I must give props to 50 Cent for the new remix of “Outta Control,” which features the original gun clappers Mobb Deep. What makes the song great is its beat. It is slow, spaced widely, with a spare piano loop and guitar lick. I heard it for the first time two nights ago at the Bada Lounge. The DJ closed his set with it, and everyone cleared the dance floor because “Outta Control” is not a dance song. As I have said many times before, real hiphop is not dance music. It is music for, at the very most, nodding your head. And this is hiphop’s the great achievement. Its beatwhich is hard, gritty, and spaced like city blocksmade dancing look ridiculous, and this ridiculousness liberated men from the tedium (and pressure) of, when in clubs, having to ask girls to dance. Before the invention of the hiphop beat, men had to walk around the club asking girls if they would dance with them because men couldn’t dance by themselves without ridicule. After the invention of the hiphop beat, men could finally dance by themselves, beer in hand, head nodding somewhat somberly. Indeed, it is this liberation that, in the late 90s, caused the music industry to inject hiphop with heavy doses of R&B (The Neptunes, for example), so that men would be forced to ask women to dance again and again and again (finally one says yes, and then you get aroused, and then she leaves you in that state when the song is overwhat a waste of bloody time and energy). 50 Cent’s “Outta Control” is an admirable attempt to restore the proper hiphop order of the dance-liberated dance floor.