Yeek! Fest brings Atlanta’s hip-hop dance history to the front of the stage

It’s similar in energy to a crowd yelling “Boom!” after a hard football tackle. It signals, said Melanie Patrick a cofounder and producer of the festival, that “you’ve conquered and destroyed.”

Saturday’s sixth-annual Yeek! Fest at Welcome All Park will continue its founders’ mission to promote and preserve not just yeeking but Atlanta’s decades-rich dance history.

“New York has breakdancing, the West Coast has krumping and we have yeeking,” said Anthony “A Dogg” Wilkins, cofounder of Yeek! Fest and member of The Crowd Pleasers (TCP), a music and dance collective based in Atlanta, known for their party-starting 1998 rap anthem “Betcha Won’t Get Crunk.”

“We do the festival to bring awareness to the fact that Atlanta does have their own dance style, and we try to get the kids involved so we can get them acclimated with what we do and hopefully pass it on to them,” Wilkins added.

Each year, Yeek! Fest also honors important figures from Atlanta’s hip-hop culture. This year’s honorees are world-renowned music producers the Dungeon Family, whose cofounders Sleepy Brown and the late Rico Wade were once members of a youth dance group named “Guess.”

A year after hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, and Atlanta’s undeniable role in it, this year’s Yeek! Fest is a reminder of the impact a core element of the culture — dance — has contributed to its popularity and longevity.

Credit: Courtesy of Melanie Patrick

Credit: Courtesy of Melanie Patrick

Yeek! Fest patrons can expect a high-energy event showcasing a range of dance expressions, from ballet to praise and worship dancing. But as in years past, when Atlanta dance groups like 911, FDC, Obsession, Too Crucial and others made high school talent shows and skating rinks places to be, it will be Atlanta’s “yeekers” taking center stage, as crews and dancers new and old perform to a deejayed soundtrack.

Those mixes are likely to include dance staples like The Egyptian Lover’s “Egypt Egypt,” Clear’s “Cybertron” and Debby Deb’s “When I Hear Music.”

“I don’t care where you was at — skating rink, downtown, anywhere you meet up with somebody, it might pop off,” said Wilkins, who added that his group TCP once dance-battled Guess, Wade’s group, at Six Flags.

“Even now, I don’t care what party you go to. It could be the most upscale situation you ever been to,” Wilkins added, noting that he attends formal events where a deejay plays fast-paced “bootyshake” music, and yeeking commences.

“It comes out of people. They’re going to start dancing with their dresses on, and tuxes, and everything.”

Yeeking goes back to the late 1980s, when bootyshake music ruled Southern rap, before the rise of the Dungeon Family. It reached a fever pitch in the early- and mid-1990s, as recording acts like TLC and Usher began adding the style of dance into their live shows.

Patrick believes Michael Jackson even borrowed from yeeking when he performed a dance move called “the tick” in his “Remember The Time” video. “Those moves came straight from Atlanta and I’ll be the first to say it,” she claimed.

As Atlanta-based rappers began finding their footing in the music industry, dancing initially remained a major part of the city’s hip-hop expression, in hyperlocal dances like ticking, “the ragtop,” and the Bankhead Bounce, which became a national phenomenon. Being able to move your body was just as significant as being able to rap, if not more.

Hip-hop grew in popularity and rap became the prominent representation of the culture, at a moment when song tempos were slowing, causing those dancing to the music to move at more moderate pace.

This phenomenon wasn’t confined within I-285. Around the same time, New York rappers like Big Daddy Kane and Heavy D, who incorporated dancing in their repertoires, saw the spotlight move away from them and toward rappers employing hard core personas through more intricate lyricism, like Nas, The Notorious B.I.G., and others.

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

Some say Atlanta put the art form on the back burner.

“Growing up here in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the dancers were the stars of Atlanta, not the rappers,” said Patrick, a well-known choreographer and dancer, seen in videos of popular Atlanta rap songs like Kilo Ali’s “Show Me Love,” and DJ Unk’s “Walk It Out.”

“When they started dancing [at the parties], that’s when the crowd gathered. Even the deejays had to start mixing their music up to cater to them because that’s what people wanted to see. They knew if they played certain songs, that’s how they could win the crowd.”

Over time, dance styles like yeeking became niche, eventually fading into relative obscurity. Goodie Mob spoke to this transition in their 1997 single “They Don’t Dance No Mo’” as many people decided they were too cool to dance and would rather “hold the wall.”

It didn’t happen without effort to preserve hip-hop dance in Atlanta. OutKast included TCP in their 1998 “Rosa Parks” music video, even taking them on tour and later signing them to their now defunct Aquemini Records label, Still public interest in dancing — and dance-based rap — waned as rappers became megastars and idols.

Yeek! Fest cofounder Ted Rush, also a member of Guess with Dungeon Family cofounders Wade and Brown, said the success of rap ironically played a part in yeeking’s demise.

“The music industry jumped off before the dance industry,” Rush said. “The dances were still in some of the music videos back then but not at the forefront. People didn’t understand it when they seen it anyway. You had to be in Atlanta to really get it.”

“Yeeking didn’t get the exposure it deserved because this dance style was not easy to do,” added Patrick. “This was a very difficult, aggressive style to emulate, and a lot of people had to get the watered down version of it to understand.”

To further illustrate, Patrick said there is a clear difference between the raw energy of dance crews like ATL Bomb Squad performing at club venues like Shyran’s Showcase and the polished choreography in Ciara’s “1, 2 Step” music video.

With hip-hop in and beyond Atlanta currently under a dark cloud, as rappers are continuously being lost to gun violence, jail and drug abuse, a return to dancing could be a beacon that brings the community back to its creative essence.

“Nowadays everybody’s too cool or on drugs, and honestly that slows you down to where you don’t want to do any movement,” Wilkins said. “Even with rappers, they don’t even do that type of up-tempo music where you have to dance. Everything is slow, depressing, gangster. Ain’t nothing happy, loving or upbeat about that.”

“I’ve seen people who were known as troublemakers that got into dancing and it changed the trajectory of who they were,” said Patrick. “And I’ve seen people do the opposite where they got away from dancing and started getting in trouble.”

Credit: Courtesy of Melanie Patrick

Credit: Courtesy of Melanie Patrick

Beyond the festival, Yeek! Fest cofounders are diligently working on a documentary featuring archival footage of dozens of dance groups performing over the last four decades. They said it will include interviews with nearly 100 Atlanta-based artists, deejays and producers, like Kawan “KP” Prather, Killer Mike and CeeLo Green, who were either once dancers themselves or faces in the crowd, enjoying the show.

With these combined efforts, the hope is that a new generation will keep the party going.

“I’m already seeing yeeking get into a lot of the dance studios,” says Rush, who is happy to see a newfound interest and momentum but hopes more individual dancers go back to forming groups. He also likes to brag about how many “OGs” are still able to do these dance moves, which he believes kept them in shape over the years.

“People from all walks of life do this dance. We want to show that this is an energetic, fun activity that you can do without being in the streets.”

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