Rhythm and Rhyme it’s a Movement

Now that we’ve covered history and all those details (Part 1 and Part 2 before this!!), we can get into the groove. The street game of Double Dutch, born out of the tradition of rhyme and rhythm, is closely related to children’s handclapping games and undeniably inspires hip hop raps to this day.

We’ve searched hard to find some good examples of this, but we’d love to hear from others who can add to the list. What tunes or dances out of these inspire Double Dutch or are inspired by Double Dutch?

Hip Hop doubles as Double Dutch

In 1999 Kyra Gaunt witnessed a pair of young girls jumping while chanting the opening lyrics of KRS One’s Criminal Minded. As it turns out – these girls have no idea that these words come from a classic old school hit by one of the most influential, KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions 1987:

Criminal minded, you’ve been blinded
Lookin’ for a style like mine you can’t find it

There are plenty of songs that use Double Dutch rhyming and rhythms as the basis of their lyrics, also based on hand clapping games. Nelly’s Country Grammar which rewrites the classic Down Down Baby rhyme, Kelis’s Milkshake, Lil Mama’s Lipgloss, are all reminiscent.

Gaunt notes another lyric a student tells her about, unaware she’s quoting Afrika Bambaataa’s Planet Rock. This takes us at Holy Roller right back to our point – Double Dutch deserves a place in the history of hip hop. Planet Rock lyrics, like many classic hip hop songs can easily double as double dutch rhymes:

Rock rock to the Planet Rock, don’t stop
Rock rock to the Planet Rock, don’t stop

Do what ya want but ya know ya got to be cool and boogie
Out on the floor, go down
Bring it low
Close to the ground
Everybody just rock it, don’t stop it, gotta rock it
Don’t stop
Keep tickin’ and tockin’
Work it all around the clock
Everybody just rock it, don’t stop it
Gotta rock it, don’t stop (repeats)

Hip hop, soul and funk that use Double Dutch

The Fatback Band

Did you know that The Fatback Band introduced the Double Dutch dance, following on from the popularity of The Bus Stop? Even so, quite hard to deduce what the routine actually was from this video.

The Double Dutch Bus

And the major pop tune that did it for you all, Frankie Smith’s Double Dutch Bus, which employed teenage code language to give us, “Dizzuble Dizzutch”!!

It was also covered by Raven Symone a couple of years ago for the teen movie The College Trip.

Malcolm McLaren

As already talked about in Part 1 – Malcolm McLaren has had probably the biggest Double Dutch inspired song ever. In the time between publishing Part 1 and Part 3, someone has posted to You Tube, the kind of footage we like.

The Dynamo’s performing live on Top of The Pops in 1983! The Dynamo’s were the team representing the NDDL and sponsored by McDonald’s, also known as the McDonald’s Dynamos, and later known as the Double Dutch Diplomats they toured nationally and internationally. And the team with a new line-up still tours today.

In The Ropes

Zooming into 2008, Young Black Miss, a couple of  female MC’s with the backing of NDDL, produce a pure hip hop tune and dance routine. A good hip hop jam that nods to the 80’s, takes the moves from The Compulsory and turns it into a dance routine sans ropes.

If you order direct from NDDL you get a CD with bonus remixes which are pretty good. These girls keep it real, with references to the old school Double Dutch Days.

The GO! Team

Brighton based indie-pop band The Go! Team, state one of their aims was to include Double Dutch rhymes into their songs. A video for one of their early songs, Ladyflash used classic footage from Pick Up Your feet and Black Magic. And a more recent song ‘Keys to the City‘ shows their direct influence Double Dutch rhymes have on them.

To refer to Kyra Gaunt’s book again – this rhyme appears in the book, as one the Double Dutch Divas sing (and wrote?). So is it a classic old rhyme or have The Go! team lifted it from the Divas?

We are the hardcore jumpers
And we never fail
We jump on through the snow, sleet, rain and hail
Now we can jump when we’re tired
We can jump on the roof

We jump on when we can’t think of other things to do
We jump on, hey, no matter what mood we’re in
Cause you know you get out, what you put in
We are the hardcore jumpers, and we never fail
We jump on x 4
Hey! hey!

Other Double Dutch inspired dances and tunes:

Do the Double Dutch

This song and dance is the result of another sport sponsored drive, Kenyon Entertainment and The KC Gift produced a song then ran a dance competition for the best routine to go with the song, http://www.myspace.com/dothedoubledutch.

And this is the official routine:

Do Dat Double Dutch

A rhyme over the Soulja Boy tune by Young Philly.

Another version of the Double Dutch tune, with dancers:

Crank Dat Double Dutch

By the 89 Boyz, more rope jumping inspired dance:

Entyce 3000
Using the Soulja Boy tune again… these girls reinterpret turning the ropes into a war stance!:

Double Dutch meets Footwork?
Black girls on the streets of their neighbourhood, bringing Double Dutch back to it’s roots and showing how it’s done (apart from the booty dance in the middle of the vid!).

Underground mixtape by FOXX includes a tune called Double Dutchin’
Moves sound pretty easy left left, right right, left left, right right.

Sa-Ra Creative Partners
A tune on their recent album Nuclear Evolution: the Age of Love.

Double dutch, to be taken from playgrounds, the streets and onto global phenomena is an amazing dichotomy. The creativity of a ghetto game is standardised and controlled by the adult world. How strange yet typical of the adult world. On the other hand, such a beautiful culture is made available to the youngsters of the world who can find hidden meaning beneath the generic approach of commercialisation, in a sense we cannot have on without the other, the eyes of the media are always watching the streets, the streets in turn feed off the media to fuel its creativity.  America took a young black girls skipping game to the center of the world hip hop stage where it became a household name to millions, still fueling young people’s creativity today…Double Dutch.

by Rollin D da Info Juggernaut

< Go back to read  Part 2: Mid 80s to Worldwide and  Part 1: Pick Up Your Feet