Pulitzer-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar is having a huge year, and his Black Panther soundtrack was one of the highlights. At one point, the album had eight songs in the Billboard Hot 100. But perhaps no song has stuck in people’s brains as much as “King’s Dead,” featuring Jay Rock and Future. Even if you don’t know the title, you may recognize it as the “I freaked it” song.
Now a line from the chorus, featuring both Future and Kendrick, has become a huge meme on Instagram: “I took her to my penthouse then I freaked it (I freaked it).”
The “I freaked it” meme videos pair the lyrics with unlikely images, like this one of Scooby-Doo:
Or this one starring M&Ms:
Or Barry B. Benson from Bee Movie:
Or Carl Wheezer from Jimmy Neutron (last seen asking if you’re going to finish that croissant):
Or Yoda. The audio on this one is particularly good.
There are dozens of these videos on the Instagram hashtag #itookhertomypenthousethenifreakedit, and a handful more on YouTube. The less likely a character is to have sex with a woman in a penthouse, the funnier the meme becomes.
It can also be combined with other memes, like the Infinity War disintegration meme:
Some people have taken the sexual connotations of the meme in a dark direction, though, applying it to notorious abusers like Bill Cosby and Subway Jared:
These are the kind of short, weird videos that used to thrive on Vine. Alas, Vine is dead, but elements of its culture live on through Instagram. Several of the penthouse memes borrow the “deep fried” video style that was pioneered on Vine, with layers of visual artifacts and startlingly loud clipped audio. These elements persist in Weird YouTube videos, too—see the popular “Boneless Pizza” meme for one of the best examples.
“Weird” video remixes never get old, they just change with the times, taking the best source material of the moment and … well, freaking it. And there’s no source material more aggressively 2018 than Kendrick Lamar and Black Panther.