Please Explain: What Is Litefeet?

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By MTV Iggy May 1, 2014

Words by Mike Steyels

If you live in New York and take the train like most people, then you’ve probably heard litefeet music before. When those dancers spill into your car, demanding everyone’s attention, and start with a show of footwork and pole tricks, they are usually litefeeters. And the beat that blasts from their portable amps is also called litefeet, as it’s named after the dance it was created for.

It’s a high energy, fast paced rap beat using an old school hiphop drum kit, full of chopped and pitched up vocal samples. It’s the newest sound of New York, and most of the producers are still in high school.

The music and the dance are inseparable. The beats are made specifically with litefeeters in mind, and it’s played almost exclusively by those in the scene. So the story of the sound can’t be told without explaining the moves, which are also called “gettin’ lite” or “gettin’ dark.”

The name comes from dancers being light on their feet, often seeming weightless. But it’s just as common that they stomp heavily to the beat, reacting to its high energy. They’ll do different variations on threading the needle, or throw in some tricks with their hat, and maybe do some shoe tricks. Yes, you might catch them taking a sneaker off. You’ll probably even see the (real) Harlem Shake thrown in there once and a while. Litefeet is a mix of different styles, and, like the music, the dance is comical and enthusiastic.

The beat is set to a tempo of 100105 BPM, usually features a snare on the four, and switches up every eight bars. Some of their favorite vocal samples include Lil Jon, Fatman Scoop, and Busta Rhymes. Producers frequently use their own voices as well. And there are a lot of energetic, quickly chopped sound effects meant to keep the pace up. Simple melodies that switch on the eight are also very common, and each track will either feature a lot of different synths, or at least multiple octaves of the same synth.

Litefeet got its start in Harlem in 2005, before it even had a name. People on the party scene were doing some dances that became the bedrock of litefeet. Early predecessors like the chicken noodle soup and the aunt jackie contributed to the flow of litefeet and helped formulate it. But dances like the tone wop (now called the rev up), and the bad one became central components of what we know it to be today.

Ron Browz was the first producer to make the tracks that litefeeters danced to, but they weren’t meant specifically for the dancers at the time, just embraced by them. Others like DJ Webstar, DJ http://www.mtviggy.com/articles/please-explain-what-is-litefeet/ 1/4 3/24/2015 Please Explain: What is Litefeet? | MTV IGGY Omar, and Black The Beast did their part as well, producing and DJing on the party scene that cultivated the current form. A number of those artists had hits named after aforementioned dances: Webstar and Danny P produced “Chicken Noodle Soup,” Black produced “Aunt Jackie,” and Browz made “Bad One.” You can hear the roots of the current sound in these vocal tracks, which were mainstream hits in their time.

Kid the Wiz

But litefeet didn’t have a name until 2007, when Team Litefeet was born and named by AG The Voice Of Harlem, whose voice also appeared on “Chicken Noodle Soup.” In addition to being the first team consisting of strictly litefeeters, it also brought Bronx dancers into the mix.

“Litefeet really got its color once it hit the Bronx. Harlem was the beginning stage, but the Bronx is the very next chapter,” says Chrybaby Cozie, a dancer who runs Litefeet Nation, the main hub of the scene. “This dance made it OK for people from different boroughs to mix with each other. NYC was very segregated for a long time, where you stayed in your borough. But this dance made it easy for people who were from one borough to travel and find it wherever it was at.”

It spread even further when D Cole began organizing battles in 2008. Dancers had always battled each other, but he turned it into a spectacle, an actual match. People started traveling to these events strictly to battle, and this is when dancers from as far as Brooklyn started to appear on the scene. His production was also influential.

At this point, litefeeters would still dance to anything with a hard beat. But it was a dancer called Lil SNS who realized that the dancers just wanted beats without vocals. He started chopping up popular rap tunes, and became the first litefeet producer. Rah Dollaz and Spunk Digga were other early producers. Swag Kidz was the first litefeet music group, and made a popular track called “5,000,” which called out all the dances. These artists were also different from the first generation, in that they weren’t DJing, only producing.

The battle culture leaks into the music as well. Tracks hover around the four minute mark, which started because each dancer gets two minutes in a battle. Some songs are made specifically for battling, and they have a particular mood, sometimes running at four minutes exactly and repeating themselves halfway through. Usually at a battle though, they’ll just stop a track after two minutes for the next dancer and play it again, or play another one. http://www.mtviggy.com/articles/please-explain-what-is-litefeet/ 2/4 3/24/2015 Please Explain: What is Litefeet? | MTV IGGY Beat battles were common for a while around 200910. Artists who had beef would pick a sample, and then each make a beat with it. Those beats would then be uploaded to Youtube, and the winner would be the artist with the most votes in the comments section. Dis tracks were also prevalent back then, with artists calling one another out over a beat. Neither is common today, although they still happen from time to time.

All of the early contributors to the music have distanced themselves from the scene. That’s why all of the current producers are so young, and why DJ culture is entirely absent from the scene. These days, the music is played off their portable amps. Even at the events where there are real sound systems, the tracks are played off an MP3 player.

