About

Roman Holiday is the opening track from American rapper Nicki Minaj 's second album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded which was released in 2012 but experienced renewed popularity in 2019 due to memes.

Origin

On February 12, 2012, two months prior to the album's official release, Nicki Minaj performed "Roman Holiday at the 54th Grammy Awards ceremony before its release, which received generally unfavorable reviews from critics, despite Minaj's confidence in her performance (shown below).^[1]

Spread

On April 12th, 2012, _Spin_'s^[2] review of "Roman Holiday" was more positive and compared the song to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Talk surround the song quieted down until spring 2019 when the song began appearing in memes due to its intense theatrical qualities. For example, on March 23rd, YouTuber Wheelie bin uploaded a video of Moto Moto running to the song (shown below, left). The video gained over 34,800 views and 1,400 likes in two months.

On September 8th, 2018, YouTuber velvetdreaming posted a video of an Instagram live video of Lati K dancing to the song as the video stutters, making her look as though she's moving faster than usual. The post received more than 3,000 views in less than one year (shown below, right).

Following the post, other users began posting videos in which song is sped up with the video. On May 8th, Twitter user @adamjmoussa uploaded a video of Detective Pikachu dancing to a fast version of "Roman Holiday" (shown below). The video gained over 800 likes and 200 retweets in a week.

here's 41 seconds of Detective Pikachu dancing to Roman Holiday at hyperspeed pic.twitter.com/pmNEv6FdbX

— Adam Moussa (@adamjmoussa) May 8, 2019

The song began popular to use in frantic videos that show some urgency or disaster. On May 10th, Twitter user @russianwhore3 uploaded a video of "James Charles losing subscribers to the sound of Roman Holiday" (shown below). The video gained over 13,900 likes and 3,400 retweets in five days.

james charles losing subscribers to the sound of Roman Holiday by Nicki Minaj😌✨ pic.twitter.com/JDZTeL8Dxs

— puta russa três (@russianwhore3) May 10, 2019

On May 12th, Twitter users like @PopAlarms announced that "Roman Holiday" is trending on Apple music. Twitter user @IfnoPerry, responded to the news with a video of a parade running to the song saying, "Roman Holiday Meme Make The Queen Nicki Popular Again" (shown below).

Roman Holiday Meme Make The Queen Nicki Popular Again pic.twitter.com/YhawYaYNvb

— •| Ifno|• (@IfnoPerry) May 12, 2019

On May 13th, YouTuber Douglas Lisboa uploaded a Game of Thrones video that gained a lot of traction on Twitter. The YouTube video gained 4,300 views in two days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References