About

Die Very Rough is a song by American rapper Mario Judah in which he sings about chasing an African-American man on the run. In October 2020, the song and the music video in which Mario Judah is held down by chains became viral online, with users making memes based on the the video.

Origin

On September 24th, 2020, rapper Mario Judah released his single "Die Very Rough" in which he sings about chasing a man who is on the run with the intention of killing him. The song accumulated over 1.5 million streams on Spotify^[1] in three weeks, while a music video (shown below) for the song received over 1.9 million views on YouTube^[2] in the same period.

I'm a big dog, big bear, nigga, I'm a lion
I'm the predator of the prey that is hiding
Oh my, oh my, I have found you, nigga
Don't you run from me, lil' nigga.

Spread

On October 3rd, 2020, Twitter^[3] user @010I0C posted a 26-second clip from the video, with the clip accumulating over 4.5 million views, 6,200 retweets and 45,100 likes in one week (tweet shown below).

LMAOOO THIS NIGGA WENT CRAZY pic.twitter.com/AGAITLDFfA

— pЯblm (@010I0C) October 3, 2020

Starting on October 5th, the video became the subjects of jokes on Twitter. On that day, Twitter^[4] user @Druski2Funny shared the clip, writing "We ALL know who he hungout with in Highschool." The post received over 9,200 retweets and 72,700 likes in one week. On the same day, Twitter^[5] user @newschxppa posted the clip, writing "Her: “I’m not racist I have a black friend / Her black friend:" On October 6th, Twitter^[6] user @riphammyy made a similar joke, with the tweet (shown below) gaining over 900 retweets and 9,800 likes in one week.

“I’m not racist my friends black”
The black friend: pic.twitter.com/fAWLHHknjv

— Hammy🍦 (@riphammyy) October 6, 2020

Starting on October 6th, 2020, the song gained popularity in memes on TikTok. For example, memes posted by TikTok users leftbuttcheecks,^[7] youngshaunthesusgod^[8] and thickylittlethe3rd^[9] on that day received over 6.3 million views, 2.6 million views and 2.2 million views in one week, respectively (YouTube compilation shown below).

The music video remained a popular subject of memes in the following week, with viral posts appearing on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, with many examples making references to subjects of Uncle Tomism and slave catching. On October 10th, TikTok^[10] removed the most popular upload of the song from the site.

Various Examples

pic.twitter.com/8iekqALDK0

— ｈｏｔ ｇａｍｅｒ ｓｅｘ (@HotGamerSex) October 11, 2020

the way he disappeared on the n word parts pic.twitter.com/2nhPVS7qg8

— aaryah nazhoni🖤 (@DEADGCRL) October 10, 2020

pic.twitter.com/rFeQPogtUw

— twomad (@twomad) October 10, 2020

Search Interest

External References