Without a doubt, one of the biggest dance crazes right now is the Renegade. The dance became popularized on TikTok, and since that is the primary app teenagers use now, it spread like wildfire. Even celebrities like Millie Bobby Brown and Noah Schnapp have posted themselves doing the dance. There have been so many people taking part in the Renegade trend that you may be wondering, who created it? If you ask any person on TikTok who came up with this dance, their answer would be Charli D'Amelio. However, the real creator of the Renegade is Jalaiah Harmon.
Up until a few days ago when the New York Times posted an article about Jalaiah being the person behind the Renegade, I also thought the creator was Charli. I have been on TikTok for a while and I have seen countless people say that the dance started with her. When I first saw her Renegade TikToks, there was nobody tagged in the captions as having come up with the original dance, so I assumed she had created it, especially since her entire profile is of her doing various dances to different songs.
Charli's dance moves are what caused her to skyrocket in popularity and gain 27 million followers on TikTok, which only rubs salt in Jalaiah's wound. She had come up with the Renegade back in September 2019 and had posted it on the app Funimate. She then reuploaded her dance on Instagram and it started to gain traction, which is when the user @global.jones took it to TikTok. When Jalaiah saw the dance getting big, she went to the comment section of the TikTokers doing the dance and asked for credit. They mostly ignored her.
I saw some people claiming that this situation is a "first world problem." They think Jalaiah should not care about getting her dance stolen and never being credited for creating it. You are naive about the power of social media if you think this is not a big deal. Thanks to her TikTok fame, Charli was able to get put in a Super Bowl commercial. I do not even want to think about how much money she got paid for that. Charli also just signed to United Talent Agency. These opportunities should have been presented to Jalaiah because everyone is capitalizing off of her work. Being given brand deals and signing to agencies like UTA can change someone's life forever. This could have given Jalaiah the resources to become a famous dancer.
The response to Jalaiah has also been people saying that this is an isolated incident and that situations like this do not happen regularly to Black artists. Unfortunately, it has become common in our society for dances, phrases, fashion, and just about everything else to be taken from Black creators without them ever being credited. Amanda Elimian mentioned in her newest YouTube video that this situation with Jalaiah is similar to what happened with Peaches Monroe (AKA Kayla Newman), the Black woman that came up with the phrase "on fleek." That phrase became a cultural staple and as Elimian explained in her video, even huge brands started using the phrase in their marketing. Monroe never got a single dollar from any of these companies for using her phrase, even though the phrase was helping them make money.
In this era of social media, artists must be given the credit they deserve. Thankfully, as I was writing this article, Charli uploaded a TikTok of her doing the original Renegade choreography with Jalaiah - and she tagged her account too. Also, the rapper K Camp, who created the song 'Lottery' that the Renegade dance is for, uploaded a video crediting Jalaiah with creating the dance. I hope this is the beginning of a successful career for her.
