If you grew up on basement parties, teen clubs or living room TV nights with networks like Video Music Box or BET, you probably remember the first time you saw somebody hit The Wop. That move from side to side felt simple, but it carried a whole mood, part cool, part joy, part “don’t step on my suede Pumas.” The dance even got a primetime look on The Cosby Show during the classic Theo and Cockroach segment ‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen’.
The Wop at 40 is less about ranking it above every other dance trend and more about honoring how something so small could carry so much of who we are then and now.
On Queue Points, DJ Sir Daniel and Jay Ray sit with that feeling and mark The Wop turning 40, treating it not just as a fun move, but as a piece of Black music history. The conversation starts with a basic truth: for a lot of us, The Wop is the first dance that really felt hip hop in our bodies. It bubbled out of mid‑80s New York hip hop, rode the golden era of hip hop tempo, and somehow landed at every block party, school dance and family function, even if you were nowhere near Harlem.
Part of what makes The Wop stand out is how flexible it is. Jay Ray breaks down all the different “flavors”, the aggressive Wop when folks are half battling, the playful Wop when it is all jokes, the flirty Wop when two people are clearly into each other. Same basic move, but tiny changes in the hands, the head, the shoulders tell a whole story. That nuance, the ability to say five different things with one step, is very much Black culture.
Sir Daniel points out something a lot of people felt but maybe didn’t name, The Wop gave Black men permission to dance. “You hood dude, your block hugger, he could do The Wop and still have a serious snarl on his face and still be cool, still be moving to the beat,” he says in the episode. In those early hip hop years, there was plenty of machismo, but this was a move your toughest neighborhood dude could do and still look like himself. He could keep the B‑boy stance, keep the serious face, and still move his body in rhythm without feeling like he had to step out of his cool. On the other side of that, women and femmes had a way in too, a shared language on the floor that didn’t require complicated choreography.
“The Wop gave men permission to dance… your hood dude, your block hugger, he could do the Wop and still have a serious snarl on his face and still be cool, still be moving to the beat.”
- DJ Sir Daniel
The episode also digs into how dances travel. Before social media dance challenges, routines moved through tours, VHS tapes, music videos and word of mouth. Sir Daniel and Jay Ray talk about how The Wop showed up slightly different in New York versus Washington, D.C. – New York’s version being more head‑driven, D.C.’s living more in the upper body and hands. By the time it reached teen parties in other cities, the move had picked up local flavor, new names and small tweaks, but the core was still there.
Music videos come up as their own kind of time capsule. The hosts mention clips like New Choice’s “Cold Stupid,” where you see almost every 80s hip hop dance packed into what looks like a frat party – NPHC letters, asymmetrical haircuts, Troop suits, all of it. They also shout out the original underground‑club version of MC Hammer’s “Let’s Get It Started,” grainy and raw, but full of hard, precise dancing. Those visuals show how the moves looked before big‑budget polish and celebrity choreographers like Paula Abdul cleaned them up for mainstream pop stars such as Janet Jackson.
“If the musicians don’t tap into that code… if we lose those recipes, that’s the scary part. We lose that access to the code that brings us the joy.”
- Jay ray
From there, the show zooms out. Sir Daniel talks about a “code” in the music, how certain rhythms and sounds unlock movement that already lives in our bodies. The same way older generations responded to songs that pushed them into the mashed potato or the twist, golden era hip hop records carried patterns that pulled a Wop out of us without much thought. Jay Ray admits he worries about what happens when producers stop chasing that feeling and focus only on what works on playlists or short clips. If we lose the recipes that make people move together, what else do we lose with it? In the episode Jay Ray states, “If the musicians don’t tap into that code… if we lose those recipes, that’s the scary part. We lose that access to the code that brings us the joy.”
Near the end, Jay Ray shares a simple wish, a “time traveling” party where Martha and the Vandellas can sit next to Eric B. & Rakim, classic house music, James Brown and 90s rap, all in one night. The point isn’t just nostalgia for its own sake. It is about being in a room where song after song unlocks that same code, where people twist, Wop, and do whatever else their bodies remember without overthinking it.
That dream lines up with the heart of Queue Points, treating our dances, our parties and our neighborhood moves as part of Black music history, not just background noise. The Wop at 40 is less about ranking it above every other dance trend and more about honoring how something so small could carry so much of who we are then and now.
