Songfacts®:

• 95 South was a rap group from South Florida named after the highway that runs through the area. This song was a regional hit and gained some popularity in the Black community, but it was the version by Tag Team called "Whoomp! There It Is" that became a breakout hit. Tag Team's version was released about a month later, although a check at the US Copyright Office reveals that "Whoomp" was registered in 1992 and "Whoot" in 1993. According to Tag Team's record label, Cecil Glenn from the group got the phrase from strippers in an Atlanta club where he worked.
  
  Carlos Spencer of 95 South tells a different story: He says the group recorded the song at a record studio in Atlanta called Digital Edge using an early version of Pro Tools. They took a tape of the song to the strip club where Cecil Glenn was the DJ, hoping he would play it in the club. Glenn loved the song, and he happened to know some people at Digital Edge. With Pro Tools, the tracks for a song remain on the computer until it is erased, and Spencer believes Glenn went into the studio with his friend Steve Gibson (the other half of Tag Team), and put their vocals over the tracks, substituting "Whoomp" for "Whoot" and "chacka lacka chacka lacka" for "lookie here lookie here" in the exact same places. The songs were built around different samples: "Whoomp!" used "I'm Ready" by the Italian Electro group Kano, and "Whoot!" sampled "Looking For The Perfect Beat" by Afrika Bambaataa.
  
  In 2021, Cecil Glenn told Songfacts the two sides had settled their differences and were on good terms. "We've never had beef, but everybody else has made it like we had beef," he said. "One of their members did a little video, like a documentary about how we did it, and I was just like, That's not right. I hate that they're living with that false narrative in their heart. But I'm on this Clubhouse with them and we're talking and laughing and they're congratulating us. And they said, 'Hey man, we just had to embrace it.' We're all making money, but it's 28 years later, and we got a Geico commercial."
• This is a "booty" song, celebrating the full, rich posteriors of women, and imploring them to show off and shake their butts. Many other rap songs of this era had a similar theme, notably "Baby Got Back" and "Rump Shaker." A big difference between this song and the more successful Tag Team version is the verse lyrics, which in "Whoot!" deal almost exclusively with sex, but in "Whoomp!" are more about partying and having fun. Another big difference: 95 South used the word "booty" in the lyrics, which was mildly offensive in 1993, while Tag Team spelled it out - "B double-O T Y, oh my." This sanitized the song for radio stations that wouldn't allow "booty" on the air.
• This was written and produced by Nathaniel Orange (C.C. Lemonhead) and Johnny McGowan (Jay Ski), who also recorded as the 69 Boyz and the Quad City DJs. Their other two hits had similar beats and were more successful finding an audience in clubs and on the radio: "Tootsee Roll" for 69 Boyz and "C'Mon N' Ride It (The Train)" for Quad City DJs.
• According to Carlos Spencer of 95 South, they had very little business savvy and failed to copyright the song, leaving the door open for Tag Team to record a copycat song. At first, they didn't think much of it, but week by week, "Whoomp!" started selling more and more copies, while "Whoot!" fell off the charts. Spencer says they reached an out-of-court settlement with Tag Team.
• While the "Whoomp!" version went mainstream in 1993, it was "Whoot!" that ultimately entered the lexicon, as gamers would shout the word to celebrate victories. In the era of text messaging, the word was written as "Woot," or the more emphatic "wOOt." In 2007, Merriam-Webster recognized "Woot" as their "Word Of The Year."