Ludacris has revealed that one of his most recognizable tracks came from an everyday frustration behind the wheel.
Speaking with PEOPLE, the 48-year-old rapper shared that he created “Move Bitch,” a standout track from his 2001 album Word of Mouf, while sitting in his car.
“I was in the car when I wrote it, so there you go,” he says. “It was inspired by being in traffic, for sure.”
The song recently received another memorable moment when Ludacris performed at The Standard Biergarten in New York City on Saturday, July 18. Following a celebrity karaoke session featuring stars including Kevin Hart, James Marsden, Brooks Nader, Joey Graziadei and Tyler Cameron, the crowd repeatedly requested the rapper’s classic hit.
Ludacris responded by performing the song three times during the event, later celebrating the unusual moment with fans.
“We just made history. We did ‘Move’ three times,” Ludacris yelled onstage. “We ain’t never done that. I love y’all, man.”
During a February 2024 appearance on Drink Champs, Ludacris joked about the song’s lasting impact and the fact that its famous command remains part of popular culture more than two decades later.
“I’m gonna be honest, I don’t want her to move. As long as she don’t move, people gonna keep telling her to f—ing move,” he said with a laugh, noting that the sentiment has since evolved into its own movement. “The moment she moves, they might stop … I don’t even have to say s—, you just hold the mic out to the crowd.”
Reflecting on the beginning of his music career, Ludacris said in June that releasing his debut album Incognegro independently in 1999 was a major gamble.
The rapper said he was “taking the biggest risk by just putting music out there” without knowing “how the world would receive it.”
Adding to the challenge, Ludacris invested $20,000 of his own money to bring the project to life.
“The fear of failure is something you have to overcome in order to accomplish great things. And I think that that was a crossroads of my life going into the success that it did because I told myself I wasn’t going to be afraid of the outcome,” he explained at the time. “Those are the type of risks that have the reward that I’ve been able to live off of the fruits of the label.”
Following the independent release of Incognegro, which featured songs such as “What’s Your Fantasy?” and “Southern Hospitality,” Ludacris signed with Def Jam in 2000. The album was later reissued as Back for the First Time in October of that year.
“I put [Incognegro] out independently and then it got 50,000 sold, where Def Jam signed me,” he recalled. “I took two records off and added three other records. So what people may not know is that it was an independent album way before it got the success.”
