About

Worried Jay-Z refers to a GIF of rapper Jay-Z bopping his head along to music with an anxious expression on his face. The GIF has been used as a Reaction Image for situations in which one is both enjoying something and worried at the same time.

Origin

The GIF comes from a televised Coldplay concert for the BBC which Jay-Z attended. During the Coldplay song "Lovers in Japan," the camera cut to Jay-Z in the crowd, and the footage captured became the GIF (shown below). A GIF of the moment was posted that day to Soompi^[1] by user goodvibrations.

Spread

The GIF was largely used on forums and small blogs for the following few years, until it appeared in a Buzzfeed^[2] post on March 11th, 2014 (shown below, left). It found its widest spread two years later when Twitter user @brokeymcpoverty^[3] used it as a reaction image imagining Jay-Z's reaction to Beyonce's Lemonade, an album rumored to be Beyonce's angry album directed at Jay-Z for cheating on her. The tweet gained over 13,000 retweets and 15,000 likes (shown below, right).

After @brokeymcpoverty's tweet, the GIF found much more use as a reaction image on Twitter to describe situations in which one is both enjoying something and worried about something else. For example, on October 19th, 2016, Twitter user @ReinaDeAfrica_^[4] posted it with the caption "When you know this unusually warm weather in October is due to global warming and climate change but you still kinda enjoying it," gaining over 32,000 retweets. On July 4th, 2017, Twitter user @MatthewACherry^[5] posted the GIF with a caption about listening to Jay-Z's new album while worrying about North Korea that gained over 2,400 retweets (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References