Street Dealer to Drug Lord

About

Street Dealer to Drug Lord refers to a series of jokes on Twitter that grew popular in October of 2018 in which people place two photos, usually of the same person, side by side, with the left half showing their humble beginnings (street dealer) to their successful latter day career (drug lord).

Origin

The phrase first appeared on July 16th, 2015 in a tweet by user @aubreysaide using two images of Drake (shown below).

Spread

On September 14th, 2018, Twitter user @asap6ix responded to a tweet they posted with the same picture with the phrase (shown below, left). On October 4th, Twitter user @holdmyliquore took a screenshot of the tweet and posted it assuming that @asap6ix had mistakenly quoted his own tweet. This gained over 80 retweets and 230 likes (shown below, right).

This led to parodies of @asap6ix's tweet, as people began posting side-by-side photos of Drake with the caption. For example, @holdmyliquore and @big_business_ both tweeted parodies with the caption that gained over 50 and 100 retweets, respectively (shown below).

The success of those tweets inspired jokes featuring other characters. For example, user @catfishgabe posted a side-by-side comparison of NFL running back Marshawn Lynch with his high school photo, gaining over 90 retweets and 150 likes (shown below, left). User @CrownRoyal22 tweeted side-by-side pictures of Ronald Reagan, gaining over 400 retweets and 670 likes (shown below, right). The jokes were covered by Complex.^[1]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References