Don’t Just Stand There Looking Like a Fool, Move
I’m on a plane on my way to Las Vegas. Vegas is not frequently a favorite place of autistic people, but I freaking love it. Yes, I get overwhelmed by too much noise, too many people, strong smells, and chaos, but I cannot get enough visual stimulation. Nowhere in the world proves the level of visual stimulation that the Las Vegas Strip does, and not just in the extraordinary light displays, but in the grand-scale art, architectural and design grandeur, and cities-within-a-city.
I find Vegas’s overall soundtrack to be a bit generic, regarding the music played in common areas in casinos; naturally, I have my own Vegas-specific playlists. I like my music to complement or even set my mood, rather than being told what I should be feeling like by giant corporate entities.
So, we come to a small selection of songs on my “Las Vegas Classics” playlist. Vegas lends itself well to dance music, as it’s a city containing some of the best and highest-tech dance clubs in the world, and also because the party-all-night vibe (even during midweek when I’ll be here) is infectious.
Yo Majesty - “Booty Klap” (2008)
What a delight to be able to introduce many of you to this song. It came out in 2008 and has never really been matched. Yo Majesty are an all-Sapphic, Christian dance-rap-crunk act—need I say more? Yo Majesty’s most successful song on their debut album Futuristically Speaking… Never Be Afraid was the wonderful “Club Action,” which is still often played in clubs almost 20 years later. But my favorite song on the album was “Booty Klap,” which has one of the strongest original backing tracks to any rap song ever, in my humble opinion. You literally can’t not dance to this song. It’s impossible. You can easily tell how much fun Shon B and Shunda K had when making this song and how hard they were dancing to their own music. And if you can’t dance to your own music, what are you even doing?
Faith Evans - “Mesmerized (Freemasons Remix)” (2005)
God, is this one good. Faith Evans, the former wife of the Notorious B.I.G., came into her own following Biggie’s death. By 2005, with her fourth studio album The First Lady, she released an incredible classic soul song called “Mesmerized.” The original is well worth a listen; it’s a fantastic song with super fun lyrics and a badass beat, with a stellar vocal performance. Possibly one of the most underrated songs of the 2000s. But it’s too slow to be on my Vegas Classics playlist!
English remix artists Freemasons radically transformed the original track with their remix into one of the most popular and high-quality dance radio hits of the aughts. It features the same vocal performance by Faith Evans, but the music is 1000% different. It’s the perfect runway song. Listening to the original and the remix back-to-back is bizarre, because it’s definitely the same song, but with completely different vibes. The remix is purely within the Vegas playlist, though!
Side note: apologies to those who use Apple Music—this song isn’t available on the platform, for some reason. It’s a conspiracy to deprive us of the best remixes ever!
Elvis Presley - “A Little Less Conversation (JXL Remix)” (2002)
What is Vegas without a little Elvis? I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge Elvis fan. I love his cultural impact, but I don’t care for most of his music. All the good stuff was directly ripped from Black artists, and in most cases the original he ripped them from are superior.
My favorite Elvis song ever was released as part of his retrospective “Elvis 30 #1 Hits” album in 2002. Junkie XL, in his more family-friendly alias of JXL, remixed a minor 1968 Elvis hit, “A Little Less Conversation.” The original is hardly noteworthy, but the JXL remix reached #1 in several countries because it was fabulous. It introduced Elvis to a whole new generation of listeners. Elvis was popular before remixing even existed, so this modern remix by a modern artist felt very special when it came out—and still today.
Who da Funk feat. Jessica Eve - “Shiny Disco Balls” (2002)
Probably the song I associate with Las Vegas more than any other, this electro-disco classic from 2002 has a very limited set of lyrics: “Drugs, rock ’n roll / Bad ass Vegas hoes / Late night booty calls / Shiny disco balls.” It just repeats that over and over again. The sound is definitely more electro, but the structure is almost like a trance song, considering the repetition. You could still play this song in any Vegas club, 24 years later, and get every single person in the club dancing. It hearkens back to a time in Las Vegas when the focus was . . . well . . . drugs, rock ’n roll, badass hoes, and shiny disco balls. Some of Vegas’s luster may have worn off in the decades since its release, but the message is still as powerful as ever, and an excellent reminder of how cool Las Vegas used to be.
And, yes: I listened to this song right after it was released and it has lived on several playlists ever since. I was 14; what’s it to you?