The Jay-Z Resurgence Has Reached TikTok

By Jeff Ihaza

Jeff Ihaza

The 23-year-old content creator Raud, whom one might remember for being responsible for one of this year’s early viral earworms, may have stumbled into the zeitgeist yet again. Earlier this year, his GE3Z single “Over” produced the viral “I think I’m Clover now” refrain. Now, after spending considerable cash on a Tom Ford suit for Streamer Prom (the streaming universe’s growing commitment to re-creating high school tentpoles deserves its own inquiry), Raud began opening his streams with an absurdist dance to Jay-Z’s 2013 track about the menswear label. The move, plucked straight from a Disney cartoon or something, manages to imbue the track with a kind of playfulness it sorely needed.

The song, from Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail, which some octogenarian readers may remember arriving three days early through an app for the first million Samsung Galaxy owners, had already begun to creep into the younger generation’s consciousness. On July 18, a post from the user Bosshood featuring the track and a similarly outlandish dance racked up more than 471,000 likes. The song’s bubbly instrumental proved irresistible to young content creators already inundated with Jay-Z content this summer.

Raud’s version has proven especially contagious. Four recent posts in which he uses the song have amassed more than 550,000 likes. The largest has more than 250,000 likes, 12,000 saves, and 16,000 shares. The main TikTok sound has appeared in more than 10,000 videos, and commenters have already begun calling the song his theme music. Back when it was released in 2013, “Tom Ford” peaked at Number 39 on the Hot 100. This month, the song crossed 100 million streams on Spotify.

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@raudspam

⛹🏿‍♂️⛹🏿‍♂️⛹🏿‍♂️#raud #gzf #fypシ #tomford

♬ Tom Ford – JAY-Z

It comes as Jay-Z’s anniversary celebrations for Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint have placed the rapper’s legacy front and center in the culture. Following three shows at Yankee Stadium, during which he brought out everyone from Rihanna to Beyoncé, streams of Reasonable Doubt jumped 94 percent to more than 2 million over four days. The Blueprint rose 118 percent to more than 2.4 million. Jay’s Spotify audience has also climbed from 46 million monthly listeners in late June to more than 48 million today.

The song itself helps explain why this particular Jay-Z single has become such fertile material. Go back and listen to the beat on “Tom Ford.” Produced by Timbaland and Jerome “J-Roc” Harmon, it sounds sort of ridiculous, in the best way. It sounds like Jay trapped Timbaland in the studio and demanded something that sounded futuristic. And, you know what, he got it. The buoyant 808s ping-pong back and forth, sounding like an aquatic marching band ushering in a deep-sea championship team.

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