60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Whoomp! (There It Is)” — Tag Team

Episode Date: May 11, 2022

Rob looks back at Tag Team’s no. 2 charting single “Whoomp! (There It Is)” along with the controversy surrounding the song and 95 South’s release of “Whoot, There It Is.” This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Rodney Carmichael Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are certain moments and words that shaped a new era in pro wrestling. Austin 316 says I just whipped your ass. Brett screwed breath. Die, Rocky Dye. Suckooke! Introducing the Book of Wrestling, 25 catchphrases that explain the attitude era. Tune in as we relive one of the most exciting, intense, and over-the-top times in WWE. With new interviews, with the voices that made the promos, calls,

and catchphrases into history. Listen now. Mundane, embarrassing teenage memory number 4,672. In the early 90s, is a broadly oblivious junior high doofus growing up in Ohio. I once took a weekend day trip with my buddy Ryan and his family to an inexplicable local tourist attraction called The Blue Hole. What was it like growing up in early 90s, Ohio?

You ask, sometimes for fun, we hopped in the car and drove for hours to get to a place called The Blue Hole. What was the blue hole, you ask? It was a blue hole in the ground. Don't overthink it. We listen to Top 40 Radio on this drive, a Casey Kasem top 40 countdown. One of the songs Casey played us was Hold On by Wilson Phillips, had to be top five at least. I am absolutely certain about this. Why do I remember that song in this moment specifically? What am I supposed to do with that information now? Better question, What are you supposed to do with that information? So on the drive back from the blue hole, Ryan leans over to me in the back seat and he says,

Hey, let's make a sign that says honk if you're horny and put it in the back window. And I was like, ha, yeah, oh man, totally. That'll be hilarious. I had no idea what the word horny meant. None whatsoever. Eventually I confessed to Ryan that I didn't know what horny meant. I asked him what it meant. He wouldn't tell me.

He thought it was hilarious that I didn't know. He dogged me the whole rest of the drive home. Super embarrassing. I wanted to turn right back around and go jump in the blue hole. It was not like a lake-sized hole, the blue hole, but it was substantially larger than like a pothole. A blue hole in the ground, larger than a pothole, but smaller than a lake. There's all the intel I can provide on the blue hole. Fucking Ryan, just tell me what horny means, dude.

It's rude. I persevered. Someday somebody's going to make you want to turn around and say goodbye. Until then, baby, are you going to let them hold them down and make you cry? No, you're not. I'm not. I didn't. So I skulked on home, dusted myself off, conquered my shame, got proactive, and sat around

waiting for somebody else to tell me what horny meant, preferably without my having to ask. And eventually, somebody else did. I heard about this song before I heard it. I pretended to know all about this song before I heard it. I strategically name-dropped this song one day in Catholic Confirmation class before I heard it. Everyone thought I was super cool for even knowing about this song. I assure you, there were gasps of appreciation and respect from my fellow Catholic confirmation classmates. But when I did finally hear this song, Me So Horny by Two Left Crew from 1989,

Me so horny did not sound the way I'd imagined it sounding. I don't know what I imagined. I don't want to know what I imagined and neither do you. Stay out of it. Stay out of my doofest 13-year-old head. Let's just say when I finally heard it, this song sounded disconcertingly, but not unpleasantly, jaunty, almost whimsical. Something whimsical about the me-so-horny baseline.

I did not, in this era, conflate horniness with whimsy. Call it a failure of imagination. One of my my myriad failures at this particular time. See, jaunty. A modest top 40 hit, Me So Horny peaked at number 26 on the Billboard Hot 100, an achievement all the more impressive, given the song's whimsical immodesty. That was Mark Raw. a.k.a. brother Marquise, just like that man they called Georgie Putten Pie, he fucks all the girls and makes them cry.

There's way more foul language in this episode than usual, just to warn you. Sorry, I should have mentioned that earlier. That was Christopher Wong One, aka Fresh Kid Ice, who passed away in 2017. They buried him face down so his erection wouldn't obstruct the views of any skyscrapers. That was unnecessary. Who wrote that. That's a very stupid joke. I just presume he would have appreciated. It's a shame that Fresh Kid Ice never got to see the blue hole, presumably. Two Live crew formed in the early to mid-80s on an Air Force base in Riverside, California. Early on, you got Fresh Kid Ice. You got a DJ named David Hobbs, aka Mr. Mix with two Xs, and you got another

rapper named The Amazing V who didn't stick around long. The early Two Live crew cut a couple of cheap singles, almost nobody heard, with the notable exception, 3,000-odd miles away, of a Miami rapper slash party promoter, slash aspiring label magnate slash irrepressible hustler named Luke Campbell, aka Uncle Luke, aka Luke Skywalker with two wives. Luke brought two live crew out to Miami to play some shows, convinced them to stick around, and eventually joined the group himself as a hypeman slash mastermind. I'm oversimplifying. The podcast. The podcast. Podcast Mogul, now hosted by Ringer Luminary, Brandon Jenkins. Mogul devoted its whole second season to the Two Live Crew and the development of rap music and Miami

and the rise of the delightful rap subgenre Miami bass. Fantastic show. Highest possible recommendation. A rich musical and historical and sociopolitical tapestry with few, if any, dick jokes. Quite sophisticated. As for this show, let's explain Two Live Crew's early evolution this way. on their debut album, 1986's The Two Live Crew is what we are. Zero Ladies' Buts on the cover. On their second album, 1988's moves something,

one lady's butt on the cover. On their third album, 1989's, as nasty as they want to be, featuring the disconcertingly whimsical hit single, Me So Horny, four ladies' butts on the cover. An album cover, I suspect you can summon from memory right now with a parental advisory sticker and everything.

