What a 1993 rap beef can teach you about recycling your content
In the summer of 1993, two songs hit the airwaves at almost exactly the same time. Tag Team dropped “Whoomp! (There It Is)” while Miami group 95 South released the nearly identical “Whoot, There It Is” just a few months earlier. Same phrase. Same energy. Different crews.
Both record labels swore it was a coincidence. And honestly, it probably was. The phrase “whoomp/whoot, there it is” was already floating around Atlanta and Miami nightclubs, passed between dancers and partygoers like a secret handshake. Nobody owned it. Everybody used it. It just took two groups to put it on wax at the same time to make the whole country lose their minds.
Here’s the twist: neither song killed the other. Both charted. Both got radio play. Arsenio Hall even had them both on his show and let viewers vote on their favorite — with proceeds going to 1993 Midwest flood relief. Two versions of the same idea, and there was room for both of them.
So what does this have to do with your content strategy?
A lot, actually.
Your best ideas, like your go to dance move, are worth repeating. That one LinkedIn post you wrote six months ago that quietly crushed it? It’s just floating in the archives, unseen by the majority of your audience. The blog post you spent three hours writing got maybe 48 hours of visibility before the algorithm buried it. The tweet (sorry — the post) that sparked a great conversation? Gone.
That’s not a content graveyard. That’s a goldmine.
Package it differently. Turn the core insight into a Reel. Pull one punchy line for a graphic. Expand a bullet point into its own standalone post. Retell the same story from a different angle. Maybe this time you lead with the result instead of the problem. Post it again to the audience that didn’t follow you back then, or the followers who joined last month and have never seen your best stuff.
Most people think recycling content is lazy. It’s actually the opposite. It’s strategic. The mistake isn’t reusing ideas — it’s assuming everyone saw it the first time, or that an idea only has one form. Tag Team didn’t just perform “Whoomp!” once and call it a day. They performed it on Arsenio. They performed it at arenas. They let it live in movie soundtracks and sports stadiums for the next 30 years. Same song. New rooms.
You’re not copying yourself. You’re remixing. Tag Team and 95 South both understood the assignment: take something that resonates and amplify it. The phrase didn’t get less powerful because two people used it. It got more powerful. It became a cultural moment precisely because it kept showing up.
Your ideas work the same way. The best content isn’t a one-hit wonder — it’s a catalog. And a catalog only works if you actually play the hits.
Whoomp. There it is. Again.
