Music Makers

chiefing that skrong with Cyranek

I find that if you are known among your friends as a music enjoyer, you are likely to become a sounding board for friends who send you links to new and intersting music. It's a good spot to be in. Case in point: a few weeks ago, my friend Joel sent me a screengrab of a song he was listening to called "When You Chief That Skrong," and asked if I had heard it. I had not, but I was soon going to be very happy that I did.

It'd be helpful here if you just played it, and the video version is best. Here's "When You Chief That Skrong":

Gorgeous stuff. A disturbingly earwormy, downright transcendent hyper-pop-punk rendition of a meme format I had seen before: paintings of unnerving of humanoid creatures paired with textual descriptions of what happens after you chief that skrong. Listening to it, I was glad to be alive at this time in history. 40 years ago, I'd have to have Joel pass me this song directly on a cassingle or something. 400 years ago, I probably wouldn't have had access to eyeglasses with a strong enough lens, and so would have probably died from a horse kick to the head, both me and my hypothetical offspring having never gotten to listen to "When You Chief That Skrong" at all.

I immediately was curious about the song's creator: the YouTuber, meme creator and musician Cyranek. He has a vast and longstanding web presence with a distinct musical bent (according to the venerated website famousbirthdays.com, his first upload was a 2013 Pokémon/J-Kwon composite called "Every Spinda In the Horde Getting Tipsy"; his channel contains complex "meme megamix mashups," but also plenty of shorter edits, like "cucumber play funny song."

Beyond the chaotically referential content, I was also struck by how Cyranek's videos are immaculately credited, even in the ephemeral and fast-paced world o' memes—from the artists who contribute music, to the sources and inspiration behind particular visuals, everything is catalogued and linked in the descriptions of the YouTube videos, and I think that's nice.

My last foray into more explicit internet music (when I interviewed the producer DJ Ellie about a urlfest called Zest Fest) went well enough, and I needed to know the backstory behind "When You Chief That Skrong," and behind the general musical output of the Cyranek channel, so I reached out to Cyranek on the contact page of his website with some questions, and he kindly responded. He tipped me off to some other high quality internet-fried songs he's done, shared some feelings on having memes break containment, and inspired me to revisit some of my thoughts on AI-generated music (which, that'll probably be another blog post, but please know I am pondering it). Let's get into it...

[Molly] Will you describe the process of creating this song?

[Cyranek] This might be a bummer to hear, but this song was actually AI generated. I input the lyrics into Suno AI and added the keywords "hyperpop nu-metal banger." After a few tries I got the result that I ended up creating visuals for and posting. Almost all of the other tracks I do visuals for are handcrafted—but I had fun creating something out of control with this one.

For "When You Chief That Skrong," were all those memes in the lyrics already in existence? And is there a particular rendition of that meme that is a personal favorite of yours?

All the memes that were present in the song were ones that I created for my @cyrakek_ instagram page. A while back I came across art by Avery Palmer, which I absolutely adore. Shortly after discovering his work I created the first post: 'when you chief that skrong and now u just nonverbal" using Mematic on my phone. To my surprise, the post gained 50,000+ likes so I kept posting "when you chief that skrong..." memes—and it just never stopped.

Wow I didn't realize you originated the memes, that's nuts. I looked at your YouTube channel and you've obviously been making music for a long time—has your approach changed at all throughout the years?

Been working on the Cyranek channel for almost 10 years now! I feel like it was very music focused from the very beginning. When I was a little kid, long before I worked on this channel, I was animating stick figures to goofy songs by Parry Gripp, weird al, computernerd01, and more. I always loved wacky over-the-top music and over-the-top music visuals by proxy.

Starting Cyranek, I created visuals for a mix of dumb song edits that I created and creations that I found on SoundCloud from users who were kind enough to let me make a video with their content. Things started out in more of a YTPMV format with the airhorn + mlg songs and have slowly transitioned into more "real" music with more complex remixes and even some completely original works with help from som really talented people like @MaxxJamez.

Do you have any songs in your music-making history that you've made that you're particularly proud of, or maybe wish more people had listened to?

I absolutely love the songs that I got to create with MaxxJamez. I'd give him ideas for lyrics and topics and he'd come back with a full track in record time. Butter Dog & XAE-A12 rank in my favorites.

Did the same process with an artist named Staple God for a song called "Enjoy the Go" which is another fave of mine and a big hit with my close friends.

What music do you enjoy listening to in general?

I've got a pretty wide range of stuff that I listen to! I'd probably highlight my love of hyperpop (100 gecs, underscores, umru) - but I listen to plenty of hip hop, country, alt, metal, pop as well! Feel free to check out last.fm for the full documentation lol.

Last question, re: memes—does it trip you out when your memes break containment? Or is that always the end goal of creating a meme/meme-related product, to have it transcend the creator/account and go extremely big?

It definitely amazes how far some of the stuff online reaches. Seeing numbers go up is certainly neat—but it's often hard to comprehend just how many people are seeing something I put out online. It certainly becomes more apparent just how wide something has reached when I see variations and remixes appear in my social media feeds. Or when friends and family stumble across something posted by another account and send it my way. I've learned to watermark the videos I post so they can be traced back to me (and to not be upset if the watermark gets cropped out or jpegged into oblivion). But I suppose the goal is always to reach as many people as possible—whether it's directly attributed to me or not.

I think the most widely spread thing that I ever worked on was this:

It got a decent number of views in the beginning and I thought that was it. Later on, I started to receive messages from friends on Twitter that the video was blowing up on Facebook in countries from Brazil to Vietnam, and had also been reposted in China (on sites like Billi Billi). The lack of a language barrier allowed so many people to enjoy it and create their own variations of the meme. I started finding all kinds of creative edits and even people dancing irl mimicking the stick figure dance. It was insane to see it have such a global spread. I've been trying to recreate something that dumb and simple but popular since then lol.

Thank you Cyranek!! Wow that Groove Battle video is sick. I love music, I love the internet. You can find Cyranek on YouTube, Instagram, and Soundcloud. Speaking of...