Chocolate Rain Meme
Quick answer
Chocolate Rain is a 2007 YouTube video in which Tay Zonday sings an original song about racism in an unusually deep baritone while stepping away from the microphone to breathe. It became one of the first YouTube-era viral music videos and a stock reference for "song you can't get out of your head."
Chocolate Rain is Tay Zonday's 2007 viral music video — a baritone performance whose delivery became as famous as its lyrics.
What does the Chocolate Rain meme mean?
The Chocolate Rain video is used as a reference to songs and performances you cannot un-hear — deadpan delivery, unexpectedly deep voice, and a lyric everyone half-remembers. Quoting it usually signals nostalgia for the early YouTube era, or gentle teasing of someone singing with total seriousness.
Origin
- April 22, 2007: Tay Zonday (Adam Bahner) uploads the original song to YouTube. The melody is a simple keyboard loop; the lyrics are about racism and privilege.
- Summer 2007: The video spreads through blogs and news sites, passing tens of millions of views; parodies, response videos and South Park-era references follow.
- Mainstream: Zonday appears on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and the phrase "moves away from the mic to breathe" becomes a running gag in its own right.
- Today: regularly named among the defining viral videos of early YouTube.
Examples
- Singing a totally ordinary sentence in an exaggerated baritone and leaning away from the mic.
- Captioning any earworm video with "Chocolate Rain… some stay dry and others feel the pain."
- Calling an unexpectedly deep-voiced performance "chocolate rain."
Translation
- Literal reading: a man sings about chocolate-colored rain in a deep voice.
- Actual meaning: the rain is a metaphor for racial inequality — some people avoid its consequences, others cannot.
- Cross-language note: the song is normally left untranslated in memes; the reference depends on the original audio, not on the lyric text.
FAQ
What is Chocolate Rain?
A 2007 viral music video by Tay Zonday: an original song about racism sung in a deep baritone on a simple keyboard loop.
When did it come out?
April 22, 2007, on YouTube; it went viral over that summer.
Why does he keep moving away from the mic?
It is how Zonday breathes between lines — the move became one of the video's signature jokes.
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