In Da Club: The enduring appeal of Lil Jon's Get Low
Here's a little story about something that happened inside an Auckland nightclub recently. Plus, everything you need to binge across the weekend...
So, a couple of weeks back I was in a club. I know! I’m 43! Chris - who even are you?! Anyway, calm down already. Yes, I was in a club. It was a birthday party, it was nearing the end of the night, and the dance floor was dying down. Glasses were being collected, food plates cleared away, and the general vibe was: ‘Guys, it’s time to go home.’
A DJ who’d recently taken over the turntables had other ideas. So far, she’d played my favourite set of the night, a half-hour of solid gold old school rap bangers that proved she knew her stuff. You know what I’m talking about: Souls of Mischief’s 93 'Til Infinity. De La Soul’s Ring Ring Ring. The kind of hip-hop that goes on a Spotify playlist called Back in the Day. I loved it. But, as I said, everyone was saying their goodbyes.
This DJ saw people grabbing their jackets and decided to course correct. She was having none of that. She thought to herself: ‘Hell nah.’ She decided to turn shit up.
She chose this moment to play Lil Jon’s Get Low.
Do you remember Get Low? I remember Get Low. Get Low is not a song. Get Low is an anthem. It’s a movement. It’s a firm directive yelled at you by a southern American rapper who’s been drinking way too much crunk juice. Don’t know what crunk juice is? Shame. You’re definitely not crunk enough.
Get Low is a song that is nearly 20 years old. It is the apex of crunk, the definition of southern hip-hip, a style of music full of yelling and swagger. It features Lil Jon, the Ying Yang Twins and the East Side Boyz all being as loud and obnoxious as they possibly can be. The lyrics include the line: “TO THE WINDOWS! TO THE WALLS!” They also include: “SKEET-SKEET MOTHERFUCKER!” It’s pure genius.
This corrupting congregation of southern stylings should not have had the affect that it did on a crowd of people who were mostly around my age, and some a fair bit older. Yet holy wow did the vibe instantly switch up.
Remember the Harlem Shake challenge, where everyone in a video was frozen until the song’s breakdown and then they’d just completely lose their shit? Playing Get Low, in this club, at this moment, was exactly like that. I nearly dropped my drink. I definitely laughed as I just stood there and stared in amazement as complete carnage unfolded around me.
At the bar, a woman who was previously engaged in polite conversation with a potential suitor immediately, at the moment she heard the opening lines, dropped to her heels and started twerking. The dance floor was suddenly rammed with people acting like we were in a dimly lit Atlanta strip club circa 2003.
The best bit, though, was happening right next to me. A man, who shall remain nameless, put his foot up on a stool and began mimicking sweat dripping down his chest, cascading onto his genitals and onto the floor. Don’t pretend you don’t know the lyrics he was doing this to. You know exactly what I’m talking about.
I don’t have a moral for this story. I don’t have a nice ribbon to wrap this newsletter up. Like I said at the start, I was in a club, and something happened. So, it’s Friday, and if you find yourself on a dancefloor tonight, a glass of crunk juice in hand, and Lil Jon’s Get Low comes on, you have permission to completely and absolutely shake your shit. It’s 2021, and we deserve it.
A deep-dive into this Viagogo mess…
On Wednesday, I published a story about the ticket resale site Viagogo. It was a gnarly, gnotty, twisted pretzel of a yarn that opened my eyes to exactly how secondary ticket resale web businesses operate.
There’s some incredibly dodgy stuff going on involving high level ticket touts, an international array of scalpers, and a network of fake tickets, inflated prices, and cloned listings.
This is my favourite bit, when an expert from London I was interviewing via Zoom opened up multiple Viagogo tabs and clicked through to find out exactly who was selling concert tickets to Lorde’s New Zealand shows at absolute nosebleed prices…
If you’d like a long-read this weekend, you’ll need to subscribe. But I think it’s worth it. You can find it all here:
Everything else you need to worry about this weekend…
After reading The Ringer’s oral history of Pine Barrens, the best episode of The Sopranos ever, I’m definitely going to watch that episode again, even if it’s just to hear Tony Soprano yell, “Mayonnaise! MAYONNAISE!” at Paulie all over again.
A few movies are out this weekend: The Justice of Bunny King features our very own Thomasin McKenzie and is getting decent reviews, and Jungle Cruise, featuring Emily Blunt and The Rock. I still haven’t seen Black Widow, so that’s where I’m heading.
The music-focused Netflix doco series This Is Pop is really worth a look. If you’re pondering where to start, click play on the T-Pain episode and find out why his success with Auto-Tune sent him into a four-year cycle of depression.
I binged my way through The Sure Thing podcast this week. The Aussie series tells the story of two kids who found themselves in the middle of the biggest insider trading scheme ever undertaken in Australia, and possibly the world. It’s a crazy story.
The Netflix series Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean kicks off this weekend, telling the story of how the car creator made the world’s coolest car, then ended up in jail.
Finally, check out the trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife which, I dunno, seems like it might be okay? Check it out here…