Chocolate Rain
Tay Zonday's impossibly deep baritone over a looping piano, delivered stone-faced into a home microphone. The joke was the caption: "I move away from the mic to breathe in." Beneath the meme, the lyrics were a metaphor about racism in America — a fact most people quoting it never noticed.
Tay Zonday uploaded "Chocolate Rain" to YouTube in April 2007: his own production, sparse and hypnotic, his baritone impossibly deep. The most-quoted element wasn't the song itself but an on-screen caption: "*I move away from the mic to breathe in." It spread from 4chan that summer as a joke — and the joke slowly curdled into something like sincere admiration. The lyrics were a metaphor about racism in America, layered beneath the surreal delivery, and listeners gradually realized the song had something to say.
Zonday performed it on Jimmy Kimmel Live in August 2007. That November he fronted "Cherry Chocolate Rain," a glossy commercial remake promoting Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr Pepper — the meme economy cashing itself out in real time. The original won the 2008 YouTube Award for Music and has since passed 142 million views. The meme endured, but so did the song.
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