Zero butts, one butt, four butts. That is at least a 400% album over album increase in butts. That's a little something called personal growth. Back in the day, the title track to move something was tremendously important to me. Listen up, baby, you look real pretty. Let me pull up your shirt and suck your tini. Yes, pretty lady, I love your soul. Since the time we met my dick has grown.

To enhance the effect, imagine fresh kids. ice holding a giant fragrant bouquet of flowers, as he says that. Super romantic. He had her at Hello. Well, he had her at Listen Up, Baby. And he definitely had her at My Dick Has Grown. You had other men, now it's my chance. Give me some time to take off my pants.

The time has come. Don't be brunt. Just drop them drums. Let's move. The second ad-libbed move in that last line. All you got to do is move. Move something is the key to the whole song. Just tremendous.

time I heard the song Move Something was in a movie. I heard it in the Uncuth 1990 comedy Men at Work, starring Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen as disgruntled garbage men who discover a dead body in the trash. Uncuth hijinks ensue. When I was 13 years old, I thought men at work was the funniest movie ever made. Renicops. I hate Renicops, too. Early 90s, HBO basically played this movie on a loop. Please come to my house right now. and physically restrain me from even attempting to explain to you young people what HBO was like in their early 90s

in the dark ages. Long before the phrase prestige TV even existed. Barry ain't out here. Back when HBO just played vehemently disreputable movies all day, every day. Predator 2 in perpetuity. HBO is an early investor in the ringer. Now we're owned by Spotify.

There were like 30 Police Academy. sequels, dude. Even HBO's original content was vehemently disreputable. Dream on. Real sex? I personally think of this era now as the How Bad Do You Want to See Female Nudity Really Era?

Men at Work was the best case scenario. You know who Keith David is, right? The actor, The Thing They Live, Requiem for a Dream. Keith David steals this movie Men at Work. He's incredible. There are several sacred things in this world that you don't ever mess with. One of them happens to be another man's fries.

It's true. Bonus points for Technotronic playing in the background. So in the first half hour or so of men at work, you got your slimy white guy in a suit, right? And he's up to no good. He's dumping toxic waste. He's got two hitmen who drive around in a car with a license plate hitmen, etc. This movie is impressively self-aware. And there's a cassette tape of the.

slimy white guy incriminating himself and he's got the hitman out looking for it. And the soon-to-be dead guy who made the tape gets it confused with another cassette tape. And so there are multiple scenes early in this movie in which somebody says, we found the tape. Here's a tape. Listen to this important tape. And they hit play, but instead of the important tape, it's move something by two live crew. And so early in this movie, there are multiple scenes of bumbling,

aggrieved white dudes getting very confused and angry when Two Live Crews starts playing. And this was a formative cultural experience. For me, I learned a lot about rap music, about rap music's antagonistic relationship with the rest of popular culture in this moment. Remarkable real life foreshadowing. Because, as you might be aware, in 1990, a Florida judge declared the Two Live Crew album, as nasty as they want to be, to be legally obscene. A record store owner got arrested for selling it. The members of Two Live Crew got arrested for performing songs from it at a Florida nightclub. A cataclysmic years-long legal fracas ensued with Two Live Crew and Henry Lewis Gates on one side

and the notorious pro-censorship duo of Florida Governor Bob Martinez and Broward County Sheriff Nick Navarro on the other. And Two-Live Crew would eventually prevail. That obscenity ruling would eventually. be overturned on appeal. But in the meantime, two-live crew aired their grievances on their fourth album, released in 1990 with zero ladies' butts on the cover. They called it Band in the USA.

That's Band in the USA, the title track. I remember watching that video premiere on MTV. I remember absorbing specific lines from this song while watching the video premiere on MTV. I remember Luke saying, what I do in my house, you might not do in your house. Yeah, tell me about it. No, please, tell me about it. They got Bruce Springsteen's permission to use his song, born in the USA, which is too bad. In my opinion, two live crew samples or interpolations or whatever sound better when they don't get permission. It's better when their cover versions are outright desecrations. It's better when you can imagine that the original artist is super pissed. Roy Orbison took two live crew to call. court as well. But even if they hadn't gotten Bruce Springsteen's permission, my favorite song on the band in the USA album would still be a modest little ditty called Fuck Martinez. The song continues. I appreciate that all the white guys get their own distinct call and

response vocal tone. It's excellent attention to detail. Is that what we sound like? Is that what we'd sound like if all the white guys were called upon to do call and response at a two live crew concert, yes. That vocal tone is accurate. I should reiterate that when this song, when the whole band in the USA album comes out in summer 1990, Two Live Crew's previous album, as nasty as they want to be, is still legally obscene. Two Live Crew haven't won yet.

They won't win on appeal until 1992. The song Fuck Martinez. This is not a skit or a throwaway. This song is five minutes and 15 seconds long. There are songs on Astral War. weeks shorter than this song. This song is severely antagonizing the acting governor and sheriff who are actively, legally oppressing the two live crew themselves. This is a delicate matter. Two live crew got to be careful. They got to protect themselves legally. This requires delicacy.

This requires strategy. I know I keep saying we try not to use hyperbole on this show. I keep insisting that I don't want to just call everything the best blank of all time, and I mean that. Nonetheless, here now is Luther Campbell in a 2020 podcast interview originally for Spin Magazine, and Luke is describing what is, without question, the single most ingenious legal maneuver in the history of the concept of law. This is Luther Campbell, talking to the writer and comedian Mike Postalakis, and answering the question. In essence, was there any blowback from Bob Martinez or Nick Navarro when you put out a song called Fuck Martinez? No, because I kind of protected myself.

