Friday, July 01, 2005

Black National Anthem

I was thinking recently...

The Black National Anthem is "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

Well, i think to go along with that, we can add a black national dance...the "Bus Stop/Electric Slide" (we do them both and they're pretty interchangeable). Why is it that at the end of many black family/buddy/wedding movies we do the Bus Stop/Electric Slide or some variation of. It was at the end of "The Best Man", i've seen it on commercials for "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" and we do it just about at every social gathering there is.

Therefore, I (since I am proclaiming myself lord of black people and can make these decisions) denote that the Bus Stop/Electric Slide is our new national dance. I hereby proclaim Mr. Magic as emperor of Atlanta, Houston, D.C. and Compton. Now all we have to do is get Kanye to remix Lift Every Voice and we can do the Bus Stop/ Electric Slide to it.

Headliner here, my take

I think you learn that dance at 4 or 5. But I don’t know if we need a remix yet. To me the most beautifulest thing about the Electric Slide/Bus Stop is that you can break it out to just about anything. What other dance can you say that about? I mean you can’t Macarena to any U2 song. You can’t throw on Lil John and hokey pokey. It’s hard to break out the Chicken Dance to R. Kelly. But you can start a slide to just about anything, even some Frank Sinatra joint. That’s classic. My favorite electric slide songs (other than the original song, I think by Marcia Griffiths, but I may be wrong):

“Ain’t Nobody” Rufus and Shaka Khan, “Superstition” Stevie Wonder, The remix Grandmaster Flash did, “Soulful Strut” Grover Washington Jr, “Sissy Strut” The Meters, “Before I Let You Go” Frankie Beverly and Maze, “Your My Everything” Barry White, “Back That Ass Up” Juvneille, ok just kidding, but you really could :) , “Never Too Much” Luther Vandross (Rest In Peace brother, you did it for all of us). I’m drawing a blank, there gotta be some more good electric slide songs out there. What else? Nothing beats Mr. Magic though.

1 comment:

The Underdog said...

But you gotta remix Lift Every Voice in order to speed it up to so the "Slide." Can't do a slow slide, it just won't work.

As for more slide songs. You've pretty much reached them. I can't think of any. My fav from that list has gotta be "Ain't Nobody", but isn't it Can't Nobody? Maybe i love that song because of FAOP and the LL Cool J remix.

All the cha cha slides are just derivatives of the slide. The slide is eternal.