It's Friday Then / Mufasa's Friday Dance
About
It's Friday Then / Mufasa's Friday Dance refers to a viral video of content creator Mufasa dancing to the song "Push The Feeling On (MK Dub Revisited Edit)" by The Nightcrawlers while his hype man cheers him on. The video spawned a dancing trend and was turned into the MufasaPls BTTV emoji.
Origin
On October 11th, 2019, Instagram[1] content creator Mufasa (cousinskeether), posted a video of himself dancing to a remix of the song "Push The Feeling On" by The Nightcrawlers (shown below). In the video, Mufasa's friend Hypeman films him dancing alongside the moving car and provides Mufasa verbal support. The video opens with Hypeman and Mufasa repeating the line, "It’s Friday then, it’s Saturday, Sunday, what?" before Mufasa breaks into a dance. In over a year, the video received more than 270,000 likes and 1.5 million views on Instagram.
The song "Push The Feeling On" was originally released by The Nightcrawlers in 1992 to little fanfare. A 1995 remix called "MK Dub Revisited Edit" by Marc Kinchen became a top ten hit in several European countries.[2] In 2009, the song was sampled in American rapper Pitbull's "Hotel Room Service." The song was reuploaded[3] to YouTube on October 19th, 2019 in wake of the Friday video’s popularity (shown below). In one year, it garnered over 10 million views. On Spotify, the remix has over 61 million plays.[4]
Spread
On October 18th, 2019, Mufasa’s Friday video was posted[5] to the subreddit r/Funny by user nourdin82, where it received over 22,900 upvotes in six months. From October 18th to October 19th, several reuploads of the song were posted[6][7][8][9] to YouTube, amassing over 14 million views in one year collectively. On December 18th, Mufasa uploaded[10] his Friday dance video to his YouTube channel.
The video has been widely referenced and recreated on TikTok. The hashtag #itsfridaythen accumulated[11] over 20,6 million views in one year, while the audio from Mufasa's video has been used in nearly 40,000 videos.[12][13] The exact sound from the video was used in over 8,700 videos as of November 25th, 2020 (examples shown below).[14]
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6838975692277828869
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6819728744622673157
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6848329237263371525
On May 7th, 2020, Forbes magazine posted an interview with Mufasa.[15] On August 7th, American singer Katy Perry recreated[16] Mufasa’s Friday dance on Instagram. On September 11th, a video was uploaded to YouTube[17] in which Formula One driver Lando Norris references Mufasa’s video (re-upload shown below).
Twitch Emote
A portion of Mufasa's dance was made into Twitch emote. On January 4th, 2020, Twitch streamer PokeLawls submitted[18] mufasaPlz emote based on the dance. On April 9th, BTTV user Venadore submitted[19] a transparent MufasaPls emote (shown below). As of December 4th, 2020, over 1,200 Twitch channels enabled the emote. The emote was posted[20] to the subreddit of Twitch streamer xQc on May 7th, 2020, and was added to his channel shortly afterwards. On Twitch, the emote is often used on Fridays.
Various Examples
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6839833409527975173
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6850811455554489605
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6865995392945753349
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6876379963981892866
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6837569853428075781
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6897232182268529925
External References
[1] Instagram – cousinskeether
[2] Wikipedia Push the Feeling On
[4] Spotify – Push The Feeling On
[6] YouTube – J-L L. K Jean-Louis Kayitenkore
[10] YouTube – Cousinskeether
[11] TikTok – #itsfridaythen
[12] TikTok – cohmedyclub
[13] TikTok – lord_torres
[14] TikTok – Push The Feeling On
[15] Forbes – Meet Mufasa And Hypeman: Influencers Born In A Pandemic, Now Working For The Weekend
[16] Oprah Mag – Katy Perry Hilariously Recreates the Viral "Friday Dance" Video Challenge
[17] YouTube – ThatOneFormula