TGIReally?

After seeing the great reviews one of my high school acquaintance-cum-Facebook-friend was getting for his "tribute" video to Rebecca Black's "Friday" music video, I had to see what it was all about.

I'd not yet seen the original "Friday", but I'd seen mention of it pop up a number of times on my newsfeed recently. I'd not paid it much attention since people are always sharing this and that, and with my shitty Southeast Asia hostel internet connections I'm generally just grateful if I can get my "basic HTML" email inbox to load.

But I do love to observe the phenomenon of the Internet Meme when I can, so now that I had the internet capability to at least load a YouTube video (albeit in half an hour), I finally had a chance to see that fabled original "Friday" video.

And oh my, is my life ever sunnier for it. Within a few bars, I knew this beauty had its place on my "Winning" iTunes playlist. If you, too, have suffered from slow internet lately or have just been living under a rock, here you go: 

But there's so much more to a meme than just the video or tune itself.

Always the avid journalist, I had to do my background research on the video and perused the - rather mind-blowingly in-depth - Wikipedia page about it.

Apparently a classmate told Rebecca (13 years old) about this "record label" called Ark Music Factory, and her mother paid $4,000 USD for them to record Rebecca singing a choice of two pre-written songs and an accompanying video. The horrific overuse of Auto-Tune and awkward rap cameo by Ark Music Factory CEO/budding rapper Patrice Wilson was, presumably, thrown in free of charge. Young Rebecca chose the infamy-bound "Friday" for her song because the other one was about "adult love", which she said she'd not yet experienced. I'd actually be rather keen to read the lyrics to the discarded alternative and muse over the possibilities that one might have brought. 

I'm still working out the sudden appearance of the significantly older hardcore Friday-lovin' party person Wilson, who perplexingly shows up on scene to kick it and have fun with 63 shag-topped suburban Anglo-Saxon 8th graders (who can drive) who are merrily jumping up and down on the front lawn of Rebecca's house.

But anywho, the abilities of Ark Music Factory CEO/rapper/party person Wilson clearly know no bounds. He does more than run the Business of Awesome that is Ark Music Factory and rap. He is ALSO an accomplished songwriter, and was responsible for the shockingly terrible lyrics to "Friday".

Where DO you get your motivation, Patrice?

Wikipedia states that he said: "I wrote the lyrics on a Thursday night going into a Friday. I was writing different songs all night and was like, 'Wow, I've been up a long time and it's Friday.' And I was like, wow, it is Friday!"

I guess it's no real shocker that the brain child from this enlightened thought processing is the lyrical tornado "Kickin’ in the front seat, Sittin’ in the back seat, Gotta make my mind up - Which seat can I take?" or my personal favorite, the cameo rap: "So chillin' in the front seat (In the front seat); In the back seat (In the back seat); I'm drivin', cruisin' (Yeah, yeah); Fast lanes, switchin' lanes; Wit' a car up on my side (Woo!); (C'mon) Passin' by is a school bus in front of me; Makes tick tock, tick tock, wanna scream; Check my time, it's Friday, it's a weekend; We gonna have fun, c'mon, c'mon, y'all." 

Passin by…is a school bus…in front of me? Makes tick tock, tick tock, wanna scream? Wtf was this guy ON??? 7 gram rocks?