Tuesday, July 06, 2010

"Teach Me How To Dougie, Teach Me, Teach Me How to Dougie"

It's not very usual for a Hip Hop pop culture term to have as detailed of a rap sheet (pardon the pun) as the word Dougie. The story starts with Hip Hop legend Doug E Fresh, who is most well known for being a human beatbox, which was a relatively unfounded skill back in the mid-1980s when he gained his reputation. Back in the day (1980s), fresh was a NY term coined to mean something "new and acceptable." According to the most widely accepted Urban Dictionary definition, fresh is:
"fresh: to mean it is acceptable and highly approved by someone.

origin: Hiphop Mid 80's Ny Fresh is derived as in the sense of seeing something brand new and is attracting people like cars in commercials. but is used to refer to anything highly approved by someone"
Maybe fresh took a break in the 1990s or I was still growing up and wasn't in touch enough with pop culture to realize it was still in circulation, but the term has been somewhat revived in the late 2000's through Hip Hop lyrics. Case in point, 2007 where Lil Wil, a completely unheard of rapper from Dallas, Texas, rode the coattails of Soulja Boy's Hip Hop dance fever generated by Crank Dat (Soulja Boy) and created his own underground dance titled My Dougie. Clearly Lil Wil's dance and debut album Dalla$, TX didn't touch the success of Soulja Boy's Crank Dat, but Soulja was kind enough to hop on the remix in hopes of continuing the dance craze.

If you're not familiar with the original My Dougie dance, click play below for the instructional video (fast forward about 54 sec):

To me the dance to My Dougie is no more creative than Crank Dat or even the She Fine (Halle Berry) dance. The only reason you have heard of the first two compared to the Dougie dance has more to do with big label marketing ($$) than talent. Check the original version for practice:

Lil Wil - My Dougie
| Download

Fast forward to 2010 where a group of four MCs - DJ C-Smoove, Yung, JayAre, M-Bone, from the always-up-to-no-good Inglewood, CA (Morningside High to be exact), formed the group Cali Swag District (@caliswagdstrct). They've generated over 3.5 million views from their unofficial viral video of a dance that one of their high school friends who went to Texas Southern taught them. Sort of random, but that's more or less the story of how Dougie came full circle from a 1980s rappers name, to a dance and finally a song/dance/pop culture term that everybody knows when four kids from Inglewood were taught the dance by a friend who lives in Texas, inspiring them to make an even hotter song from it. I say even hotter because Sean Kingston and B.O.B. jumped on the remix and added to high powered, legit verses, giving the track the buzz and star power it needed to blow up around the country on radio stations.

In fact the Dougie dance has been taken to the next (and hopefully final level) at http://teachmehowtodougie.com/. Feel free to measure up your skills with others who have submitted their samples.

Check the official video and give the track a listen below in case your local radio station hasn't already beat it into your last few playlists...



Cali Swag District feat Sean Kingston & B.O.B. - Teach Me How To Dougie (remix)
| Download

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