Big Energy by Latto (2021)

Big Energy runs on the bassline from Tom Tom Club's Genius of Love, the 1981 record that hip-hop and R&B have been borrowing for forty years without returning it, and on a hook in which Latto claims the quality for herself and demands it from him. The verses read like a job listing for the man who gets to stay: confidence required, "energy" essential. The word the title leaves out keeps sneaking back in through the ad-libs, like a guest who was told the party was cancelled.

Released in September 2021, it climbed for seven months, peaked at number three in the United States in April 2022 and went four times Platinum, which is a lot of certifications for an adjective. The remix added Mariah Carey and DJ Khaled and closed a loop: Carey's Fantasy had ridden the same Tom Tom Club bassline to number one in 1995, so the sample's most famous previous tenant moved back in to bless the new one.

The afterlife is the phrase itself. It began as a joke about one comedian's anatomy, became an all-purpose compliment, and now sits in a wedding-DJ staple that children sing along to while their parents quietly decide not to explain the abbreviation. Latto did not invent the idiom; she gave it the one thing it lacked, a chorus, and the one thing it never needed, a radio edit.