By then, I was a fucking lawyer. You know, I went and found some kid named Martinez and said, I'm going to say, fuck you. I want you to write a release. And then I found another kid. Yeah, I mean, you can find a Navarro on any corner in Miami or Martinez. So I then had them sign a release and I'm saying, fuck you. So I didn't want to get sued for defamation.

And I just went to town on both of them. I'm sorry, but just to make it real in my own head, I need to say this out loud. He found random guys named Martinez and Navarro and had them sign legal documents stating that the two live crew song Fuck Martinez was directed to them personally and not to any other people named Martinez or Navarro. I cannot believe this. I love this so much. This is the most gloriously galaxy brained shit imaginable. This is the kind of shit where everyone in the courtroom just bursts into

applause, including the judge. Believe me when I tell you that I have been delighted by this story for the past 96 hours. Me just walking around, giggling to myself, as I imagine, Luke Campbell with the phone book open to the M's, just dialing up Martinez's until one answers and then being like, hello, Mr. Martinez. This is Luke Campbell of the time. Yes. Oh, you have. haven't heard of us. Excellent. Do not ask your friends about us. I have a business. I have a business proposition for you, Mr. Martinez. Here's some money. Sign this. Someday. And that day may never come. I'll call upon you to do a service for me. The service is, if anyone ever asks you, this part of the song, Fuck Martinez, is about your

wife specifically. please. I do hope that if the decoy Martinez was married, if he did have a wife, that he discussed this scheme with his wife before agreeing to it. That would be mad, awkward for Mrs. Martinez to find out about this another way. The last thing I'll say about this matter, and I mean this also, is that there are two versions of the band in the USA album on streaming services, and both are labeled the clean version and one of the clean versions eliminates the song fuck martinez from the track list entirely and the other clean version renames the song just martinez and now it sounds like this perfect no notes excellent clean version spotless bob martinez bob bob martine what does it even mean

to make a clean version of music like this i don't mean two live cruise music luke campbell's decision his resolve to spend years fighting back against that obscenity ruling, his victory, ultimately in that fight, had colossal implications for rap music going forward. It's overstating it to say that two live crew saved rap music. But if they hadn't fought back so hard, and if two live crew had been effectively vaporized forever, to this day, we'd still have judges declaring songs and albums and rappers legally obscene all the time. That battle and that triumph is a tremendous. legacy, even if two-live crew would never again scale the commercial and controversy generating, and dare I say, artistic heights of me so horny ever again. Suffice it to say, if I ever require legal counsel, I'm going straight to Luke Skywalker with two Wies, even if George Lucas sued him and Luke can't call himself that anymore. You can't win them all, but I'm talking more about theoretical clean versions of gleefully vulgar and pornographic rap music in general, a clean version of a clean version of whole ass genre, a theoretical clean version of bottom heavy rap music. And that's a double

entendre. See, because it's bass heavy, but per the album covers, it's also proudly fixated on the B-O-O-T-Y-O-O-Mai. Because all legal shenanigans aside, Miami-Base flourished and mutated, and got even dirtier, but also simultaneously got even cleaner and more popular, more theoretically radio and parent-friendly. And most important, it's spread, philosophically and geographically, to the entire United States, to the entire world. But it started by driving 10 plus hours north, perhaps on good old interstate 95, I-95 north, to Atlanta, to a strip club at Atlanta called Magic City, the mythical Magic City. Maybe you've heard of Magic City? Maybe you've been there? I've heard of it. Do you think I've been there, Magic City?

you are correct, I have not. But regardless, one day you went to a wedding or 500 different weddings and the dance floor vibe was a little tepid. The energy was flagging a little bit. And then suddenly, there it was. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 62nd episode of 60 songs that explained the 90s

and it has never taken longer to get to the actual song the episode is about than it did just now. We did it, Joe. Whop, there it is. W-H-O-O-M-P-Xclamation point parentheses. There it is, no exclamation point, close parentheses, by the Atlanta duo tag team,

consisting of Cecil Glenn, aka D.C., the Brain Supreme, and fellow rapper Steve Gibson, aka Steve Rowland. There is no I in Roland, R-O-L-L-N. It's likely you already know their names, even if only as boisterous hit song,

intro chatter. Told you. Whop, there it is, came out in April or May of 1993. The month matters in this story generally, as we will discover. And by that July, it peaked at number two on the Billboard

Hot 100. Number two being my favorite chart position as it compels me to inform you that whoop, there it is, was beaten out for the top spot by you guessed it, UB40s can't help falling in love. That's tough break.

I got the title wrong. UB40s, parentheses, I can't help, close parentheses, falling in love with you. Sorry, this is a killer top five on the Hot 100. Actually, number one, I can't help falling in love with you. Number two, whoop, there it is. Number three, Week by SWV, Sisters with Voices, R&B classic, fantastic song. Number four, I'm going to be 500 miles by the Proclaimers. I'm going to be, parentheses, 500 miles, close parentheses.

My first garage band right out of high school, we ended our first first. show ever by doing a cover of the down by law punk rock cover of 500 miles we were playing a battle of the bands in brunswick ohio and did not win and finally at number five onyx slam oh and knock into boots by h town at number nine luke campbell recording artists h town who hailed from houston naturally but they were signed to a label deal and thusly catapulted to fame by none other than your friend and my lawyer Luke Campbell out in Miami. Right, Miami. Given how long it took us to get to the actual song this week, I will confine my remarks on Miami bass to three songs. That okay? Real quick. Base heavy, electro-leaning, fundamentally uncouth rap music from Miami and surrounding environs,

with a foundation often provided by the Roland 808 drum machine, a comprehensive survey of Miami base in just three songs. Okay, this will be fine. Song number one. In downtown, we have a state attorney by the name of Janet Reno. She locks brothers up for not paying their child support. You heard her. This is a young lady by the name of Anquiet. She is backed here by the Throw the P girls. Two live crew had a big song called Throw the D.

