Serena Williams’ crip walk is more than a Drake dis. What it means to LA and Black culture

It’s official: Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance is now the most watched of all time.

And one of the most dissected moments has been the surprise appearance by tennis legend Serena Williams, who crip walked to Lamar’s hit dis track, “Not Like Us.”

It wasn’t the first time Williams brought that fancy footwork to a massive audience. She was criticized for doing it in 2012 after winning gold at the London Olympics and in 2023 for doing it at Wimbledon.

So why do it again at the Super Bowl? Was it simply because the Pulitzer-Prize winning rapper asked her to, as she noted in a recent Instagram post. Or was it something more?

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Activist and academic Shamell Bell says it was.

“For me, the dance form is a form of liberation,” said Bell, a Harvard University lecturer whose doctoral research focuses on dance as grassroots political action. Last week, she led a dance workshop at UC Irvine that heavily featured the crip walk.

“It’s the embodiment of coming from South Central Los Angeles,” she said. “I come from those streets.”

Shamell Bell, second from right, leads a group in a demonstration of the crip walk at UC Irvine.

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What are the origins of the crip walk?

There’s some debate about when and where the crip walk, or C walk, first appeared.

One story is that a version of it emerged decades ago when acclaimed Harlem dancer Henry Heard — a double amputee who was known by the nickname “Crip” — performed in the 1940s.

Far more often, it’s associated with members of the Crips street gang in Los Angeles, whose members started doing a dance — some have called it a ritual — in the 1970s. And one of the Crips’ original members, Robert “Sugar Bear” Jackson, has been cited as its creator.

It was seen as a way of showing one’s gang affiliation, particularly in contrast to Bloods gang members.

When doing the crip walk, a person will hop from one foot to the other, twisting and turning the feet at angles, sometimes forming the letters C-R-I-P. The arms are usually held up and bent inward at the elbows, with the dancer sometimes throwing up gang-related hand signs.

David Cha of Los Angeles learns to crip walk during a workshop at UCI.

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The dance has appeared in movies, music videos and other aspects of popular culture, notably ones centered on West Coast hip-hop. In 2022, the crip walk made its first Super Bowl halftime appearance, when Snoop Dogg — who is from Long Beach — performed with other artists, including Eminem, 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige and of course Compton legends Dr. Dre and Lamar himself.

Also from Compton: Serena Williams.

So why is it controversial?

More than a week after the Super Bowl, debate about the show — and the C walk — is still going strong.

Some commenters said they recognized messages in the halftime show that went much deeper than the beef between Lamar and his rap rival Drake. Other commenters said they didn’t like it, didn’t get it, or didn’t think it deserved a platform at the NFL’s biggest event.

“Some folks believe that because of its impetus and beginning in violence that we should not be crip walking as a form of radical joy,” said Bell, who was an original organizer within the Black Lives Matter movement in L.A.

But the meaning behind the C walk has evolved with the times.

Today, there are countless crip walk tutorials on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Some dance instructors work the moves into their in-person classes.

Bell said she’s been using street dances like the crip walk as a form of social justice activism and encountered three main reactions:

1. Those who say it should only be performed by people linked to the gang.
2. Those who say it should never be performed in public because of its links to violence.
3. Those who say the dance has positive connotations, like community and connection.

Bell said crip walking in spaces like the Super Bowl is in some ways repurposing it.

“It’s about turning it on its head, kind of like what you’re doing with the N-word,” Bell said.

Bringing the C walk to the masses

And she’s put that message into practice.

In 2019, Bell drew attention on social media when she crip walked to celebrate earning her Ph.D. In a video clip shared by the UCLA department of African American studies, many people in the room can be seen celebrating with her.

The two-hour workshop she led Thursday night was part of a broader "theater of community" event put on by the university. About a dozen people took part in the session, including Zachary Price, an associate professor of drama at the university.

Price said he saw the crip walk — at the Super Bowl or elsewhere — as a form of cultural expression emerging from the “many permutations of the Black experience.” He explained that it’s part of an African American vernacular that stretches from chattel slavery to Black Lives Matter and beyond.

“I think of these different dance forms as expressive forms but also as [social] movements,” he said.

Daniel Keeling, an assistant professor, dances with others at the UCI workshop.

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Daniel Keeling, an assistant professor at UC Irvine’s Drama Department, also participated in the workshop. Originally from Kansas, he said his musical background skewed more toward musical theater and opera, but he’s been listening to hip-hop more now that he’s a California resident.

He said he had been following the beef between Lamar and Drake, and the crip walk had caught his attention.

“It’s what the culture is feeling,” he said.