"Shawty Get Loose," Lil Mama (2008)

A crucial bridge between female rap eras

Peak: #10 on the Hot 100
Streams: 9.9 million

I have a soft spot for Lil Mama. She had roughly 10 seconds in the spotlight, and she might be more remembered for interrupting a Jay-Z & Alicia Keys performance than anything she actually created, but for me, her two hits are excellent party tracks that sparkle with humor and personality.

Her first single — “Lip Gloss” — has stuck around, and I’m glad. I suspect it’ll eventually appear in a movie or TV show that wants to quickly locate its story in the mid-00s.

And even though “Shawty Get Loose,” Lil Mama’s follow-up hit, doesn’t have the same minimalist brilliance as “Lip Gloss”, it’s still a fire bomb of energy. The beat, the rapid-fire flow, the T-Pain guest verse, and the chorus all refuse to let us stand still. The song is an explicit command to get loose on the dance floor, and I accept the challenge.

Granted, Chris Brown, noted jerkwad, sings the chorus, so that’s a point off. But because Lil Mama and T-Pain dominate the song, I can overlook it. And from a pop music history perspective, this song is an interesting reminder that in the middle of the aughts, T-Pain really was part of every hit single.

Crucially, too, Lil Mama had a pair of top ten hits in a moment when female rappers had almost vanished from the scene. Nicki Minaj didn’t break out until 2010, and our current moment, where half a dozen female rappers are scoring hits at any given time, seemed unreachable. So if nothing else, “Shawty Gets Loose” stands as a notable bridge between pop music eras, with Lauryn Hill and Missy Elliott on one side and Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice on the other. I’ll dance to that.

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