When 'Chocolate Rain' ruled the internet: Anti-racism song captured Minneapolis and beyond
It was 2007. MySpace was the largest social media platform. Netscape’s Navigator was one of the most popular web browsers. And Adam Nyerere Bahner, a 25-year-old, biracial Minneapolis man captivated the growing audience of a new app called YouTube.
YouTube was just two years old. And “Chocolate Rain,” the name of Bahner’s musical composition about racism against Black Americans, was also a de facto beta test for the new app’s capabilities.
Bahner, who was studying at the University of Minnesota at the time, chose a stage name from a Google search — one with zero hits that was also easy to spell. The newly minted Tay Zonday was overwhelmed by sudden fame from the new platform.
“There wasn’t a playbook to use for what to do when your viral video leads to mainstream attention being covered by John Mayer and Tre Cool [drummer in Green Day] and appearing on Jimmy Kimmel and all of these other things that happened very quickly in succession,” said Bahner who responded to a series of written questions.
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While Minnesota did gain a bit more musical fame because of “Chocolate Rain,” it’s not Bahner’s home and he doesn’t think it’s appropriate to be mentioned in the same breath as local legends like Prince.
“Chocolate Rain,” he says, was not inspired by “Purple Rain.”
“While I do have family in Minneapolis and I did visit as a child, I mainly lived there 2004 through 2008, then lived in Los Angeles for 12-and-a-half years and have since been in Seattle for more than two years.”
The music and lyrics of “Chocolate Rain” are what stood out the most to Jill Sondergaard. These days, Sondergaard is a part-time gospel vocalist and owner of JMS Consulting. She says the rhythm and lyrics appealed to her musical sensibilities.
“As the daughter of a drummer, I was just like, ‘Wow, this is so unique.’ All the time he would say ‘Chocolate Rain’ and the lyrics were following.”
Sondergaard said her first thought was, ‘Is this a parody?’ And then she listened more closely to the lyrics.
Chocolate rain / Raised your neighborhood insurance rates
Chocolate rain / Makes us happy ‘livin in a gate
Chocolate rain / Made me cross the street the other day
Chocolate rain / Made you turn your head the other way
“It’s so relevant and poignant and it just gets everything in there,” she said. “He’s really dipping into a lot of things in life and it’s related to systemic and institutional racism.”
Those kinds of reactions helped ‘Chocolate Rain’ rack up 136 million views; get ranked as the hottest video in the summer of 2007 and win the 2008 YouTube Award in its music category.
Bahner doesn’t take his success too seriously. And he says it’s OK and probably advisable that people turn off social media from time to time. He says YouTube used to be about novelty. Now, Bahner says, it’s about attracting a loyal audience that will watch as much as possible.
“And, that’s not necessarily healthy for society,” he said. “It locks us inside individual bias confirmation bubbles instead of connecting us through common reality.”
Bahner is now 41 and over the last several years has lent his rich baritone to voiceover acting and commercial narration. According to his ‘Tay Zonday’ IMDB site, Bahner has had roles in dozens of productions, including voicing the character Masked Fishy in “Baby Shark’s Big Show!” an animated kid’s show on Noggin.
Bahner has not lived in the Twin Cities for more than a decade. However, he has fond recollections of the 2000’s-era art scene in Minneapolis. Bahner said, for example, the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater and the Fringe Festival helped foster a sense of community he hadn’t experienced in other places.
“There are ways in which the cultural space of independent art in the Twin Cities is supportive of the zany and the marginalized and maybe that had an impact on me,” he said. “I’m not sure I had an impact on it.”