About

"Mississippi Queen" is a classic rock song by the band Mountain that came out in February 1970. The track features an iconic opening guitar riff and cowbell that is often used in memes. In the early 2020s, the song became a prevalent backing track to post in conjunction with videos and GIFs of things blowing up or animations of guns firing, as it has a similar vibe to "Free Bird." Prior to its rise to memetic use, it was notably featured in an episode of Regular Show and received an updated new music video in 2020.

Origin

On August 27th, 2020, the official YouTube channel for the band Mountain^[1] uploaded a newly made animated music video for the song, with it gaining over 2.7 million views in two years, as well as refreshing it with modern listeners as the music video entered a more current rotation following its initial 1970 release (shown below).

Two years later, on February 13th, 2022, iFunnyer^[2] eggsalad posted a Jackass Couch Explosion meme that used "Mississippi Queen" as the audio with a caption reading, "The .98 cent store when the .97 cent store is invented." Over the course of seven months, the meme received roughly 13,100 smiles (shown below, left). Later on February 13th, iFunnyer^[3] littlepieceoftrash then posted a variant, decreasing the value of the store's minimum prices by one cent. The meme received roughly 1,200 smiles in seven months (shown below, right).

Spread

Starting in November 2022, the song became popularized on TikTok as various TikTokers started using the song as part of Murderous Reactions memes. One of the first prominent examples was posted by TikToker @kevinbradleyb^[4] on November 24th, 2022, in which he used a grenade in response to a girl asking for his number (shown below).

The song continued to be used even after the trend of Murderous Reactions subsided, replaced with just any type of generic action as a meme. An example of this was posted to TikTok on January 16th, 2023, by TikToker _rven,^[5] who used the song as the background for an animation of someone using a credit card to pay for an item at a store, getting over 2 million likes in one month (shown below).

Related Memes

Slow Motion Gun Animations

Slow Motion Gun Animations, also known as "Mississippi Queen" Gun Videos, are a series of exploitable memes revolved around captioning a slow-motion, 3D gun animation shooting a bullet out of its barrel with the 1970 rock song "Mississippi Queen" by Mountain playing in the background. The captions are most often related to a humorous scenario in which the solution is shooting a gun and killing something, contrasted by the overdramatic and righteous nature of the gun graphic and the song. The trend started on iFunny in 2022, spreading throughout the latter part of the year.

License and Registration Please

License and Registration Please is an image and video meme revolving around reactions to a cop doing a traffic stop. The phrase, License and Registration, is part of standard police procedure when stopped by a cop while driving, with the punchline of the meme being various reactions, from standard to outlandish, to being told this command.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References