Urban Dance Squad first got together in 1986, at a jam session in De Vrije Vloer, a club in Utrecht, a jam which resulted in the first Dutch rock band with a rapper (they borrowed the name from Parliament-Funkadelic's Urban Dancefloor Guerillas); a song, "Struggle for Jive"; and the blending of white and black music in the Netherlands, at the same time that Fishbone, Living Colour, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Faith No More, and the Beastie Boys were doing the same in the United States.

The UDS had always been a volatile unit with the band members frequently arguing, and this came to a head while touring as the opening act for U2, after the release of Life 'n Perspectives of a Genuine Crossover, when DJ DNA quit abruptly.

[2] The Pittsburgh Press described Urban Dance Squad's music as "refried Zeppelin riffs and neo-Hendrix guitar solos complete with sound effects and old soul records to produce an exceedingly loud, densely packed, dissonant garage-rock stew.

[5] AllMusic described UDS as a "sample-heavy, groove-happy rap-rock band";[6] biographer Heather Phares wrote, "Urban Dance Squad's mix of rock, rap, funk, ska, folk, hip-hop, and soul signaled the trend toward genre-bending that prevailed in '90s music.

"[6] In the site's review of their album Artantica, writer Rick Anderson wrote, "For those who think of rap metal fusion as something invented by bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit, Urban Dance Squad is back to remind you that they've been doing it for ten years now".