Eddie Murphy has been credited with many things throughout his career. He undoubtedly popularized the buddy-cop genre in the 1980s with hit movies like 48 Hrs. and Beverly Hills Cop. It’s also debatable whether or not comedians would’ve ever even thought to wear leather outfits on stage if Murphy hadn’t done it first. He, of course, donned them in both of his stand-up specials: 1983’s Delirious and 1987’s Raw.
Something else that Murphy actually credits himself with is inventing the mic drop. You know, when a performer of some kind slams the microphone on the ground as they’re about to leave the stage? Yeah, so, according to Murphy, the first one of those occurred in his 1988 film Coming to America. Here’s the moment in question, with Murphy playing Randy Watson, lead singer of Sexual Chocolate:
“The very first mic drop ever is in the first Coming to America,” Murphy said during a 2021 interview with the Toronto Sun. “When Randy Watson drops the mic…he invented the mic drop.” Some have suggested, however, that Murphy performed a mic drop a few years earlier at the end of Delirious, but it seems a little awkward and could potentially have been accidental. Take a look for yourself below.
Neither one of those can fairly qualify as the very first mic drop, though. When that took place, we may never know, but at least one piece of footage exists featuring a mic drop that predates both Delirious and Coming to America. At the end of a Sex Pistols concert in December 1977, lead singer John Lydon (then known as Johnny Rotten) was captured on film performing his own mic drop. Check it out just after the 12-minute mark here:
So Murphy might not have been the first person to ever do it, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t the first to do it in a movie. There’s certainly also an argument to be made that he popularized the gesture by doing it in such a successful film. Until any earlier movie footage surfaces, we think we can comfortably give him that credit, at the very least.
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