Quiet Storm Dance | Know Your Meme

About

Quiet Storm Dance refers to a dance started by Lil Kim in 1999 while performing her part in the remix of Mobb Deep’s song “Quiet Storm.” Although the dance has been referenced numerous times since then, the dance became popular online in memes in 2019 following Twitter users and TikTokers performing the dance. The dance typically involves squatting low with arms out.

Origin

On October 5th, 1999, Mobb Deep released a remix of “Quiet Storm” featuring Lil Kim. In the music video, uploaded to YouTube later in 2014, Lil Kim can be seen doing the dance (shown below). The YouTube video garnered over 10.5 million views in six years.

Spread

On December 17th, 2017, Twitter user @AkeemSumthing uploaded a video of someone performing the dance with the caption, “Practicing your best Lil’ Kim ‘Quiet Storm’ dance moves before the party” (shown below).

On August 8th, 2018, YouTuber SupermovaLeon uploaded the video “Lil Kim Recreates Her Famous ‘Quiet Storm’ Dance at Radio Station August 8, 2018” (shown below). The video garnered over 2,700 views in two years.

The dance became popular on TikTok in 2019. On November 20th, 2019 TikToker therealkhalilshamar uploaded a video of themself doing the dance and garnered over 800 likes in six months (shown below, left). On May 5th, 2020, TikToker thavideoplug uploaded another sound clip of “Quiet Storm” and performed the dance in a video that received over 151,400 likes in 12 days (shown below, center). TikTokers began using the dance in parody videos. On May 7th, TikToker iamdiorrrr did the dance and added the text “When the driver pulled off before you find a seat (shown below, right). The video garnered over 331,500 likes in 11 days. Stay Hipp published an article about the dances’ popularity on TikTok.

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References