Louis Theroux is a documentarian and in the year 2000, as part of his ‘Weird Weekend’ series, he did an episode on rap.
In this episode Louis spits a few lyrics of his own invention.
You can watch a clip from the show that was uploaded to YouTube in 2008 below:
Then Louis goes on a YouTube chat show in February 2022 and the interviewer asks Louis if he remembers any of the rap he wrote and without skipping a beat Louis reels off ten or so of the lines he wrote 22 years ago.
Then someone takes Louis’ rapping, adds some auto tuning to his voice and a backing track and the audio goes viral.
It goes so viral that it spills out of TikTok, infiltrates other social media platforms and even makes it to older forms of media which is epitomised by Shakira dancing to the audio on Jimmy Fallon’s TV chat show (link below).
And so the question that interests me is when was the content worthy of becoming viral?
The lyrics didn’t go viral in 2000 when the episode aired, nor in 2008 when the clip was uploaded to the internet.
It appears the auto tuning and backing track was the missing ingredients for the lyrics to become an internet sensation.
So for the creatives in the audience maybe your content is engaging it’s just missing an ingredient or two.
Thomas Duggan 