Hometown Heros

A look back at the rise of 95 South

Words by Shelton Hull

Technically-speaking, March 1 was the day after Black History Month ended. But Mayor Donna Deegan chose that day to make one more little bit of local Black History when she declared the day to be “Whoot, There It Is” Day in the City of Jacksonville, which 95 South helped put on the musical map when their hit song of the same name dropped in the spring of 1993. 

Speaking on behalf of the mayor (then engaged at the Gate River Run), Councilman Johnny Gaffney led a ceremony to mark the occasion that Saturday afternoon at James Weldon Johnson Park, mere feet away from the front door of City Hall. Attendees included the group, their friends and family, as well as fans, some of whom weren’t even born back then.

The current lineup includes Carlos “Daddy Black” Spencer and Michael “Mike Mike” Phillips, but they all basically grew up together. “The 95 South story kind of evolved from a couple of different things,” Spencer says. “We started out as dancers for a group called the Chill Deal Boys; they started doing music back in ’88. Me and Artice were dancing, and Mike was in Chill Deal Boys. So when we decided to do 95 South, there were several members; you listen to that first album, and you hear Black, AB, Jay Ski, C.C. Lemonhead, K-Nock, Mike — but he had another name, Peabody. When the groups decided to do different things, he branched off and went with 69 Boyz and the Quad City DJs, and then myself and Artice became the official original 95 South.”

“Whoot, There It Is” was the lead single for their debut album, “Quad City Knock,” which was released 23 days later. The song itself, and its general provenance, has been a source of some confusion for casual fans from day one (or, rather, day 45 — read on), and that confusion continues, some four decades later, so let’s back it up. 

“Whoot, There It Is” was recorded by 95 South and released on March 23, 1993. The song received platinum certification just 127 days later, on July 28. From day one, it’s been widely confused with another similarly catchy, similarly iconic track from that same year, “Whoomp! (There It Is)”, recorded by Tag Team in October 1992 and released on May 7 of that same year, just 45 days after 95 South’s song. 

The Atlanta duo is probably better known to national audiences because the video got tons of traction, back when platforms like The Box (formerly Jukebox Network) were still prominent. The phrase was a common club expression in that era, and both crews came up in iconic music scenes that both built upon a base of shared sonic elements, which even the most casual listener can instinctively grasp after playing both songs — like the strong Miami Bass influence, even though neither group was from Miami.

Having heard all this stuff emerge in real time back then, here are my personal impressions: 95 South’s version is more raw, more visceral; I think it stands up better to repeated listening over all these years. But the Tag Team version is more polished, more lyrical, so it crossed over better. They also worked under the tutelage of Al Bell, an industry legend whose resume includes co-owner of Stax Records and president of Motown — another decisive factor. In addition, Tag Team was representing an Atlanta scene that would become legendary within just a few years, if not months of that point, whereas 95 South was from Jacksonville, so they automatically lost that battle for prominence, even though their song was better. 

(Something similar happened to Asamov, about 20 years later; “Supa Dynamite” was a better song than “NY State of Mind”, but Jay-Z and Alicia Keys were legends, so even though Asamov’s use of the core sample was superior, AND they did it first, they got buffaloed, and the album got killed by the Isaac Asimov estate, and that probably cost them millions, through no fault of their own whatsoever.)

While the two songs are certainly very similar, there were a number of distinct differences between them, which were immediately apparent to fans at the time. For example, the BPM (beats per minute): “Whoomp! (There It Is)” has 129 BPM, whereas “Whoot, There It Is” has 134 BPM. That slight increase in tempo made all the difference in danceability within a scene that mostly matriculated on Miami Bass.

It’s not just the beat that gave the song such appeal, but the overall positive vibe. “We like to dance,” said Phillips. “We like to have fun. We like to party — good, wholesome parties. Daddy Black put it perfectly, just the other day. He said, ‘We sold two million records without one curse word.’ That was our whole thing: Let’s just do what we do. We’re not trying to be anybody else. We did want to drop some Miami Bass, like Magic Mike, and have it fast enough to dance, like Uncle Luke and 2 Live Crew. And we wanted it to be from Jacksonville, something that we can hold on to that’s ours. We took Duval to the world.”

The music industry isn’t always glamorous; in fact, it’s usually not. “We kinda learned the business from trial and error,” said Spencer, “making mistakes, sometimes having people around us who took advantage of us. So we didn’t really trust anybody. So, from a business standpoint, we just kept everything kinda in-house, tight-knit, and we basically just stayed in our lane. We didn’t see any limitations.”

“Sometimes I forget about all the places we’ve been until I see it on TV,” Phillips said. “The smallest crowd we ever played for was probably just one or two people, and maybe even less than that. The largest crowd, I guess, would be about 85,000 people.” That would’ve been when they sang the National Anthem before either game three, four or five of the 1993 World Series. Those games were played at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, which was also one of the main cities outside of the South where their sound really clicked. (Their main fanbase, then and now, was concentrated in Atlanta, Philly, Charlotte, and all over Virginia and Maryland.)

A huge factor in their global success was a fateful appearance on “The Arsenio Hall Show,” which was basically the centerpiece of Black culture in America during its original run from January 1989 to May 1994. Much like how Johnny Carson was THE kingmaker for standup comedy in America during his peak in the 1970s and ’80s, Hall was, likewise, the vehicle that delivered countless rappers and R&B icons to national mainstream audiences, an effect that proved often decisive for those artists. “If you make it to Arsenio, you’ve made it,” said Spencer.

And so it was for 95 South when they took the stage in Studio City that summer afternoon. It was either June or July — no one remembers — but their song had only been out for three or four months, whereas the Tag Team’s version came out just weeks earlier, so this segment was crucial to helping establish their brand identity at a time of great confusion among fans. It was a stunning bit of synchronicity, as Hall brought both 95 South and Tag Team to perform their hits for his viewers. 

“Arsenio had heard of both groups,” said Spencer, “and somebody had pitched him on the idea of having a battle. That year, there was a big flood in the Midwest, and people would call in to vote on which song they liked the best, and the proceeds would go to help those people.” The results, in this case at least, were decisive. “Out of, like, 16,000 calls, we got about 13,000, and that was vindication for us.”

By the time they woke up in California the next day, everyone they knew had seen the show, and the buzz was palpable. One viewer, in particular, was taken by their uniquely Florida sound: a man named Luther Campbell, aka Uncle Luke, aka Luke Skyywalker, leader of the infamous 2 Live Crew, who put Florida rap on the map, while helping to change the way we consume and market music on the most fundamental levels. By that point, Luke had fought his own creative battles all the way to the Supreme Court, but he’d settled into the elder statesman role that he still thrives in today. (He should really run for mayor of Miami, but that’s another story.) Within days, Luke had reached out and invited 95 South to open for him on tour. Only they will ever know exactly how formative that experience truly was, but one can easily imagine.

The COJ proclamation resulted from a process that began as the vision of one Tianna Holloway. “Tianna is a young lady that we hired to do some publicist work for us,” says Spencer. “She kinda pulled the strings on that to make that happen.” Those strings, specifically, entailed simply reaching out to the city (presumably via Councilman Gaffney) and making the case, which she clearly made very well.” It was perfectly-timed, as the group is currently working on a documentary about their careers that should be ready later this year. 

While 95 South and their affiliated artists did essentially peak in the 1990s, the good times never really went away for them. Being a close-knit crew with solid Southern values, they all generally turned out just fine, and the ceremony on March 1 demonstrated that, even now, as the industry itself fixates on drama and beef, hip-hop will not just survive, but thrive, by doing things the right way. Just take a look at them, and there it is. Whoot!