I Understood The Assignment

For a phrasal template of a similar name, visit They Always Understand the Assignment

About

I Understood The Assignment is a song by musical artist Tay Money, released on streaming platforms in September 2021. The song has seen a large amount of success on TikTok, where it is used by people trying to show off individual skills or assets.

Origin

Despite having the song audio appear on streaming sites such as YouTube and Apple Music in September, a TikTok of the song's hook was posted by Tay Money^[1] herself on August 16th, 2021, which drummed up hype for the song itself, having multiple commenters asking when the full song will eventually drop (shown below). The audio^[2] from her video has been made into over 640,000 videos in four months.

The audio clip was quickly picked up by other TikTok users who tried to find the best way to utilize it. The strongest contender was the user MattiaKrappa^[3], who uploaded a TikTok on August 26th, 2021, with her opening up a Harry Styles theme'd cafe after his tour dates were cancelled, and earned 630,000 likes in four months (shown below).

Spread

On September 3rd, 2021, the TikTok^[4] account Chatyah.Burroughs posted a TikTok using the audio to show her weight loss journey, earning 5 million views in one month (shown below) and establishing itself as the dominant use of the meme.

Six days later, on September 9th, 2021, Tay Money uploaded the full song onto streaming platforms and lyric websites, with the official audio version of the song gaining 244,000 views in one month^[5]. On October 8th, 2021, Tay Money posted the official music video for the song, which helped renew interest in it online. The upload on YouTube^[6] received over 800,000 views in 13 days (shown below).

Various Examples