{"id":3133,"date":"2010-03-08T12:34:07","date_gmt":"2010-03-08T17:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=3133"},"modified":"2015-01-07T13:52:54","modified_gmt":"2015-01-07T17:52:54","slug":"wata-gwaan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=3133","title":{"rendered":"Wata Gwaan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"watagatapitusBERRY\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mil gracias a Marisol LeBron<\/a>, who not only first brought to my attn<\/a> the wonderful nueva-media phenom of “Watagatapitusberry,” but who has offered some interesting thoughts on its homosocial joi de vivre<\/em> (check her initial round-up<\/a> of home videos) and has kept up on the latest developments around the song. Most recently<\/a>, the launch of a slick new video\/remix featuring Pitbull and Lil Jon —<\/p>\n

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What i find most fascinating about the Watagatapitusberry phenomenon — though I still need to tease a lot of this out, and I wish YouTube would make it easier to do so — is that the most popular instantiation is neither the “original” video by Del Patio & Blackpoint (a static image<\/a> w\/ audio, uploaded in early summer 09 — plz correct me if I’m wrong), which has, nonetheless, had over 1M views, nor (at least not yet) the new remix w\/ Pitbull & Lil Jon, but the loopy, casual, creative theatrics of a handful of young DominicanYorks which has racked up over 3.5M views<\/a> since it was posted in early August. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re missing out; get cultured–<\/p>\n

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I love that the dudes who made the video above had the cojones to label it the “Official Video.” It may as well be, for it has arguably done more to popularize the song — to make it what it is — than anything else. <\/p>\n

I confess, though, that I have been able to glean relatively little about how all these productions are related. Does anyone know if there’s any (formal) connection between these Wash Heights kids and Sensato del Patio & Blackpoint? Whether or not, it sure offers a fine example of how legions of YouTubers can add value to something by making it their own. <\/p>\n

Let’s hope that the new, Big Music-funded version doesn’t produce the kind of collateral damage on the YouTubosphere that, say, the signing of the New Boyz seemingly caused to many of the videos that helped make “You’re a Jerk” the career-breaking single that it became — the majority of which either suddenly disappeared once the song’s audio became Major Label property, became unfortunately muted, or even more oddly, took the option of “swapping” the song for something “legal.” Of the latter camp, this is my favorite, surreal example (click thru<\/a> for some sad\/hilarious comments about the “African” music now soundtracking the Action Figures’ moves):<\/p>\n

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Sounds more like Avatar<\/em> than Africa to me, but whatevs…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mil gracias a Marisol LeBron, who not only first brought to my attn the wonderful nueva-media phenom of “Watagatapitusberry,” but who has offered some interesting thoughts on its homosocial joi de vivre (check her initial round-up of home videos) and has kept up on the latest developments around the song. Most recently, the launch of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[406,404,118,412,295,296,10,145,57,204,107,304,407],"class_list":["post-3133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dance","tag-hip-hop","tag-industry","tag-internet","tag-jerkin","tag-la","tag-latin","tag-newyork","tag-race","tag-sexuality","tag-tech","tag-value","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3133"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3155,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133\/revisions\/3155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}