- I accidentally became a meme.
And this is that story.
My name is Nick Fraser, but you may know me from
the "Why the (bleep) you lying?" meme.
This all started in the year 2015.
I feel like I'm about to tell a story like from a book.
(laughing)
I was driving to 711 to get some donuts and gummy bears,
we shout out to 711, they got the best gummy bears,
just in case y'all needed to know that.
And as I was driving, I had the Bluetooth on my iPhone
connected to the car, and then comes on "Too Close" by Next.
So when the song starts to play, you know,
this is one of my favorite songs,
and I started singing it,
♪ Baby why you crying ♪
♪ I get so excited ♪
- [Man Off Camera] It's not "crying" it's "grinding."
- Oh, see, I didn't even know that.
Baby when you're grinding?
Wow, that's crazy.
After all these years,
nobody told me this whole time, I'm saying "crying."
You should actually leave that in, can we put that in?
So I'm driving, I'm singing, I'm singing, I'm singing.
I said, wait a minute.
I just heard myself saying lying instead of anything else.
And then suddenly, you know,
I just started remembering
there's this kid that I went to high school where, you know,
I'm not gonna disclose the information,
but this is a kid I'm with the high school with that,
he used to lie about things he had,
cars, clothes that people knew he didn't have.
Like, he just kept lying just to form conversation with us.
We used to call him out, like,
"Why are you lying about that?
"Like, why?"
Bro, if you're watching this,
and you know that I'm talking about you,
you don't have to lie, bro, you was cool enough.
And I felt like me saying the song
kind of like, those memories just triggered in my head,
that's why it just came out that way.
♪ Why you always lying ♪
♪ Mm oh my God ♪
I did all of that in the car while I was driving.
So I'm driving as if this is a song that's already out.
So as I'm doing that, I'm like, oh yeah, it's over.
The next day I woke up early and got a haircut.
I got the part in my head, which I don't have right now,
came back home, and then I was looking through my closet
for a shirt that, you know,
screamed 90s RNB music video type.
That's actually my brother's shirt.
And he was never able to wear that shirt again
after that day.
The location was my backyard.
I called my brother, I'm like,
"Yo, can you come outside real quick?
"I want to film something."
♪ Why the (bleep) you lyin' ♪
♪ Why you always lyin' ♪
♪ Mm oh my God stop (bleep) lyin' ♪
I didn't plan the moves.
I was really just feeling it like,
you know, like in those old 90s R&B videos
where it's just like a bop, it just took over my body.
That toilet was actually a new toilet
that my mother bought,
and it didn't work when we installed it into the house.
So we just put it outside and left it on the side,
probably for a few months before I did what I did with it.
And then ever since it just stayed there,
I just realized this is a historical artifact,
so we can't really get rid of this.
I sat in the darkness for about two hours, maybe,
editing the sound, the volume.
So once I put it out, I left my phone alone, you know.
The next day my notifications were going so crazy from Vine
that I had to get a new phone
because my phone was overheating.
And then everything just starts circling the news,
on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, Guardian,
Buzzfeed, Complex, BET, Rolling Stone,
everywhere you could possibly think of, it was on it.
And as I'm scrolling through my Instagram,
I'm seeing my face over, and over,
and over, and over, and over again.
I'm just like, wait, whoa, what's going on right now?
There was a lot of people like, wow, "This is me."
"I know somebody like this."
They were tagging certain people, "This is you."
It didn't really hit me until somebody sent me a video of it
being played on the radio.
I knew it was gonna be something,
but I didn't think that it would hit the way that it did,
and influence people the way that it did.
I actually did meet the original creators, Next.
I was on an episode of Uncommon Sense by Charlemagne.
They had me out there with him, and we were both, you know,
singing and dancing with it.
So it was a very full circle moment.
That was pretty dope that he did that.
I never really kept in touch with the kid from high school.
I actually do have a message for him, though.
I hope whatever it is that you're doing in life right now,
you just decided, you know,
the stories is not really worth it.
The folk tales are not really worth it.
You know, just, just be yourself, just talk regularly.
If you've got it, you got it.
If you don't got it, you don't got it, it's calm.
Just stop (bleep) lying.
(smooth music)