We can thank Young MC for popularizing the phrase "Bust A Move," which means to take action of some kind. The song follows a guy who seems hapless with women, but somehow keeps getting lucky. In the first first, he busts a move by dancing with a girl who shows interest. Later, he considers becoming a monk but meets a girl in a movie theater. At the end of the song, he's the best man at a wedding, and when a bridesmaid shows interest, he gets to bust a different kind of move when she wants to "dance to a different groove." It's all good fun, and it helped make rap music acceptable for a much wider audience.
Flea from The Red hot Chili Peppers played bass on this song and appears in the video, but he didn't reap the rewards. He explained to Bass Player magazine: "I have a bitter taste in my mouth about that, because I feel as though I got ripped off. The bass line I wrote ended up being a major melody of the tune, and I felt I deserved songwriting credit and money because it was a #1 hit. They sold millions of records, and I got $200! Afterwards, my lawyer told them, 'You should throw down Flea some cash,' but the record company said, 'We told him exactly what to play.' No one was even in the room at the time but me and the engineer! It was ridiculous, but I learned from it."
Young MC's real name is Marvin Young. He was signed to Delicious Vinyl, a small label that had a big impact in the late '80s. The first hit for the label was "
Wild Thing" by Tone Loc, which was released in 1988 and climbed to #2 in February 1989. Loc followed that up with "
Funky Cold Medina," which peaked at #3 that April. Both songs were co-written by Young MC.
"Bust A Move" was released in May and climbed to #7 in October. That chart position doesn't reflect the song's popularity: It stayed on the chart for 39 weeks and was a go-to jam anywhere there was dancing. It's still filling dance floors decades later.
This was Young MC's only big hit, although he did reach #33 with the follow-up single, "
Principal's Office." He was one of the first to write catchy, fun rap songs that crossed over to the world of pop. Young MC recalled to
Rolling Stone: "People looked at rap and hard rock as the type of music that you slam your door after you argue with your parents, and bang your head in defiance. My record wasn't necessarily rebellious, but it was clever enough to grab in a decent segment of people that didn't listen to rap music."
"Bust A Move" won the Grammy for Best Rap Performance at the 1990 ceremony. It was only the second year the category existed, and the next year it was eliminated to recognize Rap Solo and Rap Duo Or Group performances. The previous years' winner was DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince for "
Parents Just Don't Understand."
The main sample in this song is a loop from a song called "Found A Child" by a Seattle funk group called Ballin' Jack. Their song came out in 1970, and it's amazing that it took 19 years for a rapper to boost it - the 15 seconds of bass, drums and vocal stabs on the song makes a perfect foundation for a rap hit in an era when sampling was widespread.
Young MC wrote "Bust A Move" with his producers, Matt Dike and Michael Ross, the founders of the Delicious Vinyl label. Dike also worked on the 1989 Beastie Boys album Paul's Boutique.
The female vocalist is Crystal Blake, a popular backup singer who also worked with Third World, Tracie Spencer and Sister Sledge.
Young MC performs the song in the 2009 film Up In The Air, where George Clooney plays a guy who is constantly traveling. Clooney crashes a convention at the hotel where he's staying, and Young MC is the performer. These private functions are lucrative gigs for artists who have fallen out of the spotlight (and for some still in it), but they are rarely portrayed in movies.
"Bust A Move" was one of many songs revived in 2009 on the TV series Glee, where it was performed by the cast. The Glee version went to #93 that year.
A bunch of commercials have featured this song. Among them, a 2013 spot for Payday candy bars, an Old Navy commercial that same year ("Bust in to Old Navy's huge gift sale...") and a 2014 commercial for Southwest Airlines that shows a woman dancing to the song at a wedding.
In the 2016 episode of The Big Bang Theory, "The Positive Negative Reaction," the characters Raj and Leonard sing this in karaoke. A tipsy Sheldon proclaims, "I'm being musically encouraged to bust a move. If I knew what that meant, I might just do it."
"Bust a Move" got a fresh groove on ABC's hit show The Rookie. The song was featured in the second episode of season 6, which aired on February 27, 2024.
