Giants receiver Odell Beckham Jr.'s 'Whip' touchdown dance rooted in Atlanta

Move over, salsa. There's a new touchdown dance in New York.

In fact, there are two of them.

As Odell Beckham Jr. continues to score points for the Giants -- his nine touchdowns in 10 games are one shy of the team's record for first-year players and he still has two games to go -- he is starting to get noticed not only for his catches but also his choreography. The receiver has celebrated most of his touchdowns with a dance move called "The Whip," and sometimes he does one called "The Nae Nae." They were created by a hip-hop group from Atlanta called Famous To Most (several members of which were part of the group We Are Toonz when The Nae Nae became a hit).

Pervis Reynolds, a member of the group who is known as P.J., said they've had an association with Beckham since long before most NFL fans had even heard of him.

"He was at LSU, he was uploading videos of doing the Nae Nae," Reynolds said. "Over that time we developed a relationship, we exchanged numbers, stuff like that. We were in each other's videos doing the Nae Nae. When we came out with the Whip dance, he just hopped on board with it because he liked it better than the Nae Nae."

Two members of the group, Reynolds and Jalen Ware, who goes by the name Bear, were Beckham's guests at MetLife Stadium on Oct. 5 when Beckham scored his first NFL touchdown against the Falcons and first did the Whip.

"He told us that day that he was going to do it," Ware said. "He knew he was going to score and he knew he was going to do it. And we went crazy when he did it. It was amazing to see."

The Whip is an improvised move in which the dancer is in a crouched position with one arm extended, almost like driving a car. Other athletes have used the dance in the NFL -- Jeremy Hill of the Bengals and Dante Hughes of the Colts. Even LeBron James did a brief version of the Whip when the Cavaliers played the Nets last week.

"When they were doing it, it was like 'Wow, it's out there, people are watching us, people are actually doing what we created,'" said Hasani Buchanan, known as the Real Hasani. "It was exciting for me to see that we actually have a big impact on the world."

But the guys from Famous To Most say no one does it like Beckham.

"He's the best in the game," said DeAndre Johnson, known as King Rari. "Everybody else is doing the dance, but he has the best creativity when it comes to doing it. I think it's because there are people who take the game too seriously, but at the end of the day everybody is still a kid at heart. I think Odell, he's worked hard at what he's done so he's going to have fun with it because he earned the touchdown."

Beckham was asked about his moves on Sunday after he scored three touchdowns. He explained that they came from the group in Atlanta. "It's a way of expressing yourself and I enjoy having fun, so why not?" he said.

And Famous To Most are becoming famous to more because of it. They already were celebrities in the hip-hop world with their videos and dance moves and tours, but Beckham and others have brought them to a new audience.

"It really hit us when it made it to the other side of entertainment, which is sports," Ware said. "For entertainers, it's easy to see another entertainer do the dance because they're a part of that culture. But when you go to people who don't dance and their profession is a sport, you don't usually see athletes dancing. When it got to the NFL, to have that was amazing."And now that they are connected with Beckham, they hope to go where he goes. Maybe the Pro Bowl. Maybe, one day, the Super Bowl.

"It feels good because everybody is doing it and everybody is having fun with it," Johnson said. "It shows you the creativity of everyone in the NFL when it comes down to them having fun and not taking the sport too seriously."

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.