Bobby Shmurda's Hat

About

Bobby Shmurda's Hat refers to the grey and blue New York Knicks hat worn by American rapper and recording artist Bobby Shmurda in the music video for his song "Hot N*gga." In the video, Shmurda removes the hat and tosses it over his shoulder and out of the frame. The move inspired a series of memes that joke about what happened to the hat.

Origin

On March 1st, 2014, YouTuber Maine Fetti uploaded the music video for the Bobby Shmurda song "Hot N*gga." In the video, Bobby Shmurda tosses his New York Knicks hat over his shoulder and out of the frame as Shmurda dances his signature "Shmoney Dance." Within seven years, the video received more than 41 million views (shown below).

Spread

The hat throw became a viral hit due to its proximity in the video to Shmurda's "Shmoney Dance," which begins just after he tossed the hat. On June 24th, 2014, Vine ^[4] user uberpapi uploaded a clip of Shmurda throwing the hat. The video received more than 7 million loops, 45,000 likes and 41,000 revines before being removed.

Other Vines soon followed. That year, Vine user purpdrank posted a video in which Shmurda throws the hat and another man watches as the hat flies away. The hat then lands next to a man eating food with chopsticks, indicating that it landed in an Asian country (shown below).

Jokes about where Shmurda's hat went soon became a talking point in interviews with the rapper. On July 15th, Complex published an interview entitled "

On August 1st, 2014, Shmurda uploaded the video to his verified YouTube^[3] account, where it amassed more than 690 million views in seven years. Shortly after the video was released, many online began joking about the hat and its whereabouts. For example, Twitter^[1] user @donyetello tweeted, "Bobby Shmurda's hat belongs in a museum when we find it" (shown below, left). Additionally, Twitter^[2] user @WillisTheWolf tweeted, "Did they ever find Bobby Shmurda's hat" (shown below, right).

As the video and "Shmoney Dance" grew in popularity so too did references and jokes about the hat. Many online wondered "Where did Bobby Shmurda's hat go?" To answer this question, they began making memes that imagined the hat's journey. On July 15th, 2015, for example, Redditor posted an image macro in the /r/memes^[6] subreddit of Shmurda throwing his hat with a picture of the dwarf planet Pluto in the background and the caption, "This just in: NASA finds Shmurda's hat on Pluto" (shown below).

The meme continued to spread over the next decade, inspiring numerous jokes about discovering the science behind the throw and the hat's current whereabouts. For example, on December 13th, 2019, YouTuber HeyItsSky posted the video "what really happened to bobby shmurda's hat." The post received more than 223,000 views in less than two years (shown below, left). On September 12th, 2020, iFunny ^[7] user Gr3atLui posted a mathematical breakdown of the throw (shown below, right).

In 2021, as Shmurda's February 23rd prison release date approached, hat memes experienced a recurrence. On February 22nd, 2021, for example, Twitter user @HappyFunBuns posted a video of the hat returning to Shmurda. The post received more than 2.9 million views, 275,000 likes and 100,000 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below).

Bobby Shmurda's hat today: pic.twitter.com/mxDIwd27qT

— Bored (@HappyFunBuns) February 22, 2021

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References