soundtrack also includes "Ain't Nobody" by Rufus & Chaka Khan, and song called "Reckless" that features a rap by the little-known Ice-T.
• In the movie, the song plays in a very Flashdance-like scene were the dancers win over a panel of incredulous judges with their transgressive dancing. The judges are horrified at first but soon become enthralled.
• Ollie & Jerry stuck around to record "Electric Boogaloo," the title track to the movie's sequel, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, which was released later in 1984, just seven months after the first film. The film didn't do very well and the song was just a minor hit, peaking at #57 in the UK and reaching #45 on the R&B chart. The duo split after the song's release; Ollie Brown returned to session work, and Jerry Knight remained active as a songwriter, co-writing the 1986 hit for The Jets, "Crush On You." Knight died of cancer in 1996 at age 44.