When Did Twerking Go Mainstream? A Look at the History of This Now-Iconic Dance Move

Twerking has been around in its present form since the early 1990s but is the modern version of an ancient dance called Mapouka that originated in Côte d'Ivoire (i.e. Ivory Coast) in West Africa. It was a celebratory dance performed at festivals where women would shake their buttocks to the beat of a rhythmic drum, according to The Progress blog by Progressive Pupil, an organization associated with The New School in New York and behind the documentary "Black and Cuba". However, as colonial ideologies and "Christian" values spread throughout the continent of Africa, the dance became taboo and was even banned in certain places or on television.

Throughout slavery, Black Americans managed to maintain aspects of their African culture, and this manifested through blues singers such as Bessie Smith finding movement in their hips as they performed on stage in the early- to mid-1990s. It emerged in Josephine Baker's notorious banana dance, jazz dance, and the jitterbug, too. These dances, similar to twerking today, were wildly deemed inappropriate or distasteful. Yet, the women performing them became symbols or freedom in expression and liberation through the movement.

In 1993, DJ Jubilee released a hit track in the bounce genre — a variation of hip-hop music that originated in New Orleans — which is widely considered to be the first time the term "twerk" appeared in a recorded song, according to Fuse. "Do The Jubilee All" showcased the popular New Orleans bounce sub-culture dance style of twerking, as DJ Jubilee rapped, "twerk baby, twerk baby, twerk twerk twerk baby, twerk twerk twerk."

Doing what Black artists have done for decades, Atlanta natives Ying Yang Twins took a very vanilla song and added their own cultural flavor. Playing off the "Snow White" song "Whistle While You Work," Ying Yang Twins produced their hit debut single "Whistle While You Twurk" in 2000, bringing more notoriety to twerking outside of the New Orleans bounce scene.

In 2003, the term "twerking" was submitted to the Urban Dictionary for the first time. It was defined as: "To work one's body, as in dancing, especially the rear end." This was the same year the mega hit "Get Low" by Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz, featuring the Ying Yan Twins, was released, which calls out twerking in its lyrics and hit number two on the Billboard charts.

On June 5, 2009, three teenage girls from Atlanta — referring to themselves as "Twerk Team" — uploaded their first video to YouTube, and within a week, it had gone viral with over one million views. The crew continued to release videos until 2015.

During the 2013 MTV VMAs, Miley Cyrus twerked through her duet with Robin Thicke, becoming the most talked about moment of the night. Though Miley had twerked previously on her social media channels, this performance caught the attention of the mainstream media, being reported on by CNN, Forbes, and Business Insider, just to name a few. This moment went viral — during the performance, it was the top trending topic on Twitter and reached a peak of 306,100 tweets per minute, according to NBC News.

In August 2013, the Oxford English Dictionary added the word "twerk." It was defined as dancing "in a sexually provocative manner, using thrusting movements of the bottom and hips while in a low, squatting stance." According to the dictionary, the earliest known use of the verb dates back to the 1840s, and as a noun back to the 1820s.

About a month later, as part of filming for her reality show "Queen of Bounce", hip-hop artist Big Freedia gathered more than 350 people in New York City to set the Guinness World Record for the most people twerking simultaneously (shown in the photo here). In 2014, Big Freedia broke their own record at the Central City Festival in New Orleans, the home of bounce, with 406 people total, according to Guinness World Records. That remains the record today.

In August 2021, Lizzo did a TED Talk on the historical background and cultural importance of twerking within the Black community. She discusses how the "magic" of twerking helped her build self-confidence, self-love, and how it empowered her to be her most authentic self. Lizzo also discusses the Miley Cyrus VMA performance and how moments like that further perpetuate the erasure of Black people's impact on American culture as a whole: "Everything that Black people create from fashion to music to the way we talk is coopted, appropriated, and taken by popular culture," she said.

In July 2023, during The Essence Festival in New Orleans, Megan Thee Stallion and Janelle Monae received backlash for a "twerk off" they conducted during their performance on the main stage, with singer-songwriter India Arie being one of the loudest critics. Arie went to social media to share her thoughts, writing: "The issue is what is CONTEXT. Humanity does EVERYTHING. But does EVERYTHING BELONG IN A STAGE. No. Is everything for KIDS? No." Arie's social media posts re-ignited an on-going conversation in the Black community around respectability politics. Throughout the ordeal, Essence Magazine supported both performing artists on its social platforms.