About

DJ Toenail and xQc Making Beats refer to a series of videos of Kick and Twitch streamer xQc producing rap and hip-hop beats with the music software FL Studio under the pseudonym DJ Toenail. xQc began streaming his FL Studio sessions in mid-2022, which is when the "DJ Toenail" nickname was coined. The clips went viral on YouTube and Twitch at the time, with many internet users perceiving them as bad. Videos and memes about DJ Toenail went viral on TikTok in April and May 2025. Many added their own satirical hip-hop beats to the videos, treating the clip like an exploitable meme template. Others created JuggTok videos and edits that ironically praised DJ Toenail's abilities. One popular edit used clips of the character Darwin from The Amazing World of Gumball.

Origin

On July 7th, 2022, Twitch streamer xQc livestreamed his first FL Studio session. He shared the full stream to YouTube^[1] on the day, titled, "I Created The Greatest Beat Of All Time." It received over 402,200 views in three years. At the stream's 2:15:29 timestamp (shown below), a Twitch user named Grexedor wrote, "DJ Toenail," in the chat with the CatJAM emote. xQc's teacher repeated the DJ name after seeing it.

Spread

xQc and his fan base quickly adopted the DJ Toenail nickname over the following days. For instance, on July 11th, 2022, the YouTube^[2] channel xQc Gaming shared a clip from a new FL Studio stream, titling it, "DJ Toenail Makes Sick Beats in FL Studio." The video received over 37,100 views in three years (shown below).

On July 9th, Redditor MKNZmusic shared a post to the /r/xqcow^[6] subreddit, which was a video of them "flipping DJ Toenail's first melody." Over three years, the post received over 2,900 upvotes (shown below).

In April 2025, xQc brought back DJ Toenail streams. The clips went viral on TikTok, like one shared by TikToker^[3] @slushfunder on April 13th, which received over 138,700 likes in a month (shown below).

On April 17th, TikToker^[4] @qaydum posted an edit of the character Darwin from The Amazing World of Gumball using the abovementioned DJ Toenail beat. The edit received over 127,000 likes in 18 days (shown below).

On May 2nd, 2025, TikToker^[5] @asayake._ posted a similar DJ Toenail meme, showing characters from Regular Show enjoying a DJ Toenail beat in a car. Over three days, the video received roughly 175,900 likes (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References