It is a song that is hard to get out of your brain. As popular as it might have been in the 90s, you can see the song’s creators, DC Glenn and Steve Gibson, resurrecting it in a Geico advertisement, called “Scoop! There It Is.”
“Party people, there’s your party, Tag Team is through.”
“Whoomp There It Is” was released as a single in 1993 and topped the Billboard R & B chart.
According to Glenn, it’s just a song about young men chasing women and drinking on a Friday night, which is the theme of every country, rock and roll, hip hop, and blues song.
People liked the record. They just didn’t know how to classify it. He approached Lisa McCall, who used to work at Island Records, who in turn, told him to call Al Bell of Stax Records. Bell had put out an up tempo record called Daisy Dukes that went gold.
“I called him. I was like, look, dude, I got a hit record you really need to sign. He was okay. I was like, whoa, don’t play with me. You haven’t even heard the record. I’ll never forget these words. He said, brother, I don’t have to hear the record. I hear it in your spirit.”
Tag Team signed with Bell and Glenn gave his two weeks at the club he was working at. Within a month and a half their song went platinum.
If you asked what made the song work, Glenn had no idea, except it went back to the essence of hip hop. It was an up tempo party record that was fun and easy to dance to.
The first time Glenn played it on a cassette in the club he DJ’d at, it was the biggest response he ever had to any record. He knew it was just about finding somebody who could get it out to the masses.
The Beginning: DC Glenn Meets Steve Gibson
They were in the same homeroom in high school and sat next to each other. Gibson had a band already and they played at lunchtime. Glenn wanted to be in the band. He bugged them until they said yes.
“Once I got in the band,” said Glenn, “I was the one who developed the structure and got the gigs. I made sure we had drumsticks, guitar strings, the whole nine yards.”
The band disbanded. Glenn and Gibson stayed together. Their interests were aligned and they started the rap group called The Tag Team Crew, which had three members. Soon there were two.
Glenn graduated, moved to Atlanta, and found a job DJing at one of the major clubs in the area. He suggested that he and Gibson make an up tempo song. Whoop There It Is was their first attempt.
Al Bell helped Tag Team get their song heard. The song began to chart and everything changed. The two have made money off that single song for several decades.