The “Let’s go, Brandon!” meme lampooning President Biden is utterly taking over the internet. It continues to blanket conservative news sites and social media accounts, getting repurposed in all sorts of different ways — including, now, with a “Let’s go, Brandon!” song.
The phrase now adorns merchandise for sale and serves as the message chanted by crowds in all kinds of settings, like at sports games. But perhaps the most improbable turn of events for this anti-Biden slogan embraced by critics of the president is that it’s now been turned into a hit rap song — one that, in fact, is sitting at #1 on the iTunes hip-hop chart as of the time of this writing.
Let’s go Brandon song inspired by popular meme
The song is by rapper Loza Alexander, and it first went viral on TikTok.
Its chart success is the culmination of a groundswell of virality that the phrase has steadily garnered since October 9. That’s when this whole thing started, with NASCAR driver Brandon Brown winning a race at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway.
NBC sports reporter Kelli Stavast was interviewing him after his win. During the interaction, the crowd could be heard at one point chanting an expletive at President Biden. Whether Stavast misheard the chant — or heard it, but decided to pretend it was something else — she acknowledged it on air by noting that the crowd seemed to be chanting not “F— Joe Biden” but rather “Let’s go, Brandon!”
“Brandon, you also told me — as you can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon’ — Brandon, you told me you were gonna kinda hang back those first two stages and just watch and learn,” Stavast said during the interview. “What did you learn that helped you in those closing laps?”
One thing he didn’t learn: How someone could mistake his name for that of President Biden.
Let’s Go Brandon! pic.twitter.com/0h7WHaRl95
— Stephanie 🇺🇸 (@StephHoover8) October 7, 2021
Let’s Go Brandon! https://t.co/N3GvCr4dVT
— Sean Parnell (@SeanParnellUSA) October 11, 2021
Social media gold
The phrase was all over social media again over the past several days, especially with the news that Southwest Airlines was canceling tons of flights (leading to suspicion that Biden’s vaccine mandate was somehow to blame). And at the recent Georgia-Auburn game, someone actually rented a plane to fly a banner with “Let’s go, Brandon!” written on it.
There’s also a wink-and-nod aspect to the meme. Now, instead of chanting the more vulgar phrase at the president, his critics simply repeat this one — and everyone knows what they really mean. For critics of the president, the three-word phrase really encapsulates so much — including anger at policies they don’t agree with, plus media bias. Since — whether inadvertently or not — it was a reporter completely misrepresenting the chant that gave birth to this thing.
Already, a huge swath of the country tends to treat news from the mainstream media with skepticism by default. Things like this are one reason why.
