Athletes Keep Lookin' with Adina Howard on TikTok

Adina Howard's latest song "Keep Lookin'" is building momentum as a sports anthem. Wait, what?

Yes, the 1990s R&B sex symbol that paved the way for Rihanna, Beyonce, Miley Cyrus and Megan Thee Stallion and so many others with her influential platinum selling hit "Freak Like Me" and cult hit T-Shirt & Panties has a sports anthem that has been featured on some viral videos on TikTok.

The biggest example is University of Tennessee track and field athlete Chandler Hayden. The thrower was featured on the Prolific Sports TikTok page competing at the NCAA East Preliminary Round. The clip that featured "Keep Lookin'" by Adina Howard and scored 1.6 million views in two days

Afterwards Hayden who has over 234,700 followers posted a duet of the video and got over 131,000 additional views in one day.

Various athletes also did traditional TikTok videos dancing to the song as well. Auburn All-American hurdler Asia Jinks did her own rendition.

After that Big South champion hurdler Jewel Ash of Charleston Southern University made a duet.

Ash and many other athletes are beginning to connect to the song and use it as an anthem. "I liked this song because I feel like an underdog in my sport," said Ash who has won back-to-back 400-meter hurdles championships in the Big South conference in her first two collegiate seasons. "The 'keep your eyes on me' [chorus] was like a message to those who watch me perform. It’s a subtle message from me to my competitors to not ever count me out."

Indiana University All-American and member of the Puerto Rican national team Paola Fernandez-Sola described why the song has the potential to be an influential anthem for women's sports.

"It denotes a sense of authority and a heightened self-perception," said Fernandez-Sola. "[Howard]makes sure that the [listener]understands that she recognizes her own imposingness. Her firmness is remarkable. These characteristics of self-confidence are indispensable for high-level performance. Trusting your work and your level is key to success."

Marta Cepeda-Perez is a native of Cabezuela del Valle, Spain and is also a bronze medalist in the 1,600-meter relay of the Mid-American Conference for Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She connected with the song on how nonathletes criticize and judge athletes while not being able to perform athletic feats themselves.

"This song for me represents how society is reflected in reality," Cepeda-Perez said. "People believe that athletics is simple, that’s why they underestimate it and are so envious of people who truly dedicate themselves to it in a professional way. [The doubters] just watch and criticize without doing anything to change their lives for the better for themselves. That’s why this song reflects the resilience of true athletes."

All-American high jumper Taylor Beard who competes at University of Cincinnati and made a TikTok of "Keep Lookin'" as well, also thinks the song serves as a social commentary about women's sports but in a different way. She thinks that often times spectators of women's sports are only looking at the competitors simply for their looks and not enough for their athletic abilities.

"I feel like as a woman in sports there are a lot of stares for our appearance and not so much for our talent, said Beard, the 2021 American Athletic Conference high jump champion. "I believe that athletes' looks are overshadowed by their talent. They are always watching but not really seeing the real us. I believe women should be recognized for their beauty, but if they are talented they should also be recognized for that as well."

With all that being said, "Keep Lookin'" is a song that is connecting the R&B legend with a newer audience. Howard's breakout song "Freak Like Me" and debut album, "Do You Wanna Ride," debuted in 1995, well before all of these young women were born. So it's fair to say, that we need to re-introduce who Adina Howard actually is.

In the spring of 1995, Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me" was the number two song on the Billboard pop charts for two weeks, trailing Montell Jordan's very popular song "This Is How We Do It." Music historians and various women's studies experts have declared that Howard's debut single was a critical point in R&B music that allowed female singers and rappers to make the sexually bold songs that are seen as normal today.

While Howard was celebrated by many, including late rapper Tupac Shakur who heard her music while he was incarcerated and insisted on meeting, her, which began a friendship which lasted until his death in 1996, Howard had her share of critics who said her album cover and sexually forward lyrics promoted promiscuity and contributed to the degradation of the black community. Despite the detractors, Howard's style of music would be continued and expanded by artists such as Lil Kim, Trina, Beyonce, Rihanna, Keri Hilson, Kelly Rowland, Nicki Minaj, Cardi B., Megan Thee Stallion and many more who would go on to sell millions of records headline tours and be celebrated as liberated women and voices of their generations.

Many have said that Howard was a one-hit wonder, but the label is inaccurate as she had worldwide fame when she was featured on Warren G.'s "What's Love Got to Do with It," which was a top ten single in the UK, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden and Switzerland. She also managed to get five other singles over her career to place in the top 100 on various Billboard charts over her career.

While she is known for her sexually expressive songs such as "Do You Wanna Ride" and "Nasty Grind," Howard has evolved as an artist and addressed social issues, such as 2017's Blasphemy which encouraged the African American community to see itself in a better light and not as just thugs, gangsters and bitches.

Over the last decade she has been celebrated with a documentary as well as career retrospectives on TV One's "Unsung" and "Life After" series and for her cooking prowess on BET. She also has had her songs redone in unique ways by artists like Chris Brown, as well Megan Thee Stallion and SZA.

During the summer of 2016 Howard even trended on Twitter. Not for anything bad, but simply for looking as good as she did 21 years after she started in the music business.

"Keep Lookin'" was not recorded for the purpose of becoming a sports anthem but that's the beauty of new platforms like TikTok. A younger generation of music fans can take a song and give it momentum that nobody ever imagined. They can give artists who were stars in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s a new life, like 1990s hip-hop did for 1970s funk artists.

At many college sports contests you hear like "Pour it Up" and "Run This Town" which features the voice the aforementioned Rihanna during pre-games and timeouts. Now it wouldn't be a stretch to hear Howard's "Keep Lookin.'" TikTok has been a good barometer on if a song works and many viral videos over the past week featuring athletes from different universities and various sports have had the song attached as well. Here are some of the numbers as of Oct. 1, 2022.

LSU's Hannah Carroll - 1.4 million views

Indiana's Jayden Ulrich - 562,700

Thiel College's Maria Torres - 205,000 views

Iowa's Morgan Lietz - 356,100 views

Iowa's Sara Wheaton - 177,600 views