RICHMOND — Minutes before Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance at February’s Super Bowl LXI game, several people gave an impromptu dance show of their own at a suburban home near Richmond, Virginia. 

Onlookers were surprised when the dancers of various ages did not perform the Cha Cha Slide, Cupid Shuffle or the Wobble — popular line dances that have prevailed at many Black social gatherings for the past three decades or more.

Instead, the dancers, holding colorful hand fans, debuted a new line dance to “Boots on the Ground (Where Them Fans At),” a gritty Southern song with a catchy beat. The fans’ rhythmic “clack, clack, clack” after each break or dance sequence produced squeals of joy from everyone in the room.

Thanks to social media, the song and dance with a “wrist” have gone viral. Both have been played and performed nonstop since the song dropped in December 2024. Artist 803Fresh, aka Douglas Furtick, of Wagener, South Carolina, wrote and recorded the song. Jaterrious Trésean Little, aka Trè Little of Newnan, Georgia, is credited with creating the dance steps for the tune.

While still trying to process the wide support he’s attracted for “Boots on the Ground,” 803Fresh believes that its popularity is based on the song’s relatability factor.

The artist told WIS 10 (Columbia, S.C.) reporter Billie Jean Shaw last month that he wrote and recorded the song after attending a “trail ride,” a country party with Black culture influences. Trail rides can feature a horseback procession, zydeco, Southern soul, or hip-hop fusion music, along with dancing and feasting, according to various online sources. Attendees can number in the thousands, with many returning to the South for the gatherings from cities across the country, noted a “Black Women on Reddit” post.

During his first trail ride, 803Fresh noticed that many attendees toted hand fans, but the fans were absent on his second trail ride. His observation led to “Boots on the Ground” and its subtitle, “Where Them Fans At.”

After listening to the song with the lyrics, it will probably come as no surprise that 803Fresh grew up hearing a combination of Southern soul and country often filled with bass guitar, drums, blues, and gospel.

“Get up by your seat (your seat), let your body move (move)

Cowboys and cowgirls are feeling that groove (feeling that groove)

Sippin’ on moonshine, fire barrel rollin’ (rollin’)

I’ma get behind that thing, girl, and hold it, hold, it, hold it, hold it

In addition to performing in the church, he enjoyed listening to blues and soul singers such as James Brown, Marvin Sease, Tyrone Davis, and Z.Z. Hill. 

“It’s a beautiful marriage,” he said of his sounds and those of soul singers who dominated the charts from the 1960s until the mid-1970s. “I do my two steps and I’m done. It’s good times, fans, a lot of boots wearing and engaging with the crowd.”

Birth of a trend

Not long after hearing the song for the first time, Trè Little, 22, took the tune to another level, going beyond 803Fresh’s two steps to create a line dance for the song. 

But the dance actually came by accident when Little, a dancer all his life, tripped over his feet on one of the turns, he said during a recent telephone interview.

 “After I tripped over my feet, it was like that part had to go with the song,” Little recalled. “So I had to add that front step and turn into it. And that was really then I just started, like, just going with the flow. Everything just came together like a puzzle, basically.”

After Little recorded himself dancing to the song and posting it to social media, it generated 100,000 views overnight, he said. “Oh, my goodness! Yes!  And then it just blew up from there.”

Once Little posted online tutorials demonstrating the dance, others in the line dance community joined in. He has since met 803Fresh and they plan to collaborate on more music and dance steps, he said.

“We talk here and there and whenever he has a band in Atlanta or somewhere in this area he calls and we get together,” Little said.

One community’s love affair with ‘Boots on the Ground’

Meanwhile, back in Richmond, a city that produced musical legends such as Jerome Brailey, D’Angelo, Stu Gardner, Mable Scott, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and Lonnie Liston Smith, fans continue to boogie to “Boots on the Ground.”

Options to feed their dance hunger appear unlimited because community centers, churches, restaurants, and other facilities routinely host line-dance classes or events throughout the city.

On a recent sunny Saturday, Christopher Woody, who once performed with the UniverSoul Circus, led his first line-dance event at the Satellite Club on Richmond’s Southside. The 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. event, organized just two weeks in advance, drew nearly 100 people. Many of the partiers who learned about the gathering on social media were Black women, dressed in Western wear and armed with colorful folding hand fans. (Fans range in cost, from $2.99 on Temu to $8.99 and up on Amazon.)

Woody, 40, a mental health technician, has been line dancing for 10 years. He decided to teach the dance at the suggestion of a friend.

Teaching is different because everything’s at a faster pace when dancing, he said. “So, when you’re teaching, you have to slow it all the way down. Everything is step by step.”

Woody believes that part of the reason the line dance went viral so quickly is the current U.S. political stage, where uncertainty reigns.

“I think in a time like this, people want to get together and have, like, you know how the old cookout used to be?” he said.  When you had people that got together to simply enjoy themselves, set aside their concerns for a while.”

Kemel Patton, affectionately known as the “Line Dance King” in Richmond, agrees. Patton, 63, a line dance instructor for three decades, has relied on dance to help minimize his battle with multiple sclerosis, a chronic, autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system.

Through the years, Patton has seen as many as 350 people show up for his classes at various venues—from vacant food courts at dying malls to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ marbled halls, as well as the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia.

Given his longevity in the line dance community, Patton sees the “Boots on the Ground” phenomenon as more than a “great hip-hop vibe with a country feel.”

Rather it also is “a song and dance that let’s folks know that our culture goes beyond just one type of music,” he said, adding, “that the root of all music started with us.”