Tags
1990s, club classic, Cypress Hill, dancehall, Harlem Shuffle, high pitched squeal, Hip Hop, horn fanfare, House of Pain, Jump Around, Junior Walker and the All Stars, Music, One Hit Wonder, Shoot Your Shot, St. Patrick's Day parade, Tommy Boy
Jump Around (Tommy Boy, 1992)
Jump Around is a song by American hip hop group House of Pain, produced by DJ Muggs of hip hop group Cypress Hill, who has also covered the song. It became a hit in 1992, reaching number 3 in the United States. A 1993 re-release of the song in the United Kingdom, where the initial release had been a minor hit, peaked at number 8. The song is popular among dancehall DJs and is widely regarded in the United Kingdom as a club classic. DJ Muggs has stated that he originally produced the beat for Cypress Hill, but rapper B-Real did not want to record at that time. The beat was subsequently offered to Ice Cube, who refused, before finally being taken and used by House of Pain.
The song features a distinctive horn fanfare intro, sampled from Bob & Earl’s 1963 track Harlem Shuffle. The song also samples Popeye the Hitchhiker by Chubby Checker, but it is best known for a high-pitched squealing sound that appears at the beginning of almost every bar — 66 times in the course of the recording. The origin of the squeal has been the subject of debate. The website WhoSampledWho credits the 1967 Junior Walker & the All Stars track Shoot Your Shot, in which a tenor saxophone makes the noise. However, American blogger Anil Dash and American musician Questlove of hip hop band The Roots have pointed to Prince’s Gett Off as the source. A Newsweek reader performed a spectrogram where the sample more closely matches Shoot Your Shot, and House of Pain member Everlast himself told Questlove that it is a horn making the squeal and not Prince. However, Anil Dash claims the band has denied that the sample is Prince to avoid paying royalties to the singer. For his part, DJ Muggs says the sample came from neither Prince nor Junior Walker.
The music video for Jump Around was filmed during the 1992 New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade. Portions of the video were filmed during the parade route as well as Central Park and Old Town Bar and Restaurant. The video ends with a dedication to the memory of Matt Champy, a friend of the band who died in 1992.
To this day, Jump Around remains a popular anthem heard worldwide during sporting games and a beloved party starter.