Not really sure. I feel like he was a meme in 2015 for sure though. His antics + wayne stannery + "mumble rap"

i like ur avi

Agreed he’s definitely transitioning out of music. But he still had a few hits as a “serious act” but started off as a meme.

I mean didn’t b****** come out before Yonkers? Clearly the song that pushed him to the mainstream but he def was making music prior to that

Tank u they r cute

It was a marketing gimmick that worked, and no one ever took him that seriously after Cham wrecked his career. I’d argue there’s pretty close similarities between marketing gimmicks and memes

Nobody said Soulja boy?

/thread

Ya they had a show on Adult Swim. That was pretty close to internet/meme culture

?

soulja boy still a meme lol

The number thing was a marketing gimmick, but he still had two other songs that were big & an album.

And i disagree. You can call anything in marketing a gimmick then. Memes is where the person isnt taken seriously or used as a joke a lot. That's different imo, people still took his first album seriously.

The jokes came after the fact, which he is a meme today & the 2010s.

The pseudo fake deep meme?

What was the bino meme

Wasn’t he an actor or something before rap

i coulda swore he started out as a meme bc he pulled up to sxsw (or some music fest) dressed in a literal diaper, he broke thru wit that meme/shock value

but even tho he's mainstream now, he's still a meme. i remember there was a thread about all the dababy memes, even jus this past week on twitter he was being roasted for his beat selection. tweets like these was poppin off last week

still feels like he's seen as a meme overall in a lot of ways

Yeah he even got his name from the wu tang clan member name generator, wasn’t really taken very seriously early in his rap career, and now has a Grammy award winning album.

I guess it depends on how the question defines a meme rapper

like a mf

Agree

literal diaper

Forgot about that, I always remember him blowing up off Suge

But I feel that. He’s in a weird space of being commercially successful and borderline superstar (if he isn’t already) but still so memeable

The last time we saw that was in drake lol

Drake the type of nigga & drake so soft/pussy days during his debut n take care era

Crazy how nwts really made his life not the same lol

*getting a beard, muscle and the shift towards paranoid mob boss persona on IYRTITL made his life not the same

Vine boy turned rapper

Imo nwts is what started it and made him more universally loved.

Iyrtitl is just what the "streets" gravitated towards.

But yeah, both switch his image & persona immensely.

Used to get clowned so hard during his debut (i cant remember the name lol) & take care by public, media & some artists even tho he was still really successful.

S*** is crazy lol n i dont think ppl would believe it today how he is looked at unless they were there back then.

Memes is where the person isnt taken seriously or used as a joke a lot.

Mike Jones was not taken seriously lol. By the time his debut major album dropped he was already being clowned on. And the best songs on it we’re already released on swishahouse tapes lol. He got a bit of buzz in the national media for a moment but Texas had already moved on.

The jokes did not come after the fact lol this is 04 before the debut even dropped. “Who? Mike Jones” is in itself a joke because people didn’t know who he was when he was coming out

In retrospect, I can’t think of a single rapper that had a better rebrand lol

Rich Brian