And these ladies recorded an answer record called Throw the P. Do you need me to explain it? No, you don't. Anquiet is Luke Campbell's cousin. Her debut album, released by Luke Records in 1980. is called respect. This song is called Janet Reno. We try to avoid hyperbole around here, but this is the funkiest song about a Florida state attorney ever recorded. Janet Reno did indeed serve as a state attorney in Florida from 1978 to 1993, and she did indeed garner praise for her focus on child support, her aggressive pursuit of deadbeat dads.

And then, in 1993, Janet Reno retired and lived out the rest of her days in peaceful seclusion with no public controversies whatsoever. I'm almost positive about that. Stupendous. Just stupendous.

The busted in particular. Stupendous. Okay, song number two. Okay, class. Now, as you know, this... Excuse me. Now, fuck all that.

The motherfucker fucking poison, the clan is at the bat. Bad influence. by the Miami duo Poison Clan from their 1990 debut album, Two Low Life Mothers, released by Luke Records and produced by the two-live crew's own Mr. Mix. The album cover actually Bill's Poison Clan, then consisting of the rapper's Debenair and JT. Money, their billed is the Baby Two Live crew.

This song was not a single, Dance All Night and later Shake What Your Mama gave you, our better-known Poison Clan songs, but I love bad influence unreservedly. Per that intro, the concept of this song is that the Poison Clan have disrupted some sort of school anti-drug lecture, and they proceed to spend four minutes and change encouraging kids to do drugs. What the hell is a natural high? That's fiction. Believers, they all feel. Milled addiction. You got to be dripping off the sense of butter.

Speed of crack. It's word to my mother. What the hell is a natural high makes me laugh out loud every time I hear it. never quite prepared for when the words, what the hell is a natural high come out of JT. Money's mouth. He sounds so indignant. Amazing. The song continues. You can't worry about stuff like consequences. Jump off roots, climb about while offenses. It's too late to straighten up because you blew it. A smoking crack makes you feel good. Do it. And so forth. I love this song profoundly. Okay, song number three is called Woot. There it is. Woot. There it is.

Woot with a T. W-H-O-O-T-W-O-T-W-O-T, Woot, Woot, comma, there it is, no parentheses, by the Jacksonville Group 95 South, 95 South like the Interstate. Yeah, so this song was first. Let's make that clear. The release of this song precedes the release of Tag Team's Womp. There it is, by a few months, if only, by a few months. Timelines vary, depending on what you read.

But the LA Times wrote about Wump versus Woot in August 1993, while both songs were still hot. And the L.A. Times interviewed both groups, so let's adopt their timeline. Woot, there it is. According to 95 South, is recorded in November, 1992, and is released in February 1993. Womp, there it is, according to Tag Team, is recorded in October 1992. That's earlier. least in May 1993. That's later. As you might imagine, the existence of two hit songs with very similar titles and hooks is quite irksome to 95 South. Johnny McGowan, aka Jay Ski, identified by the

LA Times as the leader of 95 South, explains the genesis of Woot, there it is, this way. Quote, I got the idea for the single from the clubs in Atlanta. I heard people saying, Woot, there it is, and I thought it was a good idea for a single. We recorded it last November. He also casts some doubt on tag team's timeline, saying, in February, I took the single to Cecil Glenn

of Tag Team, who was the DJ at a club in Atlanta. Maybe he heard our record and said, I can do one like that, too. Finally, Jay Ski says, we know of plenty cases where people have gone in to buy our record and wound up buying their record instead.

Woot, there it is, peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100. The 95 South song is, by a substantial margin, the less commercially successful of the two saws. It is the rar, rougher, less wedding friendly of the two songs. On streaming service is now, the most popular version of the song is the Woot, There it is, Ultimix, which begins like this. Excuse me, Sonny. Do you know where I can find some booty?

That is not Jim Carrey, just FYI, but the line still works great as a hook anyway. This is a strip club song, and you can take my word for it. How do you know I've never been to Magic City anyway? Maybe I have. Maybe I go there all the time. Maybe I'm recording this from a strip club right now. You ever think of that? I am not.

That's not true. None of that is remotely plausible. You got me. But nonetheless, this is a strip club. Club song that has escaped, that has transcended the strip club, that now aspires to turn the whole wide world into a strip club, a worthy aspiration, quite frankly. It's never going out of style. On streaming services now, there are two versions of Woot. There it is on the debut album from 95 South, released in 1993 and called Quad City Knock. This music we're discussing today,

generally, you wouldn't call this an album-oriented genre per se. I don't mean that, ugly, but full-length records in this realm, they got one or two ginormous hits, and then they got a whole bunch of vibes. Let's just pick a totally random moment from Quad City Knock. Just throw a dart at this record. An arbitrarily selected 10-second clip from Quad City Knock. Okay, that was not an entirely random clip from Quad City Knock. You got me. That song's a vibe, I guess. See if you can guess what that song's called. But so there's a guy on YouTube named Height the Great, H-E-I-T-H-E-T-H-E-T-Grate, who did a radiance. video a couple years back on Wump versus Woot. And he makes a few important points. First of all,

neither of these songs is the first song to make use of this particular phrase. Here now, courtesy of the Miami label Joey Boy Records, here we have the rapper SexyC featuring both Disco Rick and the Puppies on a 1991 song called Get It Girl. And there very well might be others. So this phrase, blank, there it is, is on the record. It's in the air. It's in the air. It's in the air in the clubs that I'm not in. This isn't especially convoluted. You made it a hotline. I made it a hot song situation.

