Chocolate Rain

2007

Date: 22 April 2007 · Place: YouTube, recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota · Figures: Adam Nyerere Bahner aka Tay Zonday, performer · Tags: YouTube Music, Earnest Viral, Vocal Texture 01. A Doctoral Student At A Cheap Microphone Adam Nyerere Bahner, a doctoral student in American Studies at the University of Minnesota performing as Tay Zonday, uploads Chocolate Rain to YouTube on 22 April 2007. The song is a sincere protest piece about institutional racism, sung in a startling baritone by a slight twenty-four year old who steps away from the microphone to breathe. Picked up by 4chan's /b/ board in July 2007, it becomes one of the first YouTube videos to cross the threshold from forum joke to mass culture, peaking at the top of the site's most-viewed chart. "I move away from the mic to breathe in." — on-screen annotation, Chocolate Rain, 22 April 2007 02. The Sincerity Engine Chocolate Rain establishes a template: an earnest amateur performance becomes viral less for mockery than for the uncategorizable affect it produces. Bahner appears on Jimmy Kimmel, records with Dr. Pepper, and continues making music for two decades, never disowning the original. It is among the first internet artifacts to make critics ask whether the audience is laughing with or at the work, a question the subsequent decade refuses to settle. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Chocolate Rain' • Tay Zonday, original YouTube upload (youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA) • The Guardian, 'Tay Zonday on Chocolate Rain' (24 August 2007)