On June 13, the New York Knicks won their first NBA championship in 53 years. What’s the first thing the team did to celebrate the historic moment? The “Cupid Shuffle.”
Still in uniform or donning their new NBA Champions T-shirts, Knicks players sang and danced the shuffle in the locker room. A YouTube video of the celebration has more than 318,000 views.
Most players were toddlers or in elementary school when the song and line dance broke out of Lafayette and became a worldwide phenomenon. But the Knicks’ celebration adds another step in the Shuffle’s storied history.
Giving Hope employees dance to the Cupid Shuffle during the 7th annual Tyrann’s Turkeys Thanksgiving event at Giving Hope in New Orleans, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. The Tyrann Mathieu Foundation donated turkeys and fixings to Giving Hope to help give out to 500 families. Giving Hope New Orleans Food Pantry also gave out additional holiday food boxes. (Photo by Sophia Germer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Knocking on the door of 20 years since its debut, the Shuffle remains a cherished party song across the globe. It’s no exaggeration to say the song is played every day somewhere on the planet, whether it’s a birthday party, sports event, festival, bar mitzvah, cruise, family reunion, prom, teen dance, corporate conference, movie or TV show.
Numbers back that up. The first “Cupid Shuffle” video, which landed on YouTube 19 years ago, has 106 million views. Fan and instructional videos add another 100 million, although I don’t understand the need for how-to videos. The “To the right, to the right…” directions are in the lyrics.
YouTube even has a video of a family shuffling after a funeral and a patient bopping his head in a hospital bed. In 2007, a group of 17,000 participants gathered to perform the dance. It made the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest assembled line dance.
LSU’s and Southern University’s bands performed “Cupid Shuffle” together in Tiger Stadium Saturday, Sept. 10, 2022.
“The largest Cupid Shuffle dance involved 17,000 participants who performed the dance for 8 minutes at the Ebony Black Family Reunion Tour organised by the Coca Cola Company in Atlanta, Georgia,” according to guinnessworldrecords.com.
Tiger Stadium roared in 2022 when the LSU and Southern University bands had a historic halftime shuffle together when the football teams played for the first time.
Add another 130 million Spotify streams, and it’s easy to see that the shuffle is firmly entrenched in pop culture. Cupid, aka Bryson Bernard of Lafayette, and DJ/producer Brandon “Mr. Phat” Neazy, first hoped their collaboration might get a few people on the dance floor at parties on the UL Lafayette campus.
Bryson Bernard, better known as Cupid, performs the “Cupid Shuffle” line dance alongside LSU’s and Southern University’s bands during a Saturday morning rehearsal.
But the tune spread to local clubs and radio stations before catching fire across the South.
Cupid signed with Atlantic Records, which brought the single to No. 21 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and No. 66 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Billed as the “Line Dance King” two decades later, Cupid has follow-up dances and songs that include “Flex” (with 22 million YouTube views), “Cornbread and Greens” and “Love Slide.” Upcoming gigs stretch from Opelousas to Oslo, Norway.
Cupid hosts an all-white attire, Rock the Boat cruise aboard the Creole Queen on July 3 during Essence Fest in New Orleans.
“Now kick, now kick, now kick, now kick, now walk it by yourself.”
Shuffle on, Cupid.
Herman Fuselier is executive director of the St. Landry Parish Tourist Commission. A longtime journalist covering Louisiana music and culture, he lives in Opelousas. His “Zydeco Stomp” show airs at noon Saturdays on KRVS 88.7 FM.
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