Entry · catalog no. 5013
da butt
/ /də ˈbʌt/ /duh BUT
noun · Washington, DC go-go scene; national via 'School Daze' · 1980s
✓ Verified
1.
A dance from DC's go-go scene in which the dancer bends low and rolls the backside to the beat; nationally famous from Spike Lee's 'School Daze.'
“Soon as the percussion break hit, half the cookout was doing da butt like it was 1988 again.”
Origin & Attribution
Da butt belongs to go-go, the percussion-heavy funk style Black Washington, DC built in the 1970s behind Chuck Brown, whose 'Bustin' Loose' (1978) first carried the sound beyond the city. For the 1988 film 'School Daze,' Spike Lee needed a song for a dance scene and commissioned one from bassist Marcus Miller (with Mark Stevens); DC go-go band E.U. — Experience Unlimited — traveled to New York in 1987 to record it. 'Da Butt' hit No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Black Singles chart in April 1988 and became go-go's biggest national moment, sending the dance into proms, cookouts, and HBCU homecomings coast to coast. The order matters: the dance and the sound were DC's; the movie was the megaphone, not the source. Outside DC the song is often filed as an eighties one-hit novelty, which misreads a whole regional Black music culture as a punchline.
1987
E.U. records 'Da Butt' in New York for Spike Lee
1988
'School Daze' opens; the dance goes national
1988
'Da Butt' hits No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Black Singles chart
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Washington, DC go-go scene; national via 'School Daze' · 1980s
Spoken by
Go-go bands and DC crowds, HBCU students, Black partygoers of the 'School Daze' generation
$DABUTTThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Historical39 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
74/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1987
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
E.U., 'Da Butt' — 1988
song · verified
■
Spike Lee, 'School Daze' — 1988
film · verified
■
+ Cite a sourceWashington City Paper, 'Da Oral History of Da Butt'
press · verified
See also