Plug Walk

About

Plug Walk is a song by rapper Rich The Kid released in February 2018. The song, which has a music video that references Breaking Bad, became popularized in memes over the following years in videos and edits where characters strut in a specific low and slow way to the beat of the song, colloquially becoming known as the slang term "plug walk."

Origin

On January 17th, 2018, rapper Rich the Kid released a snippet of "Plug Walk" on Twitter^[1] (now deleted). The song was previewed on The Zane Lowe Show on February 8th and officially released that day, including on YouTube,^[2] garnering over 74 million views in four years. On March 5th, Rich the Kid published the music video for the song on YouTube,^[3] featuring numerous references to Breaking Bad, garnering over 318 million views in four years (shown below).

According to Urban Dictionary's^[4] top-voted definition, a plug walk is, "When the plug walks outside or to a specific location to sell drugs." "Plug" is a slang term for a drug dealer.

Spread

"Plug Walk" became the subject of memes shortly after its official release, mostly in videos and memes showing people strutting. The earliest known meme using the song on YouTube was posted on April 3rd, 2018 by KING NUT600 and shows Spongebob walking to the song. One of the earliest popular memes to use the song is a video edit using Chowder footage posted by Instagram^[5] user memedealer.dan on May 28th, 2018, garnering over 246,000 views in four years (shown below).

Similar memes using the song became notably popular on Instagram at the time. On June 7th and 23rd, YouTubers Dejon Brooks – Yaboidj and Marcalo posted compilation videos to YouTube of memes using the song, garnering over 165,000 and 237,000 views respectively in four years (shown below, left and right).

On July 1st, YouTuber sc6ut posted a video editing footage of Urkel from Family Matters strutting to the song, garnering over 16 million views in four years (shown below).

Lego Plug Walk

On August 1st, 2021, TikToker^[6] @lego_plug_walks posted his first video. The video shows Lego Luke Skywalker from Lego Star Wars plug walking to the song by walking forward as slowly as possible while it plays, garnering over 1.9 million views in a year (shown below, left). On August 3rd he posted a similar video on TikTok^[7] with a stormtrooper, garnering over 4 million views in the same rough span of time (shown below, right). The account continued to post videos plug walking with various characters consistently over the next year, gaining roughly 218,000 followers in that time.

The account inspired several copycats in, some doing the trend with other Lego games, including TikToker @lego.batman.solos, who began posting in August 2021, @iloveredlegos, who began posting that same month and @diimer, who posted his first video following the trend on July 28th, 2022. @diimer became notably popular on TikTok^[8][9] in August and September 2022, with several videos gaining millions of views (examples shown below, left and right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References