The wild rise of Rae Sremmund/Black Beatles/Mannequin Challe
Who knew Rae Sremmurd's "No Flex Zone" would be so prescient?
The Atlanta duo's latest single, "Black Beatles," has become the soundtrack for the Mannequin Challenge, a group art project that's taking over high schools and colleges and involves participants freezing in place.
Thursday night in Denver, Colorado, the group played along, indulging in their own version of the challenge live.
Since its release in late September, the song's seen a steady incline on YouTube, where it has more than 34 million views. The first video posted in the #MannequinChallenge hashtag is allegedly from Oct. 26, though it's not clear when the addition of "Black Beatles" first took place, and the song was already somewhat popular before the meme.
A rep for Pandora told the Daily Dot that "there has been an over one thousand percent uptick in spins of that song in the last 30 days." The track is in Spotify's Top 5 daily chart as of Nov. 3, with more than 32 million streams. The group also recently made Spotify's 25 Under 25 list.
Internet, its power at least this time is a song I love even before this happened. I knew there was a reason why it just randomly exploded but mess at me barely finding out about this yesterday its everywhere now. ALS ice bucket hew?
I don't think you realize how big this is for their careers. They literally missed the Hot 100 with their lead after an album with 5 Platinum+ singles in a row