JELEEL!

About

JELEEL!, also known as Jeleel, is a rapper and hip-hop musician well-known on TikTok. He went viral in 2021 for his song "DIVE IN!" which became a viral sound on TikTok in 2022. This was because of a Genius 'Verified' interview, wherein, he screamed the lyrics to his song with no music. He also declared he wanted the song to "feel like crack." He's known for ripping his shirt and doing backflips among other stunts with high energy. He started making music in 2018 on Soundcloud and YouTube.

Background

Jeleel started posting music to Soundcloud first, uploading his first song, "Glo Up," to the platform in 2018.^[1] On February 2nd, 2018, he posted his first music video to YouTube titled, "Charged Up," earning roughly 5,700 views over the course of four years (shown below, left). On March 12th, 2018, he uploaded the music video for, "MOB OUT," earning roughly 22,800 views in four years (shown below, right).

On December 19th, 2019, he uploaded the music video for, "Wanting Me" to YouTube.^[2] He'd later state in an interview with EARMILK^[3] on January 29th, 2020, that he was homeless in Los Angeles when he wrote the song in 2018.

On November 22nd, 2021, Jeleel started posting content to TikTok. His first TikTok^[4] was titled, "STRONGEST RAPPER EVER" and showed him doing a back-flip at a concert. Over the course of five months, the video received roughly 636,000 plays and 49,200 likes (shown below, left). Going into the remainder of 2021, Jeleel embedded a trope in his content of ripping his shirts and doing backflips. For instance, his first video^[5] to receive over 1 million plays was posted on November 24th, 2021 and it received roughly 2.7 million plays and 221,100 likes in five months (shown below, right).

He continued to gain followers and plays going into early 2022 based on his physique, athleticism and high energy. For instance on December 2nd, 2021, he posted a TikTok^[6] that responded to a comment reading, "bro 95% arm." The video earned roughly 9.5 million plays in four months.

"DIVE IN!" / Genius "Verified" Interview

On May 21st, 2021, Jeleel uploaded the music video for his song "DIVE IN!" to YouTube. Over the course of 11 months, the video received roughly 8.3 million views and 284,000 likes (shown below, left). The song started to be used as a TikTok sound by many creators, whereby in April 2022, the sound had amassed roughly 141,900 videos.^[7] On April 15th, 2022, the music journalism website Genius posted a "Verified" video on YouTube based on "DIVE IN!" Over the course of 12 days, the video received roughly 621,000 views (shown below, right).

On April 18th, 2022, Genius posted a snippet from the video to TikTok,^[8] earning roughly 16.8 million plays and 2.2 million likes in 10 days (shown below, left). Due to his flamboyant and aggressive delivery juxtaposed against the blank background, many TikTokers found the video funny and made subsequent memes with it. For instance, on April 27th, 2022, TikToker^[9] littleglass4 posted a meme that earned roughly 139,000 plays and 19,500 likes in one day (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References