With energetic choreography and a slick quick step, Rapper Lil Kim and her ballroom partner Derek Hough, stepped into the lead on “Dancing With the Stars” on Monday night.
Derek channeled Elvis’ “Jailhouse Rock” for the duos routine and the number, which netted them 28 points from the judges, had Carrie Ann Inaba screaming for joy.
“Wooooahhh!” Carrie Ann hollered. “That was amazing. I don’t know how you do it. You bring such pizzazz!”
And Lil Kim wasn’t the only celebrity to help shuffle up the leaderboard, which had been ruled by Gilles Marini.
Ex-“Bachelor” star Melissa Rycroft also made bold moves in her rumba alongside pro Tony Dovolani that took them to second place for the night.
“It was clean, it was precise,” British judge Len Goodman raved. “Very interesting choreography, which I like very much.”
Gilles and his partner, Cheryl Burke, dropped to third with their jive, which was too busy for Len’s taste.
“You showed a lot of the qualities that you want to see in the jive,” Len said. “[But] I found the whole thing a little bit frenetic. It was frenetic all the time. It had a wildness about it.”
The two scored just 26 out of 30, the same amount of points netted by their usual dance floor rivals – Olympian Shawn Johnson and her partner, Mark Ballas.
Shawn and Mark put on a sexy, but “age appropriate” rumba, which Bruno Tonioli said needed a little work.
“That was so beautifully pure, it was almost angelic, the innocent side of romance unfolding in front of me… You have to push a little bit more on the hip action and you will make it even better,” Bruno noted.
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