#BounceForWhat #30DaysOfBounce Day 3: “Where Dey At” by MC T Tucker & DJ Irv.

In 1992, the clubs and streets of an unsuspecting New Orleans were asked a very simple question which they would answer forever after with their bodies:

“WHERE DEY AT, WHERE DEY AT, WHERE DEY AT?!”

It all started out at a hole in the wall on Claiborne and Louisiana Ave called Club Big Man. There, resident DJs Jimi and Irv were trying to manage the gift and curse of “Drag Rap” aka the legendary “Triggerman” beat. (See #30DaysOfBounce Day 1.) The gift was that once they started playing it, the women would go crazy while showing off the new “P-poppin’” dance which had developed out of another Uptown club called Dynasty. The bad news was that the song was so hot, if the DJs tried to change it once they started playing it, the crowd would go crazy in, shall we say, less positive ways. So Irv started looping the instrumental so that Jimi could rap over it for extended periods to control the crowd and get more out of the beat. Jimi was never much of a rapper, but the good news was he didn’t have to be; Bounce was never a lyrically-focused craft. All you had to do was shout out the names of people, streets, and wards to buck the crowd up to shake dat ass.

Later, Irv left Big Man to DJ at Ghost Town where he met a rugged lil’ dude named T Tucker. When Irv let this dude on the mic, he discovered a commanding baritone bark which ruled the unruly crowd with its raunchy rants (“Shake dat ass like a salt shaker! Dog-ass hoe betta have my money! Lemme hit it from the back, ’cause I got a jimmy hat!”). For good measure, Tucker even implored their political participation (“Fuck David Duke!”).

When people started asking about this bombastic “Brotha-Brotha” named Tucker, Irv knew he had to bottle that magic. So he recorded Tucker doing his thing live at Ghost Town as well as a clean version for the radio, pressed up a single and started selling it independently. And that’s when “Where Dey At” hit local radio stations Q93 and FM98.

“MC T Tucker and DJ Irv comin’ atcha for 1992. HUH? HUH? Ya HEARD meeee?!”

When “Where Dey At” hit New Orleans at large, the response was utterly indelible. Tucker and Irv were no Eric B. and Rakim, but you know how Rakim said “Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em”? I find that statement to be applicable to how “Where Dey At” hit my city. The rhythm hit you and that was it. It was something at once familiar and new; in other words, something right on time.

When “Where Dey At” dropped, I was a sheltered Catholic high school freshman, or at least as “sheltered” as one could be growing up in the Ville of Vice. Like everyone else in New Orleans, I had heard the “Triggerman” beat before. But I had never heard it like this; looped for maximum drama with this Bushwick Bill sounding maniac by turns exclaiming and gutturally growling his commandments of crassness over it. Tucker was a demon drill sergeant rattling off blunt threats dressed as lyrics. Verses of terseness; spells from Hell. And like the rest of the city, I was intrigued. Who was dat masked man? Who were “dey”? And why was he so intently concerned with knowing where “dey” were “at”?

“Where Dey At” must have stayed at the top of both the “urban” radio stations’ evening countdown lists for weeks. Before this Tucker-thon phenomenon, the only thing I’d seen similar was how nuts New Orleans went over Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road”, calling in with requests to the point that a DJ actually played the song 10 times in a row just to appease the listeners. (No exaggeration; I remember my sister Courtney and I listening to the radio in utter disbelief that night, wagering on how many consecutive times they would actually play that song.)

But “Where Dey At” was something else. This wasn’t some major label R&B single crafted by polished professional hitmakers, placed on a top-selling movie soundtrack and supported by a music video in steady rotation on BET, MTV and VH1. Naw. This was a homegrown incantation of ignorance, born in the sweat-soaked walls of Big Man and Ghost Town. It was a raw, raunchy, radical romp of irreverent revelry and ribaldry. In other words, it was a sonic celebration of the streets of New Orleans.

So that’s where it lived throughout ’92; as the siren song of dem P-poppers. Indeed, the song was as prevalent in the streets of the murder capital as the sound of police sirens. If you stood on a NOLA corner on any given evening that year, most of the cars that passed were either playing The Chronic, “Armed Robbery” by Eightball & MJG, or “Where Dey At”.

Tucker and Irv would ultimately both be swallowed by the culture of drugs and violence which pervaded the city like a storm cloud. But I like to think that while they were here, they did what they were here to do: they gave birth to Bounce. Their song asked us where we were at, and we responded by being right where they wanted us: on the dance floor shaking our asses.

Meanwhile, back at Club Big Man, Irv’s former partner Jimi, the man who had introduced Irv to the “Triggerman” beat in the first place, watched with sardonic chagrin as “Where Dey At” took over the city.

“Hmph”, muttered Jimi, rubbing his chin subtly, his mouth full of Fort Knox glinting not-so-subtly. “‘Where dey at’, huh? I gots sump’m fa dat dere, yurd me?”

Next episode: “It’s Jim-maaaayyy!”