Pop Culture dictionary
Black Beatles
What does Black Beatles mean?
As a 2016 hit song by hip-hop duo Rae Sremmurd, featuring rapper Gucci Mane and popularized by the viral video trend, the mannequin challenge, was a crowd-pleaser for sure.
Related words:
- mannequin challenge
- Running Man challenge
- The Beatles
Where does Black Beatles come from?
Black Beatles聽was released in September, 2016 by the duo Rae Sremmurd, made up of brothers Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi. Rapper Gucci Mane takes a verse on it, too.
In the song, they portray themselves as black counterparts to rock icons The Beatles and reference聽John Lennon’s signature round eyeglasses.
Black Beatles聽was fairly popular right away, but rose to greater heights on the back of a massively viral video craze, the mannequin challenge, in which a camera tracks around people frozen in various poses like mannequins. Early mannequin challenge videos鈥攃redited to Florida high-school students in October, 2016鈥攆eatured no music. But, Rae Sremmund’s record label hatched a plan to capitalize on the trend. In November, the duo recorded their own mannequin challenge video on stage, prompting future mannequin challenge videos to use聽Black Beatles聽as their soundtrack.
In November, 2016, an original White Beatle, Paul McCartney, posted his own mannequin challenge video on Twitter.聽Swae Lee called McCartney’s acknowledgement “the ultimate co-sign.”
Love those Black Beatles
鈥� Paul McCartney (@PaulMcCartney)
That month,聽Black Beatles聽jumped from #9 (an appropriately Beatles-y spot) on the Billboard charts to #1, where it mostly remained into January, 2017.聽Its success was widely attributed to the viral mannequin challenge.聽Pitchfork, Billboard,聽补苍诲听Rolling Stone all named聽Black Beatles聽one of the top songs of 2016.
Examples of Black Beatles
Who uses Black Beatles?
Thanks to聽the video craze, Black Beatles is mainly associated with mannequins.
Black Beatles isn’t just a good song to stand perfectly still to, but also the kind of song people like to crank up, sing along to, and dance to.
Many memes reference signing along to the chorus, which opens with the line “That girl is a real crowd pleaser.”
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of Black Beatles like most terms we define on 亚洲网紅露点, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of Black Beatles that will help our users expand their word mastery.