And now with 95 South and tag team, we got two hit songs hitting almost simultaneously, almost. So Hight the Great in that YouTube essay also points us to a 2012 video interview, a guy named Diggy Vit did with another member of 95 South, an interview with Carlos Spencer, aka Daddy Black. And Daddy Black here recalls the most. moment back when Woot, there it is, first came out when he was informed that there was a competing song called Wump, there it is. Actually, the key moment here is when he's in his shoe store in Detroit and someone hands Daddy Black a promo photo of tag team. He was, hey, if you ever heard of these guys, they were like, no, tag, who was that? You know, I see, they look like somebody, look like my uncle, you know, I was like, who are these guys? He was like, they have this song called Woonp, there it is. It sounds like your guys record. I was like, really?

They look like my uncle is a savage burn, actually. The conceit of this interview, by the way, Daddy Black owns a hair salon in Jacksonville, and on camera he is cutting the hair of the guy interviewing him, which is visually quite striking, even if it presents ethical concerns, right? You're not going to ask hard-hitting, necessary, possibly upsetting interview questions

if the dude you're interviewing is literally currently cutting your hair. There's a conflict of interest in hair. to the whole concept of the haircut interview. That's all I'm saying. Anyway, the problems really start when a wump starts outselling woot and outselling it by quite a lot. It's a problem if you're the guys who made woot anyway. And there's nothing you could have done about that?

I mean, not really. You know, we didn't have the phrase copyrighted or anything. So it was really nothing we could do. But we did settle out of court, you know, and they did a mix of both records. is to gather, though we wrote us a check and he just called it today. This comes up in a glancing way in other interviews with dudes from 95 South. They'll make a passing reference to getting paid off both songs or something. My attorney, Luke Campbell, is advising me to not speculate any further on that.

It can't be a total coincidence, right? Woot versus Wump. Does that mean, though, that the tag team dudes heard Woot, there it is? And possibly, as the story sometimes goes, that tag team heard it when the dudes from 95 South personally played it for them. And then tag team explicitly said, hey, let's record a Slicker more radio-friendly version of this. It will not surprise you to learn that that's what Daddy Black thinks happened.

When we said whoop, they said wump. When we said, look at your head, look at here, look at here. They said, shaka, shaka, shaka. You know, but we said, ooh-wee, look at that booty. They said, ooh, B-O-T-Y-O-M. And here's what interests me in particular, is why, theoretically, tag team might make that last change in particular. Radio was so conservative at that point.

They allotted the crossover chervyn station and wouldn't play booty, but because they said BWTY or my, those stations were like, okay, we'll play this record over the 9-5-7. Now, I should mention here that the Great Womp versus Woot Ruckus is occurring in the spring of 1993. In the previous year, in 1992, a charismatic rapper from Seattle with a fedora and a royal bearing had a wedding-friendly blockbuster number one hit with,

yeah, this is happening. It's coming. It's almost here. It's here. Here it is. Yes, baby got back. by Sir Mixelot. In college in the late 90s for a little while,

I wrote a weekly column for the student newspaper in one time. I think the Poet Laureate of the United States was speaking somewhere on campus. And I wrote a whole column about how the poet laureate should be deposed and replaced with Sir Mixalot based on the poetic genius

of Baby Got Backy. It was hilarious. And shortly after that column ran, I was in an elevator in some campus building and there was one other dude in the elevator. And he was like, are you Rob? do you write a column for the paper? And I was like, yes, that's me. Yes, I do.

Thank you for it. And the dude just shook his head. That's a tough one. But so in the early 90s standards vary. Opinions vary on what you can say in a blockbuster crossover pop song. It's a moving target. What words you can use to describe the posterior.

But that's one prism through which you might view tag team's number two smash. Wump, there it is. You could see this song as a, kid-friendly version of an emphatically not kid-friendly rap subgenre. The word dairy air just glides off DC the brain Supreme's tongue. Does it not? There's a party over here. A party over there. Wavy hands in the air. Shake the dairy air. These three words mean you're getting busy. Woop. There is hit man. That's four words.

This is a silly, playful, cuddly, colossal, tremendously slick and universally appealing song. whoop there it is and i will not argue otherwise nor will i argue that any of that is bad this song earns its colossalness right down to the beat right down to the sample of the 1980 track i'm ready by the italian disco group cano which now and forever is a song capable of causing spontaneous and separate parties to break out both over here and over there absolutely let me also gently complicate the impression i might have created that whoomp there it is is some g rated Candy Land Romp. That's Steve Rowland Romp. Have you ever heard the dirty version of Whoop? There it is, in which those

words are not semi-bleeped? The dirty version does exist, but it is not common. This is a massive song commercially. Billboard does year-end charts as well, and whoop, there it is, was the second biggest song of 1993 overall, beaten out only by Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You. Yeah, that's reasonable. But this is a massive and hypercommercial crossover pop song with like 50 pounds swear words semi bleeped out of it. There is a dissonance tonally if you think too hard about it. And believe me when I tell you that this is a song that discourages you from thinking too hard about it. It does not reward you for thinking too hard about it.

Like, blank, chin and juice I drinkin. Bent and bent as a puff on day. Rock the mic. Uh-oh. I crave skin rib. Find a honey to dip it in. Like, yo, I crave skin is a remarkably gnarly way

to convey the sentiment that D.C., the Brain Supreme is conveying there. He's horny. That's what he's saying. The 50-pound swear words are even semi bleeped out of the album version of Wump. There it is. Which I own, by the way. The full tag team album from 1993, also called Wump. There it is, of course, is also uncommon. It ain't streaming, not even on YouTube.

