About

The Dougie is a style of hip hop dance that involves shimmying from side to side and passing one’s hand over or through one’s hair. Since being introduced by Dallas rapper Lil' Wil in his 2007 hit single "My Dougie," the dance has been further popularized with participation from well-known athletes and celebrities.

Origin

The dance takes its name from the American rapper and beatboxer Doug E. Fresh^[1], known for this signature move in the 1980s. It was initially popularized in 2007 by Dallas rapper Lil Wil with his hit rap single “My Dougie." In the official music video, Lil Wil and his dancers can be seen swaying back and forth while moving their hands over their heads.

Spread

A few instructional YouTube videos of the Dougie and Yahoo Answer threads^[3] were posted in 2007 and 2008, but the trend stayed contained within Lil Wil’s hometown of Dallas, Texas, where the term “dougie” was also used as a synonym for Swag.^[2] That May, the first question about the Dougie was asked on Yahoo! Answers.^[3] The dance was introduced to a wider mainstream audience when the hip hop group Cali Swag District released the single "Teach Me How to Dougie"^[4] on April 12th, 2010, without any credit given to Lil Wil.^[17] The song was certified platinum in the United States on January 6th, 2011^[5] for more than a million downloads.

As of May 2012, the official music video of "Teach Me How to Dougie" has more than 10.5 million views on YouTube and more than 450,000 shares on Facebook.^[6] An official site^[23] featuring fan-submitted dance videos was registered in March 2010, but has not been updated since 2011. The song has two fan pages on Facebook, one with 227,166 likes^[7] and a second with 39,230 likes^[8] as of May 2012.

Notable Examples

The dance itself has more than 40,000 likes on Facebook.^[9]Posts about the dance can be found on Tumblr^[21] and Twitter^[22] with the tag #Dougie. On YouTube, there are more than 77,500 results for Dougie^[24] and more than 21,000 results for “how to dougie”^[25] as of May 2012.

Athletes

Many American basketball and football^[18] players have used the Dougie as a victory dance or sharing YouTube videos of themselves doing the dance, including Washington Wizards player John Wall and Orlando Magic’s Glen “Big Baby” Davis. In August 2010, ESPN^[13] and men's humor site The Smoking Jacket^[16] reported on the dance becoming a trend amongst sports players, followed by a similar article shared on the Wall Street Journal^[14] that November. In December, the Dallas Observer^[15] published a compilation article featuring the year’s best Dougie videos.

Celebrities

In April and May 2011, videos of First Lady Michelle Obama^[19] and model Kate Upton^[20] doing the dance surfaced on YouTube. Pop musicians like Chris Brown and Justin Bieber have also incorporated the Dougie into their live performances. Justin Bieber has several Dougie-related Facebook fan pages, each with more than 10,000 likes including They Be Like Justin (what?) Can You Teach Me How To Dougie?^[10], Dear Justin Bieber: Can U Teach Me How To Dougie?^[11] and Justin Drew Bieber University of Dougie.^[12]

Parodies

Aside from instructional videos of the dance, there are a handful of parodies of the Cali Swag District song as well.

Search Interest

Since “Dougie” is also a popular nickname for Doug, there has been consistent queries for the keyword, but the volume of search interest began to pick up in late 2007, which may be attributed to the release of Lil Wil’s “My Dougie.”

External References