Jermaine Dupri credits Uncle Luke with sparking the Black community’s interest in the strip club scene.
The hip-hop stars are both executive producers on Hulu’s new documentary Freaknik: The Greatest Story Never Told, in which they recall hip-hop’s transition into X-rated territory and how it impacted Black culture, particularly in Atlanta. According to Dupri, Uncle Luke is the one who first brought strip club-inspired activity into his music, igniting a movement.
“The story goes so deep that in Atlanta, all I know is strip clubs, right? And I don’t know Atlanta to not be a place where we don’t have a strip club,” Dupri told Ebro Darden on Apple I.
“[Uncle Luke] was going to strip clubs before Black people. He actually invented Black people going to the strip club, and I don’t think in hip-hop we ever talked about this, ever. He invented Black people going to the strip club in Miami.”
The former 2 Live Crew frontman agreed and recalled a time when the only strip clubs one could attend were predominantly white.
“No [Black] strip clubs in the ’80s. It
was only white strip clubs,” Luke said. “Tootsies is the biggest strip club in the world right now. It was a little spot right next to the skating rink that I used to throw the parties at, and the bouncers took me over there and they were like, ‘Yo, you got to check this sh*t out.’”JD added, “And he was like, ‘I ain’t going to no strip club, white bikers be over there.’ He said, ‘Nobody Black went to the strip clubs in Miami.’”
The Freaknik documentary highlights how Uncle Luke
changed the Freaknik street party scene from the predominantly college-geared crowd who dominated the picnic in the ’80s to the wild, “anything goes” type of crowd that took over in the ’90s.“Atlanta had one club, 112. That was the only club that stayed open until late, and they eventually closed that down when Freaknik got big,” Luke said. “So, we just really brought the party there, our way of partying, and then it became something.”
The Miami native was happy to bring his city’s style of partying to Atlanta and help turn ATL into the strip club oasis it continues to be today.
“Miami is the party capital of the world. We don’t go to sleep,” he added. “We go all night long to the next day.”
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