Jump Around

Jump Around opens with a horn fanfare and never asks you to wait. DJ Muggs built the beat around a sample from Bob and Earl’s 1963 recording of Harlem Shuffle and a rhythm pulled from Chubby Checker. The track is best known for a high-pitched squeal that hits at the beginning of almost every bar. It appears 66 times. The source of the squeal was debated for decades. Everlast eventually confirmed it came from Divine Styler’s 1989 recording of Ain’t Sayin’ Nothin’, which itself had sampled Jr. Walker. Muggs assembled all of it into something that sounds like it was always supposed to exist. The production has one setting. That is enough.

DJ Muggs made the beat for Cypress Hill’s second album. B-Real could not find the words for it. Muggs offered it to Ice Cube next. Ice Cube passed. House of Pain took it. Everlast sat in Muggs’ driveway and wrote the lyrics in one session, drawing from dancehall and Shabba Ranks. Muggs told him to drop the reggae approach and commit to Jump Around. The album shipped with shamrocks on the sleeve and an Irish flag on the cover. Everlast and Danny Boy O’Connor were Irish-Americans from Los Angeles. The Irish imagery was not a costume. Jump Around fit everywhere.

The single reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and number three on the Cash Box Top 100. It peaked at number five on the Hot Rap Songs chart. The album debuted at number fourteen on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum in the United States. A 1993 re-release of the single in the United Kingdom climbed to number eight on the OCC chart. Then something else happened. At Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin, students started jumping to the song between the third and fourth quarters of Badger football games. The stadium shook. It became a tradition. Thirty-four years later it still plays at every home game. Thirty-four years ago today the album that started it all dropped in Los Angeles.