When Ludacris wrote his hit song “Move, B*tch” — a song about fighting in the club — he never envisioned it becoming a protest song. That’s exactly what happened though, as the song has begun to crop up as a chant at multiple rounds of protests against injustice. In 2017, the song was used by protestors at an anti-Trump rally in Boston after Trump failed to condemn demonstrators at the Charlottesville “Unite The Right” march. Just last month, it resurfaced at a New York protest against police brutality as police tried to set up a barricade.
Ludacris addresses the development on a new episode of the Quibi show Musicology With Tim Kash. Kash prompts the Atlanta rapper to “talk about rap and hip-hop’s history as a rallying cry for Black artists.” Luda points out that hip-hop was born of trying to tell the stories of struggle. “You tracing it back to Ice T and NWA, there’s been so many records talking about what everyone is just now opening their eyes to.”
He also notes that artists like Kendrick Lamar, whose “Alright” has also become a popular choice for protestors, are “ahead of their time.” Of his own song becoming part of movement music history, he seems nonplussed, “I never in a million years, when I made that record, thought it would become a protest song. It makes sense now but that’s not what I was thinking when I wrote it. It’s one thing to be a part of pop culture and hip-hop culture, but when you start getting into movement culture, that’s a whole other thing, man.”
Watch Ludacris’ interview with Tim Kash above.