Take that, Miley! Hip hop/bounce pioneer Big Freedia has enlisted the help of 358 booty shakin’ dancers, aged from 8 to 80, to help her set the Guinness World Record for Most People Twerking Simultaneously in New York yesterday afternoon.
Freedia is the sort of artist who can joyously and unironically call herself the Queen Of Bounce, and release songs with titles like Booty Whop and Azz Everywhere, and has been twerking since before it was “cool”, ie back when it was just actually cool.
After slamming Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance in an interview earlier this month (“She’s trying to twerk, but don’t know how to twerk…a lot of people are very offended by it, especially in New Orleans. When something get hot, everybody want to jump on the bandwagon and act like they created it.”) Freedia stepped up her campaign to bring proper, OG twerking to the masses, and organised the World Record attempt to “let the world know that we’ve been twerking for a long time. This is not new at all.” And of course to promote her new Fuse.tv reality show Big Freedia: Queen Of Bounce. But mainly the historical accuracy thing.
A really, really white guy Guinness World Records official was on hand to confirm the record, and to ensure that participants adhered to the really precise and elaborate twerk rules:
1. Body must remain upright, with movement concentrated in hips
2. Participants can put hands on knees or hips for support
3. Twerking action cannot comes from knees – hips only
4. Freestyling or additional choreography not permitted – no hands on the ground, feet in the air, twirling, etc.
5. Twerking action must be synchronized, can be at own pace
6. All participants must twerk simultaneously for two minutes when Big Freedia gives the signal
7. Any performers who do not participate fully for the entire two minutes will be deducted from the final total
Some paranoid attendees were expecting a naked, tongue-wagging Miley to appear on the scene piloting a giant wrecking ball, taking down Freedia, her DJ and the sound system to sabotage the attempt and protect her ill-gotten “Twerk Queen” crown. Thank god she didn’t, because then we wouldn’t have been treated to this twerk nanna who continued to make her ass quake for a full five minutes after the record was set:
Via Fuse.tv
