In the past few years, hip-hop has moved from one dance craze to another. The new big thing on the streets in L.A. is “jerking” or "jerkin'". You may ask yourself, "What is jerkin'?" Well, this dance craze that's hitting the nation by storm all started in L.A. when two friends, Ben J and Legacy, made up a few funny dance moves. After the dance moves caught on, they decided to make a song to go with them, and the single “You’re a Jerk” by the New Boyz was born.

Their album will come out on August 16, on Asylum/Warner. Their official video on YouTube already has had 3,357,825 (and counting) views. Tons of young people have posted videos of themselves doing the dance. The youth around my neighborhood in L.A. have come up with variations on the "Jerk," including the "Sponge Bob," the "Reject," and the "Tippy Toe." I bet the New Boyz never thought their song-and-dance would be such a great hit.

Here is a video that shows you how to do regular jerking and some of the variations I listed above. (Note: Thanks to Rebel Kid for letting us use his song "Hazardous" instead of "You're a Jerk," which we can't use in its entirety because of copyright law).

When I was looking around in my neighborhood to shoot some video of people jerking, I asked one of my friends who I should approach, and he told me "You can't just ask anybody, You have to look at how people dress." Jerk style is skinny jeans and colorful clothes. It's true: I noticed that every time I asked a person wearing skinny jeans, they knew how to jerk. Legacy has said that their "style and music connect because they're both so different to the game [...] everything complements each other." Jerking is basically hip-hop and skater style rolled into one. The beats are hip-hop, but the fashion is skater. The beats are like hip-hop because of the bass line. The fact that the dance is just as important as (and maybe more popular than) the song is part of what hip-hop is all about. According to will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, "Hip-hop became big business and had to be marketed and sold far beyond the nightclubs where it had begun. But even if hip-hop was no longer traditional dance music, dancing never really left."

I personally don't really like the music, so I thought I'd ask my neighbors what they thought. They didn't think the song "You're a Jerk" was all that great. They thought that the dance move was "stupid" even though they did it pretty well. Maybe the record label thought it was a great idea, and then it spread for some crazy reason throughout the music community. These days, it seems as if musicians write songs about anything. At this point in time, everyone thinks they know how to sing..

Maybe jerking is a trend for mainstream audiences, but if you ask me and my friends, I don't think that this trend is going to last long.

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