No Church In The Wild / Human Beings in a Mob

About

No Church in the Wild is a song and music video by artists Kanye West and Jay-Z. Online, the first few lines of the song (sung by Frank Ocean) "human beings in a mob, what's a mob to a king, what's a king to a God, what's a God to a nonbeliever, who don't believe in anything" have been used both unironically and ironically on various fandom photosets, with a notable rise in popularity in September 2022 on TikTok.

Origin

In 2011, Kanye West and Jay-Z collaborated on the song "No Church In The Wild" for their album Watch The Throne.The song featured Frank Ocean and The-Dream and was released as the last single from the album on March 12, 2012. It features themes of decadence and religion.

Shortly after the track was dropped, photosets taking images from the music video were posted on tumblr ^[1]. The lyrics would then be taken and posted atop images from other media, including television, film, and literature.

Spread

In September 2022, the song went viral on TikTok^[3] with posts using the carousel photo montages feature of the app and edited videos of movies/tv shows, which flows automatically in sync with the beat of the song, like this edit of the movie Get Out by Jordan Peele, posted by @fendibaee on TikTok^[5] on September 17th, 2022. It recieved over 942,000 views in only twelve days.

This TikTok^[4] by @remussendcigs, uploaded on September 15th, 2022, shows a POV of her watching these types of edits. It received over 3.4 million views in about two weeks.

Notable Examples

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7144059125410974981

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7145558418986765611

Search Interest

External References