Photo: Erika Goldring (Getty Images)
The Mannequin Challenge was the viral video craze of 2016 — sorry, water bottle flippers. Everyone from Paul McCartney to a professional Chinese Basketball team joined in on the frozen fun, albeit with different levels of success.
Love those Black Beatles #MannequinChallenge pic.twitter.com/aAu9umHKI7
— Paul McCartney (@PaulMcCartney) November 10, 2016
We tried it haha what do y’all think? @therealmh33 @hassantashakorikia
A video posted by Josh Smith (@noigsmoove) on
The song that linked most of them (aka the legit ones) together was Rae Sremmurd’s hit “Black Beatles”, which became the official “Mannequin Challenge” song after students at Colony High School in Ontario, Calif., choreographed an elaborate Mannequin Challenge video that went viral.
“Black Beatles” which was off Rae Sremmurd’s sophomore album, “SremmLife 2,” rocketed up the charts and the rest is meme history.
That kickstarted an epic year for the Atlanta by way of Tupelo, Mississippi rap duo of Khalif “Swae Lee” Brown and Aaquil “Slim Jxmmi” Brown, as you can see for yourself in the SremmLife2 Tour Recap, which shows the rambunctious siblings in the studio, playing video games with Lil Yachty, taking backstage selfies with fans, and throwing cakes and spray champagne at concerts with Steve Aoki.
