Webstar & Young B
So the latest ‘discovered’ craze is now the Harlem Shake. I’m sitting here
in utter amazement for two reasons. One, because I thought that died out
around 2006 to make way for the ‘Chicken Noodle Soup’ dance that dropped
then, courtesy of DJ Webstar & Young B (remember them?). And two, ‘cause
it has spread like wildfire to the point where ad agencies by 4 P.M. TODAY
are trying to come up with ways to work that into their clients’ campaigns,
which means there will be some serious lunches ordered in from Hale and
Hearty Soups. You’ve got colleges and various others blowing up YouTube
with their renditions, forever putting it on the ‘catchy’ shelf with Carly Rae
Jepsen and PSY and even the Macarena. Baauer, the producer who made
the track that revived the dance again is probably counting his chips right
now.
But you gotta marvel at the way the mainstream media & culture apparatus
will take something random and make it a hit. It’s basically like culture
antiquing. The ‘hood bigs something up, runs it into the ground for all that
it’s worth and then leaves it be only to get found by someone who crosses
it over to the mainstream white culture. The Harlem Shake’s been around
since Bernard King rocked Ponys on the Madison Square Garden hardwood,
even saw a little bit of resurgence with Sean ‘P Diddy’ Combs’ getdown in
G.Dep’s ‘Special Delivery’ video. And you know you used to crack the hell up
every time you saw him bust that move out in the late 1990’s. But now, it
feels like all of these Harlem Shake renditions are nothing more than the
reclamations of thrift-store wandering hipster types. The same ones that
you’ll see in your newest Whole Foods on 125th Street uptown, a few doors
down from A Taste of Seafood, where I used to see cats bust the move out
in the summertime to the newest mixtapes being doled out from long tables.
Even B-list rappers are trying to get into the act. (We see you Azealia.) And with all
of this, I always wonder when it will die out, and how. Look at ‘Gangnam Style’. That
was all over the place, so much that the dude performed it at a Presidential Christmas
concert last year. The only thing that slowed it was the discovery of remarks that
he made at a concert in 2004 that were against American involvement in Iraq. But
with the Harlem Shake, we know that it’s just another appropriation. One that says
that a dance that started way back in the golden years of the Rucker is now going to
be associated with random women sloppy drunk off Corona bulldogs during a happy
hour. Let’s just hope the Cha Cha slide won’t be next.
Oh, wait.