Hip Hop Cheerleading Music
From LoveToKnow Cheerleading
Raw, infectious spirit is what cheer is all about, and using hip hop cheerleading music is a great way to infuse that spirit into your squad. The music has been around long enough to appeal to both the old and the young. It has beats that are designed to make bodies move, and they are usually complex enough to give the cheerleaders a broad palette for choreography.
First, Pick the Right Hip Hop Cheerleading Music
It could be tempting to simply use the most recent top ten hip hop songs for your cheer squad, but there are a few things that may make that not the best decision:
- Is your school licensed to use that piece of music? While a lot of squads simply use the music anyway, there are times when larger schools will run into trouble with copyright lawyers if the song is used without the rights being secured first.
- Is the length appropriate? It may be necessary to have someone re-mix the song into an appropriate length for the routine.
- Check for content. It would be nice to think it was just all about the music, but in reality many lyrics would be inappropriate or objectionable to the schools where they are performed. Be sure to listen to the message being sent out.
Consider the audience as well. If the crowd of fans is mainly teens and peers from the school, using the latest hip hop song might be exactly the fresh burst of energy that is needed to grab their attention. However, if it is an event such as Homecoming, the fans will likely be a mix of current students, alumni and parents. Picking a more "old school" hip-hop song by an artist such as Boyz to Men will stimulate the memories whether they were fans of the group or not.
Free is Good
One way to avoid the entire copyright issue and be sure that you are getting music that has not been used by any other squad is to use some free resources for music. There are thousands of artists and millions of songs licensed under the Creative Commons license. This license specifies how a song can be used; for example, for non-commercial purposes with "attribution" (in other words, saying who created the song). This can be as simple as the announcer saying "Now the East High Cheer Squad will feature the music of MC Honeycut in their new routine!" It's usually considered polite to let the artists know where their music is being used.
Incorporating the History of Hip Hop
Technically, hip hop is more than just the music; it is a mixture of art forms including graffiti artists, the DJ, the rapper and the "b-boys" and "b-girls" who do the break dancing. While it's not necessary, it shows respect to the art form to at least try and acknowledge these elements, perhaps by having a graffiti backdrop for the routine or a live rapper singing while the cheerleaders bust their moves.
The moves are another aspect of the entire package. One difficulty that groups such as Sass X7 (a former college dance squad) has had on "America's Best Dance Crew" is the lack of actual break dancing moves in their routines. While there is no reason that cheer squads can't just use their own moves, incorporating a few hip hop dance moves into the routine will give it more authenticity.
Where to Start
Another factor in adding hip hop cheerleading music is to try and feature the more influential women of the genre. Here is a list of ten of the most influential women of hip hop. Their music is available through iTunes, Amazon, and other music outlets.
- Salt-N-Pepa: Hot, Cool & Vicious
- MC Lyte: Lyte as a Rock
- Queen Latifah: All Hail the Queen
- Roxanne Shante: The Best of Cold Chillin'
- Lauryn Hill: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
- Missy Elliot: Under Construction
- Lil' Kim: Hard Core
- Eve: Scorpion
- Foxy Brown: Broken Silence
- Da Brat: Funkdafied
Learn More
This page has been accessed 5,366 times. This page was last modified 19:10, 27 June 2008.
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