"Low" by Flo Rida ft. T-Pain
Apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur. One line, and Flo Rida's 2007 debut single became the ringtone anthem of school cafeterias and bus seats everywhere — ten straight weeks at number one, and Billboard's #1 song of 2008.
Flo Rida's "Low" featuring T-Pain dropped in October 2007, pulled from his debut album Mail on Sunday and the Step Up 2 the Streets soundtrack. That opening couplet — "apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur" — became one of the most recognized lyric openings of the decade. The song hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for ten consecutive weeks, the longest-running number one of 2008, and Billboard crowned it the year-end #1 song of 2008.
The ringtone era met its apex with "Low." Every phone speaker on every bus played it, and the "shawty got low low low low low low low low" hook became an entire generation's middle-school singalong.
The song's reach was staggering. It became the first song ever to sell four million digital downloads in the US (by mid-2008), then the first past five million (by 2009), climbing past seven million total on its way to an RIAA Diamond certification. It was a chart record, a cultural moment, and a sales milestone — the ringtone age's perfect storm.
Similar items
Ringtones & Crazy Frog
Before smartphones, your ringtone was your personality — monophonic beeps, then polyphonic MIDI, then "real tones," each tier a status upgrade bought from services like Jamster. And looming over the whole era: a CGI frog doing a moped impression, outselling Coldplay.
Nelly — "Ride wit Me"
"If you wanna go and take a ride wit me..." — HEY, MUST BE THE MONEY! Nelly's acoustic-guitar bounce was the sound of every radio, mall, and school bus in 2001, the laid-back victory lap off Country Grammar.
"Milkshake" by Kelis
"My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard." The hook that launched a thousand ringtones and playground chants, Kelis's 2003 smash — produced by The Neptunes — became one of the decade's most quoted lines before anyone even agreed on what it meant.
"Drop It Like It's Hot" by Snoop Dogg ft. Pharrell
Tongue clicks, a skeletal beat, and total confidence. The Neptunes stripped hip-hop down to almost nothing in 2004, and it became the biggest rap song of the decade — and, incredibly, Snoop Dogg's first #1 ever.