Getting Clearance For TMNT: Mutant Mayhem's Best Needle Drop Was A Challenge [Exclusive]
This article contains spoilers for "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem."
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" is one of the best animated movies of the year: a film that reinvents and reinvigorates the franchise by focusing on the teenage part of "TMNT," casting actual kids to voice the Turtles and having them record together to capture a sense of spontaneity.
"Mutant Mayhem" also has a most excellent soundtrack, filled with classic '90s hip hop and the kind of songs you'd hear while playing "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater." After "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" gave us some of the worst needle drops in cinema, it is a delight to see "Mutant Mayhem" use the songs that actually help the story and reflect the personalities of the Turtles and other characters.
One of the best needle drops in the film is "No Diggity" by Blackstreet featuring Dr. Dre and Queen Pen, which shows up during a fight sequence. Speaking with /Film's own Ethan Anderton, director Jeff Rowe said it was one of the first songs used in the film, but "there were going to be challenges with the legal clearance of it."
Schrödinger's Diggity
Though Rowe didn't go into detail about what the legal challenges were, The Daily Beast's oral history of the "Riff-Off" scene in "Pitch Perfect" — which concludes with Anna Kendrick rapping "No Diggity" — sheds more light on why this particular track is so difficult to clear. According to executive music producers Julia Michels and Julianne Jordan, one of the song's writers was estranged from the rest of the band members, which caused great difficulty clearing "the last one percent" of the track. "It was such a drama," said Michels, who explained that it came right down to the wire. "The day that we were shooting 'No Diggity,' that one percent was not cleared ... I think it cleared while we were shooting — I think it was that close."
The "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" team was similarly unsure of whether they'd get clearance for "No Diggity," so they tried other songs, including "Ruff Ryder's Anthem" by DMX. "That's the one that maybe got the closest," Rowe continued. "But just nothing worked as well as 'No Diggity,' and we just had to commit to that." Indeed, as Rowe told it, when the team watched the version of the film with the song in it, producers Ramsey McBean and Greg Levitan, and the editor "all looked at each other like, 'This is electric, this is amazing. It's got to be this.'"
'And I pray, Oh my God, do I pray'
It's not just the needle drops; "Mutant Mayhem" also handles Easter eggs in a fantastic way that doesn't overload the story with them, by leaning into the intrinsic contemporary aspect of "TMNT." The franchise has always been about teenagers, so it has always incorporated modern slang and references. In this version, the Turtles are Gen-Z and the film captures the way kids talk through memes and pop culture references. So they call each other "sus," and watch TikTok, and we get delightful moments like Donnie describing a face drawn in watermelon as "like Stewie had a baby with 'Hey Arnold,'" or turning Donnie's love of "Attack on Titan" into the literal third act plan to defeat the villain.
Indeed, the Turtles know their memes, so it makes sense that, during a climactic chase sequence where the turtles are running away from Superfly and his mutant gang, a diegetic use of 4 Non Blonde's "What's Up" that Mondo Gecko and the other mutants are gleefully singing along to turns into none other than the He-Man remix of the song.
If you need a refresher, the He-Man remix of "What's Up," also known as the "HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA" meme, is a viral 2005 animated music video in which He-Man and other "Masters of the Universe" characters sing "What's Up." It is not just a great needle drop, but a clever joke that harkens back to the franchise's origins by invoking another popular '80s toy franchise.
'And so I wake in the morning and I step outside...'
According to Jeff Rowe, there used to just be a piece of original score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross in that scene, titled "Goochie Goochie Goo," which he describes as "the coolest piece of music, and it's scary and tense and exhilarating." But as the film was screened, the team felt that the scene would be better if it was funnier. That's when producer Seth Rogen suggested they use "a crazy version" of "What's Up."
"And then we tried it and we watched it in edit. I think we were all very tired and we're like, 'Honestly, this is the funniest thing ... It's got to be this. And then [we] began the challenge of tracking down who made it so that we could legally clear it for the film."
Though there are multiple versions of the song on YouTube, with many, many millions of views, the original was created by two animators at Slackcircus Studios, who originally uploaded the song on a forum before finally bringing it to YouTube. It is one of the best moments in the film, a hilarious song, and an even better joke that speaks to the Turtles' teenage attitude.