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The beats came from their co-producer and hip-hop hit-maker Mike Will Made-It. “We kicked in the door, we went No 1, the beat was crazy. Billboard writer Jason Lipshutz called the song “brash and unabashedly strange”, compared with music by 2016’s other popular hip-hop artists: “Listen closely, and you’ll find closer to the Stranger Things theme than anything released this year from Drake, Future or Kanye West.” In fact, Jxmmi says: “ don’t want to make our music based on memes.” As well as reaching No 1 by an unconventional route, Black Beatles suggested a new kind of beat could go mainstream. Someone with a camera hovers over my shoulder during our interview, presumably in case any snippets are suitable to use later.Īnd yet Black Beatles, in which they reimagine themselves as the modern equivalent of the Fab Four – “I’m a fuckin black Beatle, cream seats in the Regal / Rockin’ John Lennon lenses like to see ’em spread eagle” – is more than a novelty viral hit. Even though they didn’t start the mannequin challenge themselves, they’ve turned it to their advantage. At their gig later that evening at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London, it’s notable how they don’t just selfie at the end of a show but the whole way through it, posting clips on Instagram in real time. Rae Sremmurd come from the Kardashian school of self-promotion. “It was an epidemic – like, the world started doing it and putting our song behind it.” His words weave around Jxmmi’s. “We dropped a lotta heat in a short period,” says Lee, who is half on his phone, half grinning into the distance and speaks hazily, in slogans. Rae Sremmurd surfed the mannequin challenge wave, staging and filming their own version, naming their favourite mannequin challenges – including Michelle Obama and Paul McCartney.
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In November, Black Beatles reached No 1 in the US, where it stayed for seven weeks. The mannequin challenge hashtag started finding its way online, and we saw how it was going to build, and there wasn’t one song that was associated with that when it first came out, so it was just about taking Black Beatles, knowing that we had a hit song on our hands, and finding ways to associate that song with the mannequin challenge. “I knew if we could build some momentum by increasing awareness and feeding the right audience we had a shot at this thing taking off. “With Rae Sremmurd specifically, their music fits so well into memes and short-form content, so the goal was to become the soundtrack to all the things that plug up your timeline,” Gunner Safron of Interscope said last year. At first, there was no specific song to go with it, but then Rae Sremmurd’s US label, Interscope, realised there was a gap for a soundtrack to the meme, and – with help from the website Pizzaslime – set about making Black Beatles that soundtrack. Then a group of school students in Jacksonville, Florida, filmed themselves and the mannequin challenge meme was born: a group of people pose as mannequins, then go wild when the beat drops. Last September, they released the single Black Beatles featuring Atlanta mainstay Gucci Mane, which was just another Rae Sremmurd single for a month or so. It wasn’t the downbeat relationship jams, however, that swept Rae Sremmurd from merely widespread to absolutely unavoidable. This time, added to the usual adolescent fodder to froth up any frat foam party, there were downbeat relationship jams and a weirder, darker sound. Keen to distance themselves from the accusations of “kiddie rap” and the comparisons to Kriss Kross levelled at them on the release of their debut album, 2015’s SremmLife (that they’re in their mid-20s but barely look out of their teens doesn’t help), the pair released a followup, SremmLife 2, last August. Rae Sremmurd burst into view in 2014 – topless, as per their signature look – with two singles, No Flex Zone and No Type, establishing their knack for a hashtaggable hook and a lite-but-hype hybrid of electro, trap and crunk. Aaquil – Slim Jxmmi – the elder by two years – rises from the suite’s adjoining bedroom and with one eye still closed, hand down his joggers, announces: “Man, I got a hangover … I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower go light up at one o’clock in the morning and then I was drinking till …” He slumps on to the sofa and helps himself to some fries. Younger sibling Khalif Brown sways in woozily, living up to his nickname, Swae Lee, a cluster of diamante-rimmed pendants clanking around his slender frame. The Mississippi brothers have an image of being hip-hop’s hard-partying, swag-bragging, enfant terribles, and – true to form – they are worse for wear today, following a big night out in Paris. You could never say that Rae Sremmurd can’t stay in character.