Can't buy the MP3s. To ensure I got a new, legit delivered in a timely fashion copy of the Tag Team album, I bought it for like 20 bucks on Amazon. I don't mind telling you. I expensed it. I don't mind telling you that. either. I expensed the shit out of it. I expensed it so hard. It caused a sonic boom. It caused a nuclear reaction when I logged into concur and expensed this shit. You didn't know that's what you were hearing, but you heard it when I expensed the tag team record. It was like, it's not bad. The tag team record. This is not an album oriented genre, but it's not bad. What do you really need to know about the? Okay, the word Nubian appears three times in the first verse of the second song on the tag team record, a song called U-Go-Girl Girl, Capital U-Go-Girl. D.C., the Brain Supreme returns to that theme later in the song. Oh, my God. So, how's everything with you? There's a whole ham motif on this record that I do not careful.

I really dig a song called It's Something on the tag team record. Okay, forget it. The Woot versus Wump phenomenon peaked on July 26, 1993, when both tag team and 95 South appeared on the Arsenio Hall show. They staged, in essence, a battle of the bands on the Arsinio Hall show. 95 South performed Woot and tag team performed Wump. And Arsenio's viewers were invited to vote for who won by calling a 900 number. I will not explain to young people what a 900 number was. With all the proceeds from

this affair, you had to pay to make a phone call. I guess that's it. That's all I'm going to say. All the proceeds went to Midwestern flood relief to the American Red Cross flood relief fund. This event raised $14,000 and strongly suggested that tag team in 95 South had reached a sort of public detents, at least. In 95 South won. Handily, I would say. They got more of votes. Tag team were charismatic. Their performance was fine, but 95 South won. You can tell, just by the crowd noise here, that this is the precise moment when the dudes in 95 South started shaking their deriers. But tag team won the war. No, tag team never had anything remotely resembling another hit. They put out another record in 1995 called Audio Entertainment. I'm not

buying that one. I'm sorry, I can't expense everything. Yes, in 1990. Steve Roland got arrested while in possession of 600 pounds of Mexican marijuana and spent a couple years in prison. Yes, I know you want more detail there, but how does any more detail help you really? The marijuana was in a camper. I don't know. He's long since out now. He's fine. Yes, in 2020, talking to the Hight magazine, D.C. the Brain Supreme described in detail the two decades of litigation.

This isn't 95 South stuff. This is internal litigation. Over the song, Whomp, there it is, which required tag team to basically fight two different record labels for control and for the money. It's a mess that DC summarized by saying that as young kids, they'd signed a fucked up contract. And shit, we paid for it for 20 years, dude. We were in litigation for that record for 20 years, but we won. But it's like war. You may win.

You're going to come back fucked up. lost a leg, lost an arm, or can't hear. End quote. Yes, Jay Ski and C. Lemonhead of 95 South formed another group called the Quad City DJs, who in 1996 put out a hit song called Come On and Ride It, the train. Come on, capital N, apostrophe, write it, parentheses, the train, close parentheses. That is arguably better than any other song I've mentioned here. That song kicks ass. Quad City DJs were in the Space Jam soundtrack, also. the original Space Jam. Some people around here will get really salty

if I don't mention Space Jam. But no, tag team still won. And Tag Team are still, today, reveling in the spoils of that victory. In 2021, the spoils of that victory consisted of D.C. and Steve Rowland, now looking like somebody's

grand uncles, appearing as themselves in a super goofy Geico commercial that everyone seemed to unironically enjoy. The line from Two Live Crew to Tag Team, from Me So Horny to Woot, there it is, to scoop, there it is, is not a straight one. Nor do those connections glorify two live crew or 95 South by demeaning tag team. This isn't Miami versus Atlanta or tag team against the world.

It's all just another way of doing business. The world needs frivolous bordering on corny pop songs and uncouth bordering on pornographic pop songs. And bonus points, if you can somehow combine those two categories into one. one song. Just get a lawyer, too, is my advice. I've got mine. Our guest today is Rodney Carmichael, the hip-hop staff writer for NPR, and the co-host of the fantastic podcast, Louder Than a Riot, which explores the relationship between hip-hop and mass incarceration. Rodney, thank you so much for being here. Hey, thanks for having me, man. I seriously, speaking for both myself and my producer, Justin Sayles, Louder Than a Riot, is one of our favorite podcasts. It's

incredibly serious and important work. And I guess I'd like to start by apologizing to you for bringing you on today to talk about just the silliest song we could think of. No, this is great. I mean, it's still in my wheelhouse, you know? It's Atlanta related, so I'm glad to chime in. All right.

I was wondering about Atlanta-related. You grew up in Atlanta tag team or from Atlanta. Do you think of Wump, there it is, as an Atlanta song? Or is it too huge and fluky to be even considered a local hit? I think because it's hip hop, you got to consider it an Atlanta song, right? Like every hip-hop song, it comes from somewhere. It comes from somebody. And, you know, no matter what they're doing on the record,

nine times out of ten, they represent where they're from. So the question is probably what kind of representation or how good of a representation of Atlanta is, there it is, which, you know, we could talk about that. But yeah, man, you know, he was, you know, it comes out of Magic City, you know, there's, you can't get more Atlanta than that. Yeah. Okay.

So is it a good representation of Atlanta rap then or now? Oh, I mean, definitely not now. There's no question about that. I mean, it's, you know, it's kind of, it comes at such an interesting time where Atlanta really didn't have an, uh, an idea. identity hip-hop-wise. You know, we sounded like Miami a lot, and, you know, the bass music, the booty music was,

it was that borrowed sound. So it definitely represents, you know, pre-outcast Atlanta, you know what I'm saying? So for what that's worth. Yeah, what else was going around, what else was going on at that time? Like, how would you describe that moment? The first outcast record is 94.

