Every time the New Orleans Saints kick off this season, another “Who Dat?” question is raised: Who dat singing dat song? A high school horn part over a hip-hop track has become the soundtrack to Saints kickoffs, and since they’ve been scoring at a prodigious rate, people are hearing it a lot.
The track is “Halftime (Stand Up and Get Crunk)” by the Ying Yang Twins from, ironically, Atlanta. It has been played in the Superdome since 2006, but it caught on last year when special teams player Josh Bullocks seemed to get particularly pumped as the song played. Earlier this season, Saints safety Usama Young—also on the kicking team—told WWL in November that the song had an effect. “Man, the stadium gets loud,” he said. “It gets electric in there and you got that bass going.”
“We didn’t think it was going to do what it did, but it did,” says D-Roc of the Ying Yang Twins, who are in Germany working on a new album right now. The song’s use, though, is not unusual. It was written for the soundtrack to the sports-themed movie Coach Carter, a Samuel L. Jackson vehicle from 2005. But in that case, the sport was basketball.
The Ying Yang Twins had heard about the song’s new popularity in New Orleans, and they’re as surprised as anybody. “I guess it was just the right song,” D-Roc says.
