🎶 I KNOW WHEN THAT HOTLINE BLING! 🎶
Reverse-engineer a meme of your choice. Why & how did it go viral?
Have you guys heard of HOTLINE BLING? Maybe you don’t even know what it is but have heard the term “you used to call me on my cell phone”? This is a famous line from the song by the one and only Drake. A song about a girl who used to call him late at night to get it on (we’ve never heard a song about that before). The Song became so huge due to the meme engineering of the original Video. The majority of 2015 was Drake’s hotline Bling memes that flooded the internet like crazy. I remember when it first started, my newsfeed would show anyone and everyone replicating his video. Although there wasn’t much to it, for some reason it was funny.
The craze took over and everyone from the biggest celebrities, politicians and possibly your grandparents were all taking part of the fun that became one of the biggest crazes. I know my grandmother was even talking about it (she probably had no idea who Drake was or what the song was about) she would sing the song all the time.
The Rapper/singer Drake had just released a surprise mixtape (If Your Reading this, Its too Late). Following the mixtape Drake had released a song (I’m sure many of you know it) Hotline Bling. Next came the music video, and thats where things got interesting. Many of you probably remember how ridiculously crazy it was. The video was Drake dancing, the whole time in a room. I don’t know why, But the simplicity of the whole thing is so appealing to me.
The idea that a Drake could do whatever he wanted (in this case dance) could turn into something so big makes you wonder if he had planned for this? Does he have a team of people to come up with these ideas? What made this so unique was that nobody had ever seen a global rapper dance before, so the possibilities of what Drake could do next were endless, not only could Drake rap, sing, and act but he can dance too, anyway this caught everyone’s attention. The simplicity of the whole video created a swarm of people making jokes and memes to poke fun at the rapper which only fuelled him further.
Drake enjoyed the all memes being created and even took part in them, coming up with memes to poke fun at himself. I mean if you can’t poke fun at yourself then life is too serious. This was smart publicity move in the way that the simplicity of the video along with his “superior” dance moves created so much talk concerning the video and the song. For all I know I can’t figure out who originated the memes, it could have very well been him. If it was, I give a HUGE pat on the back, well done Drake.
The memes that were created daily, used the dancing to showcase other possibilities of activities he could be doing in place of the dancing such as: throwing pepperoni on pizza, Skiing, playing tennis, getting into a fight with his nemesis (Meek Mill). That year one of the biggest Halloween costumes was Drake. The popularity of the memes helped move the song to climb the charts and become a hit. Nothing was the same after that song came out for Drake. Pretty much anything he released became a number one hit. The memes made him well known, almost a household name. Adults who were unfamiliar with the rapper knew who he was because of the song in collaboration with the memes. If you hear the tune, you may associate it with your FB or Instagram feed being flooded with these memes. They were HOT and it was the thing at the time to create one or know about the Trending one that day. I remember people asking “hey have you seen this Hotline Bling meme?” Such a simple concept, yet with the use of a celebrity as the poke of the joke and a catchy song, it all just worked cohesively.
It’s hilarious that other rappers attempt to copy this video concept, AKA Big Sean… Ummm NO! Seriously? Did you just make that video! It is identical to Hotline Bling, we are over it! Drake did it, we all talked about it, there were 5 million memes and now it’s over! Who knew that releasing a Surprise mixtape could be thew start of a legendary career in anything you do. Let’s face it Drake hit this one on the mark, he got all the areas, especially hitting the internet at large.
