One of, if not the most notable songs to come out of 2018 so far is “In My Feelings” by the hip hop artist Drake. Not only is it an extremely popular song, but it also sparked the viral internet trend known as the “In My Feelings Challenge”, along with an endless amount of memes to go along with it. This song has achieved its status as a result of it being a piece of media both spreadable and sticky, along with the fact that its audience found no trouble making memes out of it.
The song “In My Feelings” contains many aspects which contribute to its stickiness and spreadability. Mixing this song’s catchy, humorous, and memorable hook with its fast-paced, unique, and upbeat New Orleans Bounce inspired instrumental makes this track extremely catchy. Henry Jenkins states that sticky media “attract[s] and hold[s] attention”, and this song does just that (Jenkins 7). Songs within the New Orleans Bounce genre tend to be quite energetic and upbeat, which is a perfect description of “In My Feelings”. This song managed to stick due to its strategic conception and release. One of Drake’s earlier hits of 2018, “Nice for What”, was a successful New Orleans Bounce inspired track as well. “Nice for What” proved to Drake and his team that the New Orleans Bounce style stuck easily when presented to the hip hop culture, and must have made the decision to release a similar track, “In My Feelings”, an easy one. Not only was “In My Feelings” sticky, but also tremendously spreadable. The song managed to gain an immense level of popularity, reaching the very top of the Billboard Hot 100 list on multiple occasions, and has found itself on that list for the past 12 consecutive weeks at the time of this post. Relating to what is mentioned by Henry Jenkins about stickiness, the fact that this song was so catchy attracted audience attention, inspiring “deep audience engagement” with the content (Jenkins 4). This resulted in the piece of media having tremendous stickiness, resulting in many memes.
The most notable trend born from this is without a doubt the infamous “In My Feelings Challenge”, which originated from a video on the instagram account called “@theshiggyshow” showing a man dancing to the song. The video went viral, and from this the “In My Feelings Challenge” was born, resulting in a trend of social media users posting videos of themselves doing a specific dance to the track. The internet’s participatory culture is undoubtedly the cause of so many people partaking in this trend, as everyone who recorded one of these videos certainly had the desire to be a part of this meme.
“In My Feelings” was the perfect storm. It evidently fit well with not only hip hop culture, but internet culture as well, allowing for the song to spread like wildfire, while at the same time stick with its audience.
CITATIONS
Jenkins, Henry, et al. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture, New York University Press, 2013.
Caldwell, Don. “In My Feelings” Challenge, Know Your Meme, https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/in-my-feelings-challenge. Accessed 1 October 2018.
“In My Feelings & Nice For What Master New Orleans Bounce Because Of BlaqNmilD | Genius News.” YouTube, uploaded by Genius, 26 Jul. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD3lRLThVRY.
“Billboard Hot 100”, Billboard, 29 Sept. 2018, https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100.