Beyond the two-step

The return of the dance to hip-hop

TREND. During what was probably hip-hop’s golden age — the late 1980s and early 1990s — knowing the latest dances was essential to being an authentic participant in the culture.

Anyone who could not perform The Wop or The Running Man (a.k.a. the MC Hammer) was just a sideline observer stuck looking dumb at backyard barbecues and middle school functions.

But in the late 1990s, everything changed. As landmark artists including The Notorious B.I.G., Wu-Tang Clan and Snoop ushered in a hard, “gangsta” view that transformed the rap landscape, it was no longer cool to shimmy and fling about.

With the exception of some dance moves introduced by Caribbean music — The Bogle, The Butterfly, etc. — there was little for the hip-hop enthusiast to do but pose and look hard.

Those days are over. Today’s hip-pop generation is in the throes of a dance revolution, with moves like Aunt Jackie, The Heisman and Chicken Noodle Soup going from local fads to YouTube phenomenon in a matter of months.

The explosion in dances might be hard to pinpoint exactly, but, around the time Dem Franchize Boyz started screaming “Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It” in 2005, something was clearly afoot. Kids from Florida to New York knew exactly when to sway, dip and pop accordingly; snap dancing has long since gone mainstream and is now almost cliché.

Last summer, Yung Joc had everyone, including Tom Cruise, doing his “motorcycle dance,” but the floodgates truly opened that same season when Harlem’s DJ Webstar made Chicken Noodle Soup go from street corner fad to national obsession.

“Right now, record companies understand that young people are driving the market in terms of commerce,” says Jake Paine, East Coast editor at hiphopdx.com. Ringtones help drive the songs’ popularity, he says. “At no point do they translate into gold or platinum plaques, but labels are finding ways to make money with them.”

“If you look at the last 10 years, there was not a lot of dancing in hip-hop, especially by men,” says Kyra Gaunt, Ph.D., an ethnomusicologist and music professor at Baruch College at CUNY. Now, however, with Soulja Boy’s “Crank Dat (Soulja Boy)” at the top of the Billboard charts and his instructional YouTube video quickly approaching 13 million page views, a sea change has clearly occurred. Perhaps not surprisingly, Soulja Boy’s step — formerly just a hood shuffle — has gone pop; online you can find versions by everyone from frat boys to Beyoncé.

“It’s amazing how many white kids and older people have heard of Chicken Noodle Soup,” says Gaunt. “These dances are clearly crossing lines.”

While some might dismiss these often simplistic bops as foolish, Gaunt says they have cultural importance — not least because hip-hoppers are finally having fun after a decade of acting hard.

“Social dancing has always played a pivotal role in what it means to be black,” she says. “Dances in Atlanta are not the same as the ones in Chicago, but they all share the same context.”

With dances, an exciting terrain for both record labels and the youngsters who seem to invent one every week, the movement isn’t likely slowing anytime soon.

So, even if you are a fogey who remembers The Cabbage Patch, you’ll probably gain more cool points trying to “crank that” than not knowing it at all.

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