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No Country for Old (Rap) Men: The Wacky World of Novelty Dance Raps

Robbie revisits the many rap songs that inspired some of the best (and worst) dance trends

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Dumb, catchy songs aimed at kids and really drunk people have been a staple of popular music forever. But in the rap game, it wasn’t until hip-hop was a regular fixture of the pop charts that the phenomenon really took off. Here are some memorable good (and inevitably terrible) examples.


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01. Kriss Kross, 'Jump'

These young whippersnappers had so much impact that some morons at my school actually showed up to class with their clothes on backwards. Combining the irresistible ‘Funky Worm’ sample with some Naughty By Nature-like rapping and a bouncy beat was all that was required to set dancefloors alight everywhere, from high school dances to ‘urban’ nightclubs. The real stroke of genius was the fact that absolutely zero technique is required to jump, unlike pretty much every other dance fad.


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02. 95 South, 'Whoot There It Is' / Tag Team, 'Whoomp! There It Is'

The 95 South version, which was released a couple of months earlier, embraces more of its strip club roots, while the more commercially successful Tag Team version delivered a PG-rated experience. Either way, both songs are simply worthless fillers supporting a catch-phrase which was inescapable for all of five weeks and has since been reduced to the kind of lame comment that character on a tween sit-com delivers to demonstrate how out-of-touch they are.

 


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03. Cali Swag District, 'Teach Me How To Dougie'

This video ticks all the boxes for a dumb novelty dance rap video by featuring on-brand t-shirts, small children / dwarfs, hip Asians, skateboards, BMXs and shirtless dudes. They dropped a mixtape named Deeper Than The Dougie under the misguided belief that anyone cared about anything beyond the beat and the dance from the aforementioned song. Tragedy has followed this group since they set-off 2010’s most popular dance, however, with one of the members being murdered in 2011 and another succumbing to a long-term illness three years later.


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04. DJ Webstar and Young B, 'Chicken Noodle Soup'

Pure greatness. By combining air raid sirens, a Fatman Scoop-style hypeman by the name of AG The Voice of Harlem, sweet dance moves and a hook that’s catchier than a case of the measles, this song is still guaranteed to have eight-year-olds everywhere losing their minds once hopped-up on Fanta / Sunkist and cupcakes.


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05. Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, 'Crank That'

This 2007 viral hit now seems like a quaint artefact to the ‘good ol’ days’ of flip phones, two-way pagers, MySpace, ICQ, and writing your name on your sunglasses with a paint marker. Throw in a dance that the kiddies went ape for, married to some seriously ‘problematic’ lyrics that even Dr. Dre would raise an eyebrow at and you’ve got the alpha and omega of Ringtone Rap. I don’t have time to explain in detail, but there was once a time when sending a text message cost money and people spent actual cash on ringtones and wallpaper for their phones. Ahh, the salad days!


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06. Lil Mama, 'Lip Gloss'

Before she trolled Jay Z on stage and became a living, breathing, meme, Lil Mama made a catchy little ditty about the importance of flavoured lip gloss, speaking directly to fifth grade girls everywhere. Then she went bat-shit crazy and appears to be attempting to reinvent herself as the new Lil Kim. Might I suggest she makes a track about the importance of bubblegum and we can forget that the previous five years ever happened?


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07. GS Boyz, 'Stanky Leg'

Another notable Ringtone Rap, this dance proved to be quite enduring despite the fact that the video looks like it was filmed at high school basketball practice. Ironically, it was adopted by several soccer players in 2009 as part of their on-field celebrations, thus becoming gospel to soccer moms around the globe.


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08. Silento, 'Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)'

The logical conclusion of this trend was finally achieved in 2015 with this lowest common denominator of a song, which throws in references to every other popular dance of recent years in order to distract us from how abysmal this song actually is. We can only hope that Silento lives up to his moniker and remains so for the foreseeable future. Come back Willow Smith, all is forgiven!

Keep up with Robbie’s weekly ‘No Country for Old (Rap) Men’ here.