This is 1993. So it's almost there, but it's not quite there. Like what is happening in Atlanta rap, you know, besides this weird, fluky thing? Like I said, it's a lot of, it's a lot of base influenced, you know, Florida influenced music. It's interesting, man. I was not in Atlanta in 1993. I was on the West Coast.

I had just gotten out of school. And so I was listening to Wump, there it is, from outside of Atlanta and looking at it and trying to figure out what was going on. And I don't know. I remember it definitely becoming kind of like a joke amongst me and my friends at the time. But yeah, in terms of what was going on in Atlanta, you know, it was, you know, you had the kilos. You know, Kilo Ali was really huge in Atlanta. but very local regional. You know, he was from Bankhead and he was rapping,

but he was rapping over like, you know, that Miami sound for the most part. You know, it was Atlanta's version of the bass music sound. You had, you know, Shadi a little bit before him, of course, you know, who was a cat who was originally from New York, but again, rapping over DJ Toon beats. and, you know, again, very bass influence, booty influence-type beats. So that was kind of what separated Atlanta's bass sound from Florida's, is that it was a little more lyrical.

It tended to be a little more lyrical. But this was just a straight club joint, you know. They weren't going for the lyricism, obviously. At the bottom of everything is Wump, there it is. You know, you mentioned Magic City. Is it a strip club song that somehow went ultra mainstream? Is it that simple? I guess.

I see, I'm having a hard time trying to imagine what strip club music sounded like in 93. Because I wouldn't old enough to get into the strip club yet. You know, but when we think of like the strip club era in Atlanta, that's not the music that we think of. You know what I'm saying? It starts to happen a little bit after. that. I mean, this is probably like the beginning of that era, you know, that, that, that, that era of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, and, and, and strip club being kind of like interlinked or interwoven like that. You know what I mean? So, so, so yeah, I guess it's, it's, it's, it's a strip club joint. I mean, they say that the, the chant came out of, out of Magic City, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's hard for me to imagine people chanting that in. I mean, I don't know. I guess, you know, the yik was a really popular dance in Atlanta around this time. The yik was something that had been through the late 80s into the early 90s.

It was, you know, any high school event, any talent show, you know, there were yeeking crews all around the city. And it was, you know, a dance that was punctuated with everybody saying, and yeek, you know, on the, on the main beat. So in a sense, you can kind of imagine Woonp being a thing, too. But I don't know, it's just so different than what we think of now is strip club music, you know, in the 2000s and whatnot. So, yeah. I was going to ask you if you've ever heard the phrase, Wump, there it is, or blank, there it is, outside the context of this song. I had never heard it until I heard this song, man.

I mean, again, I can imagine, you know, in the South at that time, I think Womp was definitely a thing. You know what I'm saying? Like, it might be just, again, the punctuate a thing, like, you know, kind of like the YEEK was, you know, it might be like if you see some two people fighting and, you know, somebody lay a good leg, you know, something like that. Yeah, okay. But there it is. I don't know. That's a weird. That's a weird edition, yeah. It's very funny to me to go back and read 1993 articles and like the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times with some stuffy cultural critic going.

It's the hot news saying with young people. Wump, there it is. What are the kids mean? What is this? What is your memory of how the mainstream media would talk about rap music and like rap music lingo in this era? You know, we weren't paying attention to mainstream media in 1993. and what they had to say about rap at all. But I've gone back and looked at a lot of those articles, too. And yeah, they do tend to be pretty corny and outsidery and, you know, white gaysish or whatever.

But, you know, it kind of went with the territory at that time. I mean, especially when you're talking about Southern rap, right? Like even, you know, hip-hop journalists in that era didn't know how to talk about what was coming out of the South, you know, didn't know how to talk about like Luke and two live crew and everything coming out of Miami. So if it wasn't something that was worth joking about or some surprising hit, it probably wasn't getting covered on any level at all, you know what I mean? So, yeah. Is there any concrete way to explain how or why Wump there it is got as big as it got and why there was obviously immediately no chance of

tag team ever having a hit, you know, like 10% that huge again. Like, what is it about this song that made it transcend all of that, all of that bias? That's a good question. I don't know because, like, I mean, it's obviously an addictive song, you know, infectious song when you listen to it. You can imagine it, you know, it was a party starter type of song. It's kind of like, you know, there were a lot of songs in that era like that. Like, you think of a song like, I mean, this is a different kind of hit, but, you know, baby guy back, sir, mix a lot, you know.

Wild thing. Yeah, you know, it's like, it's funny. It's, it's sexually suggestive, but it's clean, you know what I mean? Right. So you can play it anywhere. It's, you know, you don't have to worry about, you know, covering kids ears or grandmamas being mad at the cookout. You know what I mean? So I could see it.

I could see it being kind of universally loved or laughed at at the same time. Right. At the exact same time. Right. I guess that is, it's just sort of like a Muppet Baby's version of two live crew or something. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But, you know, that's basically what it is. The Muppet Baby's version of two live crew.

That's why. Did you have any personal stake in the Wump? There it is versus Woot, there it is, war? you know, the 95 South tag team sort of Cold War, I guess. Like, is one vastly superior to the other? Like, is Wump just a blatant copy of Woot? I mean, I'm in the Woon Camp, mainly because that was the first version I heard. And because they have the real Atlanta connection.

And because, like, who says Woot? What is a Woot? I don't know. I mean, I was familiar with Woon. Like as a term, you know, divorced from, you know, the context of the song, you know, people would say won't. But I ain't ever heard nobody say woot, even down south. So to me, I feel like when I read the backstory on the two songs, I feel like the Jacksonville

Cas 95 South, they came to Atlanta and they misinterpreted what they heard in the club. I don't think anybody in the club was saying woot. You know, you don't even pronounce T's hard like that in the South. I don't know where it came from. Okay. Must have been a reverb issue or something. I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

I do like the part of the 95 South song where the dude go, you know, on Wump, the breakdown is Shakaaka, which is Shaka Laka with very on hip-hop. I don't know. Nobody's Shaka-lok-in, you know, but on the, on the Woot joint, what is it they say? On the Woot joint, the breakdown is. It's, look at here, look at here, look at here. Oh, boy, look at here. Now, that's very, that feels very 90s Atlanta southern to me.

