Miley Cyrus recently released a video of her twerking to a Hip-Hop dance song titled “Wop”. The song skyrocketed back up the charts and has given a reawakening to the single, which was first released in 2009. The viral video now has 3,000,000 views on YouTube.
The original music video, which features Florida-bred rappers T-Pain and Flo Rida, has collected nearly 9,000,000 views.
The song has started a craze – from dance teams, to celebrities and even a panda (video below), everyone’s trying to “wop”.
AllHipHop.com had the opportunity to speak with the creator of “Wop”, rapper J. Dash, about his feelings on the Miley Cyrus video craze, his connection to Flo Rida and his upcoming album that sports a T-Pain feature.
AllHipHop.com: Your life has changed!
J. Dash: Man, I’m just as blessed as I’ve always been. It’s just more people know about it.
AllHipHop.com: How do you feel that Miley Cyrus took your song and did something with it? She’s one of the biggest Pop stars these days.
J. Dash: What’s crazy is that Miley actually reached out to me on Twitter a few months ago, just talking about how much she loved the record. We’ve been talking back and forth for a minute, we used to play about posting a video. I’m honestly just as shocked as everybody else when I saw it. I was like ‘Man, that girl can move for real!’.
I’m shocked, excited and appreciative. All the things you’d expect I would be. “WOP” has had unbelievable success as an independent record. It went Gold and it was my first major release. For that to have happen before that, we joke around and say it’s the most known unknown Gold record out there. She brought it to life for all the rest of the people that we have been trying to figure out to get to, at once. It was cool. It was awesome.
AllHipHop.com: Have the sales skyrocketed, have people been on iTunes getting that joint for $1.29?
J. Dash: The Miley video put it up to #30 on the Hip Hop charts and #61 on all genres of music. Before that, when “Wop” blew up the first time, when the record was going gold, I peaked at #31 on the Hip Hop charts. It definitely had gone way back down and then when Miley did her thing, it skyrocketed, it jumped up forreal. Higher than it had ever been. I love the record but I feel like Miley brought the attention to the record. Nobody makes anybody buy the record, people buy the record because they like the record. The fact that she danced to the record is what brought everybody’s attention to it. She’s very instrumental in the sales of the record going the way they’ve been going.
AllHipHop.com: I think people are surprised to learn that it’s been out for a long time. 2010.
J. Dash: Yeah man! I had moved on. I’m a producer first, so I was doing songs for MTV theme songs. And when that thing came back, it came back strong.
AllHipHop.com: You knew that Miley Cyrus was going to do the video?
J. Dash: I had no idea she was going to do the video. We had joked about, I knew she loved the record and I knew she was a fan but I thought that was the end of it. When she posted that video, I was in the bed sick that night. I just started getting text after text after text and I didn’t even look at them. I was about to shut my phone off.
All the texts were like “did you see it?”, I didn’t know what people were talking about. I saw that Miley hit me up on DM, in a message and was like “Did you check the page?”. I went and checked her Facebook page and I looked at the video and I thought ‘Man, this video is so dope!’. She was like “Yo dig it?”, and I said “I love it!”. We joked after that about we’re going to get matching unicorn tattoos. It was a joke and people took it way too serious. The next day the video was on Good Morning America and The Today Show. I really didn’t know what kind of power and reach that girl had until right there.
AllHipHop.com: It’s that effect of when someone who’s not Hip Hop or in that type of culture, does something out of their character – it kind of explodes.
J. Dash: Exactly. When people are on the news talking about “Oh, I don’t know what twerking is.” I’m like I’ve known what twerking is for years. For it to come into the mainstream and for her to introduce what twerking it to the mainstream, and for it to be to my record, that’s a huge deal to me.
AllHipHop.com: Do you necassarily want to focus on being an artist or do you want to focus on being a producer? Has this changed any of the work that you’re doing?
J. Dash: Anybody that knows me knows that I have a passion for both. I love being an artist and a performer. I also love being a producer. I’ve been doing music for a long time bro. I’ve been playing piano since I was five. I’m a musician, and a lot of these cats don’t know that. I have an equal passion for both in different arenas so it’s good for people to start checking for me.
AllHipHop.com: It seems like a lot of people in Florida have the dance thing going on. I partied in Gainesville and that type of sound I hear on “Wop” is the same type of music I heard when I was there.
J. Dash: I made “Wop” in an apartment in Gainesville. [laughs]
AllHipHop.com: [laughs] That’s wild, but it’s funny because that’s really what it sounds like. Do you attribute Florida to your sound?
J. Dash: Absolutely. When you’re raised in that environment, it’s what you know and that’s what wins. I make a lot of stuff and I’m into a look of different kinds of music and when you find something that works, you got with it. At the end of the day, as musicians, we all want to be able to make money doing it. That Florida music, bass and dance music. That’s what I grew up on and that’s what I know.
AllHipHop.com: Are you at all taking advantage of this free press? Do you have a mixtape coming out tomorrow, or something?
J. Dash: [laughs] Definitely taking advantage of the press. Why wouldn’t you? We definitely have some major releases that were actually trying to figure out how we were going to release them. I have a record with T-Pain called “Winsday” and it’s an amazing record. We were like “Man, this record is huge. How are we going to drop this after I’ve taken months off to record this album!”. Then Miley dropped this video and we were like “Whoa!”. We have to release this record right now. It’s a monster record and I’m ready for that to be out. My plan is to get that record out to the people as soon as I can.
AllHipHop.com: It seems like you have a pretty close knit with other artists in Florida. You have T-Pain on this record and Flo Rida in the video.
J. Dash: Absolutely. The connection with Flo – that went back for a minute because when I was in the Gainsville area doing music, when different artists would come to town I’d open for them. That’s how I originally met Flo and when nobody had a name for themselves. I would open, and Brisco would go, Flo would go and then Rick Ross would go. Rick Ross was the only one that really had a name at that time. You meet people along the way and you keep in contact with them and when I actually shot the video, I reached out to the camp to see if they could jump in the video. They were all about it. It was love.
AllHipHop.com: That’s love. What’s coming up next?
J. Dash: About to release the T-Pain record. I just finished another album called For The Better and I’ll be releasing that with key features. I can’t give you everything at once, but I can tell you that honestly as a musician and artist, I can’t talk up this record enough. I’m just excited to be a part of something so big. It’s not even pride or anything like that but you know when you have great music. It’s a lot of hatred that comes out of different reasons when people hear new artists and new music. This is none of that. I just want people to listen to this music and enjoy it.
AllHipHop.com: Are there any dance records on the album?
J. Dash: Definitely a lot of records you can dance to on this album. I’ll put it that way. We’ll see if we can start another viral sensation.
AllHipHop.com: This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime kind of things where somebody does that and it becomes viral. This is an opportunity to say “Let’s put out this music.”
J. Dash: Exactly. And when I do, I’m going to keep knocking them over the head. I am not stopping. That is my word.
AllHipHop.com: Anything else you think the people should know?
J. Dash: Follow me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @TheRealJDash.
AllHipHop.com: J. Dash, I wish you much success!
J. Dash: Peace and blessings to you and yours as well, brother.
Listen to the fulle J. Dash Interview: