I am not sure if it’s “Go” or “Hey” but where the heck did this saying/chant/thing come from?
I think Martin started it on his tv show. That’s the first place I ever heard it. And it is ‘Go’.
I thought it was a version of the song Jacko wrote for the Simpsons.
“Lisa it’s your birthday, Happy birthday Lisa.”
I’ve heard people sing it to that tune as well.
Either Cisco is correct, or it was popularized where I first heard it – on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air as spoken by Will Smith.
It is actually a copyrighted song. In Chasing Any, Kevin Smith told Ben Affleck to improvise the end of one scene. As a result, he says “Go Holden, it’s your birthday”, pissing Smith off because now he has to pay royalties to the song creators. In the next scene you hear the rest of the song in the background, because they had already paid for it. It’s on the DVD commentary.
Armed with what you said and a trip to IMDb, I found this:
Luke was a rapper on par with 2 Live Crew; blegh.
You can hear a snippet of it on CDNow.com here (it’s track 2).
It’s from the 1994 album Still A Freak For Life
If you like that, you might want to try some of his other albums, like Luke’s Freak Fest 2000 or Luke’s Booty Calls & Chants 
Pash
Damn. here’s the IMDb link.
And Holden McNeil was Ben Affleck’s character, and Banky Edwards (Jason “Figments-of-your-f__king-imagination” Lee) was his friend, who Holden was singing to.
To clarify, Luke (aka Luther Campbell) is the founder and creator of 2 Live Crew.
We discussed this over at Dave Wilton’s etymology site a few months back. Dave was gonna write an article about it.
My 12 year old knows more rap shit than you can shake your booty at. So I asked him, and he replied: “The Ninja turtule movie.” I said, which one? Who? He said Vanilla Ice was in one of them and the people in the crown were chanting "go man, it’s your birthday.
So the answer is, it probably comes from the California rap community in the 1980’s.
samclem, Vanilla Ice appeared in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, performing the song “Ninja Rap.” This was widely considered the point that he lost whatever credibility he may have had. The repetitive hook from that song (which he appeared onstage performing in the film) was, “Go ninja, go ninja, go ninja go…” After this you hear the inevitable “it’s your birthday.” I agree that the phrase likely emerged in urban slang in the 1980s, but why do you specify California? 2 Live Crew (although originally from Cali) didn’t find fame until they moved to Florida; coincidentally, Vanilla Ice is from FL too (though the appearance of the phrase in the TMNT flick was more likely the doing of screenwriters than Vanilla Ice). So perhaps there’s more likely to be an East Coast connection?
Err… no. I don’t like it, I was just wondering where it came from 
peepthis I’ll grant you I have no personal knowledge of the region/state in which may have originated. Heck, it could have arisen simultaneously in many places.
I have read more than one thread on this board concerning questions on hip-hop and rap, questions which were answered by participants who were there in the 1960’s and 70’s. And most of them were in Calif. So I’m just projecting their memories. They could be flawed, of course.
I"d love to know if I’m right or wrong.
I seem to recall this song being in use in suburban Philadelphia in the late 90s and turn of the century. I wouldn’t have thought that Chasing Amy was early enough or popular enough to be the source, but I could be wrong.
I think you misunderstood that post.
It wasn’t that Chasing Amy invented the song and was the copywrite holder, it was just the opposite. The song was from 1994 written by Luther Campbell.
What happened with Chasing Amy is that in one scene one of the actors improvised part of a scene by singing a bit of it. This pissed off the producers because now they had to had to buy the rights use to the song in the movie.
I always hear it - and this goes back to the late 80s or early 90s - as “Go Shorty, it’s your birthday, Go Shorty…”
I have no idea who Shorty is.
ETA: A quick Google tells me that it is from a 50 Cent song (“In da Club”), and it’s actually from 2003 (I swear I’d heard it long before that).
Go Shawty, it’s your birthday
We gon’ party like it’s your birthday
We gon’ sip Bacardi like it’s your birthday…
mmm
Not the correct reference (no birthday), but the Go <name> Go <name>, motif goes a long way back.
For me, the definitive is The Stranglers, Go Buddy Go, from 1977.
Here with the original line-up. (They still tour, I have my ticket for a show in a couple of months. Sadly Jet Black and Dave Greenfield have both passed. Hugh Cornwall left a decade odd ago. They do however sound as fresh as ever.)
That’s exactly how I read the thread title.
Not for real-real, just for play-play
Hip-hop tropes are incredibly hard to pin down. You can ID who first copyrighted a recording, but very often the underlying hooks have been floating around underground for a lot longer.
I’d agree with both of these, I would put it at mid-late 90’s when it first went viral. Can’t put my hands on it right now, but I remember reading an article around that time where the recording artist actually heard his daughter chanting “it’s ya burfday” and decided to record a song based on that hook.
But who knows if the kid actually originated it or heard it from somewhere else. Hip-hop is all about what’s circulating in the community, things get spread, repeated, stolen, reworked, re-stolen to a degree where it can be near impossible to determine the origin of a thing.