The roof is on fire

My quest to track down the origin of the most persistent recurring hip-hop memes brings me to this chant:

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire
We don’t need no water, let the motherf***er burn

The chant made its first appearance in the hip-hop canon in “The Roof Is On Fire” by Rock Master Scott & The Dynamic Three, the B-side to their 1984 single “Request Line.” “The Roof Is On Fire” ended up being way more popular.

The recorded version of “The Roof Is On Fire” leaves out the mofo line. In 1984 people mostly weren’t using curses in hip-hop recordings, which now seems charmingly quaint. In live shows, Rock Master Scott and the Dynamic Three were less demure, and when they led the crowd in the chant, the mofo was included.

I don’t know what specifically Rock Master Scott and the Dynamic Three were referring to in the chant. I’ve seen it associated with the 1985 firebombing of MOVE’s headquarters by the Philadelphia police department, though the Dynamic Three song was written a year earlier. The chant probably got attached to the MOVE bombing after the fact. It wouldn’t be the first time that hip-hop has channeled political anger into a semi-ironic party slogan.

MC Serch is on fire

I first heard the chant in “Here It Comes Again” by my favorite white rapper, MC Serch. Listen at 1:21.

Someone much cooler than me in high school used this song in a dance performance. It’s the mark of a truly powerful meme that the chant has been stuck in my head for more than half my life. The other line that jumps out of my memory after eighteen years is “J-E-L-L-O, ya know?” – listen at 2:15. I love this kind of nerdy, cerebral, reference-heavy emceeing. I also love early 90s sample-heavy production. Serch is the kind of geek who samples the Mahavishnu Orchestra, on his tune “Hits The Head.”

Anyway. For a lot of people, the strongest association with “the roof is on fire” is P-funk, who like to chant it during performances of “Tear The Roof Off The Sucker.” P-funk’s chant inspired Talking Heads to write “Burning Down The House.” It also inspired many techno DJs to work the chant into their own work, including The Orb and Westbam.

The Bloodhound Gang is on fire

When you Google the phrase “the roof is on fire,” the results are dominated by Bloodhound Gang’s song “Fire Water Burn,” which I had never heard of before researching this post. I find mopey rock interpretations of hip-hop tedious in the extreme. I don’t have any problem with rock musicians borrowing ideas from black music; all the good ones do that. I just don’t like the sullen tone. Music should be fun.

Anyway, there are plenty more rock songs that quote the chant:

• “Sway” by Coal Chamber
• “Polaroid Baby” by Bratmobile
• Songs by Slipknot and Cake — I haven’t identified which specific ones because their music makes me sad; knock yourself out

Other sightings of the roof meme

Tweet named her track “We Don’t Need No Water” after the chant. The track is produced by Missy Elliot, using a sample of “Mango Meat” by Mandrill. Hip!

“In Da Club” by 50 Cent quotes the chant too — listen at 2:54:

In “The Roof Is On Fire” Bizzy Bone refers to the chant amusingly as “the old negro spiritual.”

Any others I missed? Hit the comments.