A deep voice cuts through the silence. The beat kicks in and backup dancers get out of their chairs and begin to gyrate and sway in matching platinum outfits. A young African-American male sits on a throne, delivering deadpan lyrics, flanked by two fly honeys.
But this isn’t Jay-Z, or Cam’ron even.
It’s Tay Zonday.
Yes, the very same 25-year-old (who looks 14) graduate student Tay Zonday who became an Internet celebrity after the music video for his original song “Chocolate Rain” blew up on YouTube with upwards of 13 million views. The song featured Tay’s dulcet Barry White-like singing voice over a repetitive and Metroid-worthy beat, as Zonday confusingly twisted what sounded like a dessert option at Applebee’s into a convoluted metaphor for institutionalized racism.
So what is he doing in that No Limit-esque hellscape of a music video described above?
Workin’ for the man.
Indeed, the venerable Zonday has sold out to Dr. Pepper.
The song/video is called “Cherry Chocolate Rain,” an extended music video and advertisement hybrid that co-opts the original “Chocolate Rain” song to promote the new cherry chocolate flavor of Dr. Pepper.
All commercial viability of a chocolate-flavored soda aside, this two-minute ad is just indicative of the growing symbiotic relationship between wannabe-tastemaker TV advertising executives and the unwashed masses cowering in basements filming themselves.
The Tay Zonday Dr. Pepper incident is not the first time someone has crossed over from the smaller screen to the small screen. More and more, the subjects of obnoxious e-mail forwards and Facebook groups are being recruited by the corporate big dogs to be their spokespeople or worse, their fresh reality-show meat.
Remember Smosh? These dudes were one of the earlier YouTube celebrities, due to their ubiquitous videos of the two bored kids lip-synching to nostalgia-inducing ’80s and ’90s TV theme songs including “Pokemon” and “Ninja Turtles.” Apparently lip-synching rules, because as of today, Smosh has over 11 million YouTube channel views. As a result, MTV contacted them for a development deal, which surprisingly, they didn’t take.
More recently, Internet oddball Chris Crocker was courted by big money. Crocker is most famous for his half-performative, half-confessional and wholly histrionic “Leave Britney Alone” video, in which he sobbed out a defense of Ms. Spears after her zombified VMA appearance.
Crocker looks and sounds like an extra from “The Birdcage,” and despite his hysterics, homeboy racked up 15.5 million views of his “Britney” video. MTV subsequently hired him to provide video for their Web site, and he also inked a development deal with a reality television production company. The head of the company said, “He’s going to be a TV star.”
Oh, bro.
What we’re starting to see here is that the Internet is basically a minor league for the George Steinbrenners of TV to draft the best recruits. YouTube and the Internet at large are more tolerant of weirdness because it is completely untargeted; as a result, “am-I-laughing-with-you-or-at-you” guys like Zonday and Crocker have a place to shine. Logically, TV and ad execs want the top recruits for maximum recognition, regardless of just how weird they may actually be. So in an odd twist of fate and technology, people that 10 to 20 years ago would never have seen the light of day in terms of fame are now an odd subgenre of celebrity with mainstream recognition.
Maybe this is the democratization of media that everyone talked about with the dawn of the Internet. Between celebrity bloggers like Drudge and Perez Hilton, and YouTube celebrities, America is starting to see normal people invading the ranks of the privileged. Commercials used to be the realm of models and celebrity spokespeople, not normal folks, let alone weird people.
So where does that leave us with Zonday and the good Dr. Pepper? Did he ever expect to have one of his videos end with a bottle of Dr. Pepper exploding because the flavor is so intense? Probably not.
It seems like it would be easy to call him a sellout, but it’s hard to do that because he was so unassuming to begin with.
Besides, the thought of a rich Tay Zonday making it (chocolate) rain at a club is too awesome to discount. I haven’t seen this music/video ad on actual television, but I can applaud Zonday for making money off of being himself, and laugh at what happens when people who are used to filming in basements are given king-size budgets.
If you would buy cherry chocolate soda because Tay Zonday told you to, e-mail Ayres at jayres@media.ucla.edu.