Welcome back to “Choppin’ it up”. Usually, I interview local independent artists (which I will continue to do), but today we are going to do something different. Today, I will be reviewing a song that came across my TikTok feed. Now as you know, TikTok is pretty much known for creating and sharing short videos; some singing, lip syncing, acting, voiceovers and dancing. I mean the list goes on and on. Since I have signed up and created my TikTok, the most popular posts getting a lot of views and such are the dancing videos. Now some of these dances are simple and fun for all to partake in, and some should be left to the professionals.
With a dancing video, it’s usually paired with a very catchy tune. I mean 9 times out of 10, I find myself scrolling through TikTok, watching these dancing videos (In my head, I am killing all these moves), and immediately going to Spotify to find the song they are dancing to because I can’t get it out of my head. Well it happened again, but this time I chose to write about it. So last week, I stumbled upon the latest TikTok wave, which is a dance called the “Park Heights Strut”.
The Baltimore strut has been around 7 years, but a gentleman, by the name of Bunkey Jr., put a little twist on it and named his “The Park Heights Strut”. He named it after the section of Baltimore, where he was from. The dance is cool and pretty easy to do, in my opinion; but what draws me back to the videos are not the actual dance moves, it’s the song that they are dancing to.
The name of the song is Free Mind by Tems, who is a Nigerian singer and songwriter. After finding her on Spotify, I go to find the song, I click play and…it’s not the same version as the TikTok videos. So I googled the dance and discovered that it was a remix made by Dj Zayy, who is also from Baltimore. I found it on Youtube, hit play and BOOM! Dj Zayy made the perfect mix. Something about this mix makes you want to move. It makes you feel good about life changing. Mind you, the original is a good song. The lyrics and her voice are on point, but it’s something in that Dj Zayy mix that does it to me.
I must also mention that while watching video after video of people doing this dance, it lost its “umph” once the song changed. So, it’s clearly the song for me. Make sure you check out Tem’s song,”Free Mind”, on all streaming platforms, as well as Dj Zayy’s version, which is only available on YouTube. You be the judge. Again the original is good but that club mix goes hard!!!!!
