About

Blood On The Leaves is the unofficial title of an unreleased 2021 drill rap song by yvngxchris that became significantly popular on TikTok after being previewed on the rapper's social media pages. The song inspired the "Posing as X" trend on the app in July 2021, in which TikTokers comedically pose as various people in their lives over the track. "Blood On The Leaves" was criticized for its use of "Strange Fruit" that same month, resulting in an apology from the rapper.

Origin

On June 29th, 2021, yvngxchris posted a video (shown below) to his TikTok^[1] and Instagram^[2] pages previewing an unreleased song he's working on using a sample of Nina Simone's 1965 song "Strange Fruit," (originally by Billie Holiday) also used in Kanye West's song "Blood on the Leaves." The video gained over 500,000 views on TikTok and 1,500 likes on Instagram in a month. The original sound is titled "yvngxchris unrealeased drill song – yvngxchris."

Spread

On July 7th, 2021, YouTuber^[4] legezaf posted an unofficial "full" version of the song, garnering over a million views in a month (shown below).

Criticism and Apology

On July 17th, 2021, yvngxchris posted a two-part series of videos to TikTok^[5][6] (shown below) responding to a now-deleted TikTok finding issue with yvngxchris using the Nina Simone sample, as the original song "Strange Fruit" is about "Black people being lynched," as stated via on-screen text on her video. In his videos, Chris apologizes for using the beat and "disrespecting" the original artists and claims he didn't know what the song was about, he just liked the sample.

The apology was well-received by many, while others defended Chris, stating that Kanye used the sample first and didn't receive any criticism (example of each shown below).

"Posing as X" TikTok Trend

Over the course of July, the original sound for yvnxchris' unreleased song grew significantly popular on TikTok, being used in over 208,000 videos by August 4th, 2021. Most notably, the sound inspired the "Posing as X" trend in which TikTokers pose as people, characters or objects in a variety of ways and show their resemblance to them. For example, on July 15th, TikToker^[3] @j.thiccy posed as a number of women from her past who used to call her ugly, exposing each by showing the photo she's posing to after (shown below). The video gained over 5.9 million views in three weeks.

The two most popular videos using the sound follow this trend, and were uploaded by TikTokers^[7][8] @nancythotwin76 and @hannahhelsesser on July 20th and 22nd respectively, gaining over 12 million and 8.8 million views in roughly two weeks (shown below, left and right).

Continued Spread

On August 3rd, 2021, PopBuzz^[9] reported on the song, its controversy and the meaning of "Strange Fruit."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References