\"Jump Around\" is a song by the American hip hop group House of Pain, produced by DJ Muggs of the hip hop group Cypress Hill, who has also covered the song. It became a hit in 1992, reaching number 3 in the United States. A 1993 re-release of the song in the United Kingdom, where the initial release had been a minor hit, peaked at number 8. \"Jump Around\" was featured at position 24 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the 90s, number 66 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop, and number 325 on Blender's 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born. The song is popular among dancehall DJs and is widely regarded in the United Kingdom as a club classic.
DJ Muggs has stated that he originally produced the beat for Cypress Hill, but rapper B-Real did not want to record at that time. The beat was subsequently offered to Ice Cube, who refused, before finally being taken and used by House of Pain.
The song features a distinctive horn fanfare intro, sampled from Bob & Earl's 1963 track \"Harlem Shuffle\". The song also samples \"Popeye the Hitchhiker\" by Chubby Checker, but it is best known for a high-pitched squealing sound that appears at the beginning of almost every bar—66 times in the course of the recording.
The origin of the squeal has been the subject of debate. The website WhoSampled credits the 1967 Junior Walker & the All Stars track \"Shoot Your Shot\", in which a tenor saxophone makes the noise. However, American blogger Anil Dash and American musician Questlove of hip hop band The Roots have pointed to Prince's \"Gett Off\" as the source. A Newsweek reader performed a spectrogram where the sample more closely matches \"Shoot Your Shot\", and House of Pain member Everlast himself told Questlove that it is a horn making the squeal and not Prince. However, Anil Dash claims the band has denied that the sample is Prince to avoid paying royalties to the singer. For his part, DJ Muggs says the sample came from neither Prince nor Junior Walker.
AllMusic editor Rob Theakston described the song as a \"dynamite classic\". J.D. Considine from The Daily Gazette noted it as \"springy\". Leah Greenblatt from Entertainment Weekly wrote that \"the first and only members of hip-hop's Irish-American Thug Life Hall of Fame earned their spot in that (imaginary) pantheon with this killer blast of rapid-fire rap bravado.\" Scott Sterling from The Michigan Daily called it the \"most happening track\" on the House of Pain album. Rupert Howe from Select described it as a \"Kriss-Kross-with testosterone smash\" and added that it is \"an impossibly simple freestyle skank that stormed the US Billboard big-time.\"
