GQ: How’d you get the nickname Toosie?

Toosie: That’s a childhood nickname. I got it from my best friend’s dad. He thought I was African, and there’s a tribe in Africa called the Watusi tribe, so every time he saw me, he’d call me “Watusi.” He was trying to be funny, and then my best friend started calling me that in school. The “Wa” dropped off, and Toosie stuck.

Did you grow up dancing?

I’ve been dancing all my life. I’ve always been in love with it. My first style of dance was breakdancing. I loved the b-boy style during the era when movies like You Got Served came out. I was copying what they were doing. But I had hoop dreams; I wanted to go to the NBA. You know how that goes. This kind of just fell into my lap. I took advantage of the opportunity.

Let’s talk about that first opportunity. When was your first viral video?

What’s crazy is you can go to my Instagram and see the receipts from 2014. When the Nae Nae dance came out, we made Nae Nae dance videos outside of our school. This is like when Instagram just started doing 15-second videos. I didn’t even have an Instagram, my friend made me get one and post a video of me dancing. I uploaded one and the first day I was on there, I got 2,000 followers. Back then, that was a lot. We were just having fun at school with my friends, doing the dance that was out, and it started blowing up. I kept uploading, and I kept blowing up to the point where people wanted to book us for shows to dance, and they wanted to book us for parties.

Then Dwight Howard really opened my eyes to what was possible. He literally redid my whole video in the warm up introductions before a game. I was like, Whoa, Dwight Howard knows who I am. He’s doing my moves. That gave me motivation. And then we linked up with Odell Beckham, who shows so much love. He’s in love with dancing just as much as us. He’s a big part of my success too. He opened up a lot of doors, introducing me to people and letting people know who I am.

When did you hang out with Odell for the first time?

He flew us out to New York during his rookie season. It was right after The Catch. We stayed at his crib for like two weeks. We was having so much fun, he didn’t even want us to leave. We made so many videos. We really clicked. He’s like a brother to me to this day.

Was your big break going on tour with Future?

Yeah, I was on the Summer Sixteen Tour with Drake and Future, and that’s when I met Drake. I was seeing him every day. Right before we’d go on stage, he’d dap us up and say what’s up.

That experience was life-changing. I was so young, like 18 or 19, traveling the world. I had to grow up really fast and adjust to the whole industry, moving city to city, being around all these celebrities, performing in front of so many people. That really prepared me for all of the stuff that’s come now. It put me in a professional mindset and made this into a career.

And you helped teach Future how to really dance, right?

Yeah, we gave him the sauce. He was like, “I just got to be moving, I need the sauce like y’all. Don’t teach me how to dance dance, just how to groove and be on beat and look good on stage.” He’s a big brother to me too. We’ve been with him since that tour. He took us under his wing.