What the “Hey! Hey! Hey!” Chants in Top 40 Hip Hop Are

Ever notice the men yelling HEY! in every other hip pop song these days?  I have.

My girlfriend listens to Top 40 R&B Hip Hop radio stations in her car. So if she’s driving, that pretty much means I get to listen to them too.

One day I pointed out to her all the “HEY! HEY! HEY!” cadence calls in every other track, and she said she never even noticed it before.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, listen for what sounds like about 10 men in the military, chanting “HEY! HEY! HEY!” in about any hip hop song that has been released since 2012.

And if you don’t feel like doing that, I give you exhibits A-N:

• Iggy Azalea – Fancy
• Kid Ink – Main Chick
• Ty Dolla $ign – Paranoid
• YG – I Just Wanna Party
• Fabolous – Who Do You Love
• Tinashe – 2 On
• Lil Jon – Turn Down For What
• Trey Songs – Na Na
• Jeremiah – Don’t Tell Em
• Too Short – Shake That Monkey
• Kid Ink – Show Me
• Tyga – Rack City
• Young Jeezy – RIP
• 2 Chainz – I’m Different

Now that’s a lazy, partial list. The thing is, it’s in just about every other hip hop song from the 2010’s. It’s the musical sound of the decade.

In the 70’s you had disco, funk.

In the 80’s you had hip hop, punk, hair metal.

In the 90’s you had grunge.

In the 2000’s you had nu-metal, post-punk, emo.

And in the 2010’s you have trap, dubstep to a limited extent, but more commonly, you have the Hey! chant.

It’s not a motif, It’s a genre.

If you’re curious as to who is credited with creating this genre, it’s a guy named DJ Mustard.