About

Froggy Fresh (formerly known as Krispy Kreme) is the pseudonym of Tyler Cassidy, an amateur rapper known for his hyperbolic lyrics and absurd YouTube videos. He gained much of his notoriety after releasing his first video "The Baddest" in April of 2012.

Online History

Krispy Kreme uploaded a video to YouTube^[1] titled "The Baddest" on April 20th, 2012, which featured Kreme rapping with a runny nose accompanied by his gun-toting sidekick Money Maker Mike. The song's lyrics depict Kreme as being absurdly rich, physically intimidating and popular with women. Within a month, the video accumulated over 2.3 million views.

On April 27th, 2012, Redditor pants20 submitted "The Baddest" in a post titled "This kid is a lyrical genius" to the /r/videos^[2] subreddit, which received over 1,000 up votes within one month. The same day, the video was featured on the tech news blog Geekosystem^[5] and the Internet humor site College Humor.^[3] On April 29th, the Internet humor blog Smosh^[4] published the video in a post titled "Krispy Kreme: The Baddest Rapper EVER!" On May 1st, The Huffington Post^[6] published an article titled "Rapper Krispy Kreme's 'The Baddest' Isn't (Just) Funny", which brought attention to the use of firearms in the video. On May 8th, the YouTube celebrity Ray William Johnson uploaded a video titled "MEOW DIED", in which he reviewed "The Baddest" music video (shown at 2:05 below).

On May 14th, Kreme released another music video titled "Krispy Kreme and Money Maker Mike – Haters Wanna Be Me", in which Kreme raps about how everyone is jealous of his great success and masculinity. Within one week, the video received over over 300,000 views. As of December 4th, 2012, the official Krispy Kreme Facebook^[8] page has received over 215,000 likes and Kreme's YouTube channel has received over 37.9 million views and 214,000 subscribers.

Copyright Infringement Claim

On May 17th, 2012, Kreme’s manager Brett Caldwell posted a message on the official Krispy Kreme Facebook^[8] page to explain why Kreme’s music videos had been removed from the page earlier that day. He revealed that the music production company Diamond Style Productions claimed copyright infringement for the instrumental track used in “The Baddest," although he promised to continue giving away the song for free. On May 18th, 2012, the two music videos were re-uploaded to Kreme’s YouTube channel and Caldwell explained that the copyright issues would be resolved soon.

Identity

On July 2nd, 2012, the blog Chola Adventures^[13] published a post titled "Krispy Kreme a.k.a Tyler Cassidy's Identity Revealed," which provided evidence that Krispy Kreme was actually Tyler Cassidy of Flint, Michigan. The post linked to a newsletter from The Flint Journal^[9] listing Cassidy as a member of Bendle High School's class of 2008, where he graduated first of his class with a 3.95 grade point average (shown below).

On July 9th, the Internet culture blog Slacktory^[10] published a post titled "The Hunt to Expose 'Krispy Kreme' as Rapper Tyler Cassidy," which speculated that Cassidy invented the Krispy Kreme persona to build a large following before launching his legitimate rap career, citing a more eloquent earlier rap recording by Cassidy (shown below).

Rap Name Change

On December 3rd, 2012, Krispy Kreme uploaded a video to his YouTube channel titled "gotta get a new rap name" (shown below), in which he announced that the Krispy Kreme donut company informed his father that he needed to change his name. He asked viewers to assist him in choosing a new name, listing "froggy fresh," "candy cane," "jelly bean," "jelly bean jack," "lil kuntry" and "white chocolate" as possible alternatives.

On the following day, the Internet news blog The Daily Dot^[11] published an article titled "Donut company forces rapper Krispy Kreme to find a new name," reporting that a Facebook^[12] support group titled "Save Krispy Kreme" had been created, which accumulated over 40 likes within 19 hours.

On December 18, 2012, a video was uploaded to his channel announcing that his name will be officially changed to Froggy Fresh. As a response to his fans reaction to this name change, he guarantees that his new name will not affect his music and even suggests that he might as well change names for every album he'll make in the future.

His username, which used to be KrispyKreme is now changed to FroggyFreshRap. It is still the same account so his Krispy Kreme music videos are still available for viewing. However the audio containing his old name has been replaced with his new one.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References