Eminem's "Fack"

About

"Fack" is a 2005 hip-hop song by American rap artist Eminem. In early 2021, the song was popularized on TikTok as an original sound, associated with a number of viral videos and inspiring a lip dub trend on the platform.

Origin

On December 6th, 2005, rapper Eminem released his first greatest hits album Curtain Call: The Hits. The album included four new songs, "Fack" being one of them (seen below).

The song received largely negative reviews upon release, becoming infamous in later years for the end where Eminem describes putting a gerbil into his rectum. On the day it released, a user of the iLounge forum^[3] made a post to discuss how bad the song was. Pitchfork Media^[1] included it in their list of the 15 worst songs of the year, calling it inane in their review of Curtain Call: The Hits.^[2]

Spread

On September 26th, 2013, YouTuber^[7] Hyrppa95 uploaded a video consisting of Eminem singing "shove a gerbil in your ass through a tube" for around 20 minutes, garnering over 57,000 views in seven years (shown below).

On April 2nd, 2015, Eminem added a verified annotation to the chorus of the Genius^[12] lyrics for "Fack," writing, "It was a goofy fucking song. I was taking a lot of fucking pills at the time. Ambien will make you do crazy shit. Imagine if you took it all day long," gaining over 1,600 upvotes in six years (shown below).

On November 9th, 2020, Hot New Hip Hop^[8] published an article praising the song for its cult status, noting that "Fack" is technically a multi-platinum record due to the status of Curtain Call.

"FACK By Eminem" TikTok Sound

On February 3rd, 2021, TikToker^[4][5][6] @meez.w posted a trilogy of videos of herself lip dubbing to "Fack" (shown below). The first two videos gained over 2 million views in a month. The third video, which includes the interlude of the song and a comedic recreation of the gerbil scene, gained over 17 million views in the same span of time.

The original sound for the third video, titled "FACK by Eminem," took off on TikTok over the course of the month as @meez.w's video went viral, inspiring users to perform lip dubs using it.

In one of the most popular trends, which began in late February 2021 and continued through early March, TikTokers^[9][10] present a variation of the on-screen text "everyone wants X until" over the beginning of the sound, lip dub the lyrics "I'm cumming," then present reasons why someone might not want "X" via on-screen text as Eminem mumbles, looking into the camera and shaking their heads with a worried expression (popular examples shown below, left and right).

On March 12th, YouTuber^[11] tiktok angel uploaded a compilation of videos using the sound, garnering over 85,000 views in five days (shown below).

As of March 17th, 2021, "FACK by Eminem" has been used in over 790,000 videos in roughly a month, many of them structured similarly to the "everyone wants x until" videos.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References