Baauer - The Man Behind the Harlem Shake Track

I have seen many stupid internet phenomena over the years. However, none have been so ridiculous and have gone viral so quickly that it has spawn several thousand versions all over the world in the matter of a week or two....to the point where the company I work for created it's own version. Yes, I'm talking about the Harlem Shake Videos. Here are a couple of notable versions:

Firefighters gettin' down....and giving me nightmares about Spiderman and a Giant Chicken. 

KSLA, can I work for you guys? Seriously! 

Flash Mob and Harlem Shake at my Alma Mater, the University of Maryland, College Park. And yes, it ends with a lovely surprise :-) 

This was at my job....Seriously. It happened right outside my office. 

So, being the musically-inclined person that I am, I began to look more into the man behind the music. Baauer, aka Harry Rodrigues, is a Brooklyn-based producer signed to Jefree's, a subdivision of Mad Decent. Baauer released "Harlem Shake" 8 months ago and thanks to a couple thousand viral videos, the song's popularity exploded. Thanks to a new calculation policy that incorporates YouTube streams, Baauer has landed on an historic #1 spot on the Billboard Top 100 this week.

This guy is having the Best Month Ever

I applaud this new groundbreaking calculation for the Billboard Top 100. It will help out indie artists that struggle to get onto mainstream radio, but do exceptionally well on other platforms. This is going to be an interesting year on the Top 100 indeed. 

Check out Baauer's Soundcloud for more sounds. He has many gems on the page including this lovely collabo with one of my faves, Just Blaze:

And on a final note, I think it is my duty as someone who has been exposed to the original Harlem Shake to show you the correct way to do the dance (which came out 10 years ago):

As you can see, almost no one in the Baauer-related Harlem Shake videos are doing this move...which makes the videos even more hilarious.