On Sept. 8, the SMU Mustangs football team won its only game of the season against the North Texas Mean Green, 45-31. Before the game on Bishop Boulevard, fans from both teams joined together to dance.
Around 15 UNT students and the same number of SMU students lined up together outside of the Fiji tent. They jumped around in sync to the song “Crank That” by Atlanta rapper Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em.
“It’s the new thing,” said senior Aaron Buchbinder, who played the song. “People like it because it’s not that hard to pick up.”
The two groups of students from the Dallas area aren’t the only ones who know the dance moves to this song. Thanks to YouTube, the entire country is very familiar with this trend.
“This is nothing new,” said Dr. Jeremy Wallach, an assistant professor in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. “There have always been dance crazes.”
Dance trends have existed for more than 300 years among young people, according to Dr. Wallach. When certain immigrant groups came to the New World and didn’t fit in with the new society, their dances helped them adapt.
“This is something that goes back to Western Europe even before the U.S. really existed,” said Dr. Wallach. “There have been dance crazes and there has often been a moral panic around the popularity of a certain dance.”
On any given night in bars and clubs everywhere from Washington to Waxahachie, DJ’s can be found spinning the hit single. On Thursday nights at The Green Elephant, hundreds of SMU students flood the dance floor and stage to bounce along with the popular track.
“People do it [the dance] all the time here,” said Buchbinder. “It’s not just an SMU thing.”
Not only are club goers dancing along with Soulja Boy, but elementary school children have also caught on to the trend.
“My boyfriend’s little sister knows the dance,” said SMU senior Frances Martir. “She’s nine years old and learned it in her hip-hop dance class.”
Dr. Wallach mentions dances connected to songs like the Macarena, the Electric Slide and even the Hokey Pokey have pervaded American culture. He said the Twist is the classic example of a dance connected to a song.
“That song says how to do it,” said Dr. Wallach. “It’s a very straightforward how-to primer for how to do the dance.”
The popularity “Crank That” has on the nation’s dance floors is just a 21st century approach to what Americans have been doing for decades. In the 1960s, Chubby Checker brought all of America’s wallflowers away from the punch bowl to twist on the dance floor.
“Chubby Checker had a great deal to do with what we consider the music of the ’60s,” said Tony Pederson, the Belo Distinguished Chair in Journalism at SMU.
He said everyone did the Twist because it was uncomplicated. Anyone could master the moves.
The lyrics of 17-year-old DeAndre Cortez Way (Soulja Boy’s real name) may be audibly illegible. Nevertheless, the set of dance steps that correspond with the song’s words have inspired tens of thousands of “YouTubers” to create video variations on the dance; from how-to’s to SpongeBob Squarepants montages.
Soulja Boy’s first album, “Unsigned and Still Major,” was independently released in March 2007. The young artist’s MySpace page was flooded with millions of hits.
“With the availability now of YouTube, it’s easier to communicate almost instantaneously across the country,” said Dr. Wallach.
Pederson sees YouTube as the ultimate form of democracy. With no content filters on the Internet, someone who might not have gotten published in the past can become a huge, overnight sensation.
“It’s the key component of a cultural depository of information on the Internet,” Pederson said.
“You never know what’s going to catch people’s attention.”
Soulja Boy’s second album, “Souljaboytellem.com” was released on Oct. 2 by Geffen records and has reached as high as No. 4 on the Billboard 200 charts. In a September 2007 article from the chart listing’s magazine, Interscope Records’ Head of Marketing Chris Clancy described the Soulja Boy-YouTube phenomenon as the new “blueprint” for success in the record business.
However, not many people think “Crank That” will go on to have the staying power at weddings and Bar Mitzvahs like songs such as the Conga and the YMCA do.
“It’s probably going to be one of those one-hit-wonder songs,” said Buchbinder. “I’m sure one day someone will say ‘Soulja Boy’ and all you’ll think of is the dance.”