You know what I mean? I remember us like picking that up and saying that a lot, even though that wasn't really the version that I messed with. That was, that was catchy. That was good. I was about to do that, and I'm really grateful to you for doing that before I did that. No, I want to hear. Go ahead.

Nobody, look at here, look at here. Yeah, just, whoa, yeah, that was, that's different. Okay. When Steve Rowland, who is one of the rappers and tag team, raps, I'm taking it back to the old school because I'm an old fool who's so cool. What does it mean to take it back to the old school in 1993? How is hip-hop nostalgia already sort of working at that point? I mean, my interpretation of it, besides it just being, you know,

a way for him to rhyme and get that bar out, is, you know, In a certain sense, by 93, booty bass music was nostalgic in the South. You know what I mean? It was still very prevalent. It was still very dominant. And it defined a lot of what was going on down here. But it was also getting old for hip hop at that point. You know, when you think about the lifespan of hip hop and the lifespan

of a sound or whatever at that point being a lot shorter than it is today or I don't know, maybe the same thing to a certain extent. It was, it felt, it felt, you know, like, like throwbacks to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to sound that you had grown up on, you know, you know, again, because I, I had graduated high school that year. Um, but I could go back to elementary school and think about beats I'd heard that sounded exactly like that. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, yeah, it was old school if you were, you know, 20-something.

You know what I'm saying? Where does bass music either Atlanta or Miami bass music peak for you? Like I think about My Boo, the ghost town DJ song. That's, you know, that's not exactly a deep cut. But that's sort of the peak of it for me. But is there an artist, a song, you know, an era within this micro era? you thought like this, this was as good as this style of hip hop is going to get. Yeah, I think early little John, you know, before he really becomes, you know,

Krunk, King of Krunk, you know, when he was like, So So Def, Bass All-Stars compilation. Those are great. All of those are great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's kind of like the peak of Atlanta-based music, you know. Jermaine Dupree. Yeah, those are great. Yeah.

Is it a knock against Wump? There it is that it's so, you know, wedding friendly, grandma friendly. Like, is rap music better when there's sort of a silly and crowd-pleasing song that sort of works counter to the grittier stuff? Like, we need songs like this, right? Even if we don't, you know, claim to love them in public necessarily. I mean, like I said, we definitely had a lot of them back then. I don't know. Do we have, like, those corny, you know, corny rap songs nowadays?

I don't know if we get them as much now as we used to back when rap, you know, the industry, you know, or sometimes because of that cultural industry crossover, you know, cats were trying to cater to, you know, man, you got to do this if you want to get on the radio. Whereas now, radio will play anything, you know what I mean? They don't care. So it did feel like back then you got a lot more cheesiness in the rap, you know, in the, you know, in the. in the mainstream rap, you know, you always had somebody from vanilla ice to, you know, Sir Mixelai had a few joints, even though he had a bunch of hard joints too. Yeah, young MC. Yeah, you know, oh yeah, bust a move, yeah, no doubt. Just to ask you one last question that pertains more to louder than a riot, like the two live crew pretty famously went to jail, you know, just performing songs from their legally obscene,

rap album. What are the reverberations for rap music as a whole if two live crew don't ultimately win that legal battle over as nasty as they want to be? What's sort of the legacy that you see even now to all of that? Wow, that's a pretty heavy thing to contemplate, especially in a week like now. I mean, not to minimize the seriousness of, you know, Roe v. potentially being overturned, but it almost feels like the musical hip-hop comparison, you know, or equivalent to that case. Okay. And what it would have looked like, you know, 20, 30 years later had they lost that case. I feel like hip-hop would sound a lot different, man, you know.

I feel like hip-hop would sound a lot different and maybe that case. doesn't quite get the props or the recognition it deserves. It has it more so in recent years. Obviously, you know, there have been some great stories about it, especially from Gimless podcast on it, what, a couple, yeah, Mogul a couple of seasons ago. But, yeah, it's pretty groundbreaking in terms of making sure that that kind of, you know, speech. nasty as they want to be speeches protected you know what i mean yeah when you say different i'm just you know a lot safer i guess right like there would you know it would have a huge chilling effect on anybody

doing anything remotely explicit you know offensive yeah i would think so i would think so i mean you know you got to think about certain certain it makes me think about certain um really key uh cases around porn, you know, that were really legal, legal landmarks that allowed for that industry to proliferate and continue. And yeah, I mean, yeah, I think it would be a whole lot different. It would be, yeah, would it be cleaner, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. It's so weird to think about what hip hop might sound like if it had been forced into some

kind of, some kind of, you know, clean bag. And, you know, artists couldn't be explicit or, you know, sexually explicit or like so much of this stuff is like the defining stuff of hip-hop. When we look back over the last 30, 40 years, would it be hip-hop? I mean, you know, yeah. Rodney, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for talking. We really appreciate. appreciate it. Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. Good to talk to you, man.

I've been reading yourself for a long time, so it's a pleasure. Likewise, man. That's great to hear. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you so much to our guest this week, Rodney Carmichael. Thanks to our producers, Justin Sales and Kermn the God. Thanks to Mike Postalakis for his help with Luke Campbell's legal genius.

And thanks, as always, to you for listening. And now, without any further ado, here's 10. team with Wump, there it is. We'll see you next week.