But the scene has continued to spread and evolve. There are litefeeters all over the world, from LA to Japan. The Litefeet Nation Facebook group has around 1,800 members, with about 3,000 still waiting to join. There’s also dozens of litefeet producers, although they’re almost all from Harlem, The Bronx, or Long Island, with a few scattered around Brooklyn. Nearly all of the producers either started as a dancer or got into dancing after making the beats. “Even when people start out just producing, they usually become a dancer,” says Dark Lyte, a dancer who founded Team Rocket.

Youtube and Soundcloud are how the sound is spread, even among those in the scene. A

dancer named Crazy C was the Dancers Tarone "40 Pounds" Lindsay, Kennedy "Ksmoove" Noel, Sylvan " Kid Zoom" one who started uploading Small, and Manuel "Real Lyte" Ramirez/Photo Credit: Aaron Vazquez litefeet to Soundcloud. He posts other people’s beats on an account named Courtney WaltonAve, and that’s how all the litefeeters began to use the service.

Harlem’s Kid The Wiz is the biggest litefeet producer of the moment. Any of the litefeeters you speak to will mention his name. As if to cement that status, he appeared on America’s Got Talent last year. He also had a song that got radio play, uncommon for a genre rarely heard outside of litefeet circles. His track, “The Real Harlem Shake,” alongside Tweek Tune, was played on Power 105.

His wasn’t the only litefeet song to make it onto the station, however. Joo and C Him‘s “Valid Like Salad,“ which was named after a dance, was played on the station last year. It also made it to Hot 97 on DJ Wallah’s show and got some play in the clubs. C Him, the producer, is actually from Jersey. In fact, the first version of the song was a Jersey club track. The litefeet version went viral, racking up over a million combined plays from its various uploads to Youtube. It was also signed to a major electronic music label, Ultra Records. But the label didn’t work with the artists on the release plan at all, so after they deleted all the viral videos and uploaded their own official version, it never reached 75,000. The video even featured dancers from LA instead of NYC. “Communication between the label and us was nonexistent. The label didn’t even inform us the video was released or when the song was available on iTunes. I found out through Twitter,” says C Him.

The New Era mixtape by Hann was big news for the scene in the past year. It was the first litefeet mixtape, and also is higher audio quality than is normal for litefeet. Hann is made up of two of the biggest producers — Long Island’s Lil Live and Chris Designs from The Bronx. Designs reached out to Live when he heard Live’s music, and asked Live to teach him. (In litefeet, Designs would refer to Live as his “creator” since he taught him). Designs had never made music before, but Live taught him how to use FL Studio, which is what nearly all the producers use. Within a year, he was releasing his music and soon gained respect from the dancers. “We wanted the sounds to be reflected in their dancing. A lot of the time, the dance style changes because of the music. And we wanted the dancers to hear every little part of our songs,” he says.

Some other artists frequently mentioned include Big Sean (BSN), Astro Sparkz, Top Flight, and Larry Smoove. Brooklyn’s Smoove is one of the few artists to reach the million views mark on Youtube with a song called “Light Up.” It’s currently at 1.3 million combined views, not including the video uploaded to his own channel, which was hacked and deleted. And at 20 years old, he’s one of http://www.mtviggy.com/articles/please-explain-what-is-litefeet/ 3/4 3/24/2015 Please Explain: What is Litefeet? | MTV IGGY the older heads making litefeet beats.

Some litefeeters are urging producers to experiment more. They point out that the dancers are open to new ideas and will go in to almost anything. It is a dance comprised of a number of other styles, after all. “Producers shouldn’t be scared to try new types of beats. There’s nothing you can’t do. If you don’t do it, it’s because you didn’t want to,” Dark Lyte argues.

Wherever the music ends up next, you can be sure it’ll reflect the city it was born in. “This is New York music. It was birthed here. When people ask what the New York sound is right now, I tell them it’s litefeet,” says Chrybaby. Hann (L/R: Chris Designs and Lil Live)/Photo courtesy of the artist For now, without DJs to bring it to the clubs, you’ll have to follow it on the internet. Unless you go to one of the battles, like Center of Lite, Friday Night Lite, or MindlezzThoughtz. At those events, they play the hottest tracks of the moment, usually chosen by the organizer, or as requested by a dancer if he’s respected enough.

You can also catch the sound when dancers are cyphering in the park or hitting the trains. But with the NYPD cracking down on the subways, its time there may be limited.

The dancers have always had to put up with tickets and the occasional trip to central booking. But the new police commissioner has made it a priority to stop people from looking for money on the trains, even singling out the “acrobats” — a reference to litefeeters — as particular scourges.

If the cops are successful, it could possibly damage the litefeet scene, as the opportunity to make money is an incentive to take it seriously for some. “This is how people are able to survive,” says Larry Smoove, “A lot of people might give up on it if they couldn’t hit the trains anymore. But we’re putting smiles on people’s faces. It’s a positive thing.”

“It may be illegal, but we’re doing something good,” adds Top Flight, “People are giving us money because they like what we do, it’s not like we’re taking it from them.”

TAGS: Aunt Jackie bad one Black the Beast C Him Center of Lite Chicken Noodle Soup Chris Designs Chrybaby Cozie D Cole Dark Lyte DJ Omar Hann HOT Joo Kid the Wiz Larry Smoove Lil Live Lil SNS Litefeet Mike Steyels MindlezzThoughz New York City North America Please Explain Rah Dollaz Ron Browz Spunk Digga Swag Kidz The Real Harlem Shake tone wop Top Flight United States Valid Like Salad

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