While the song was first repurposed to share one’s “body count,” it is now widely used on the platform. Each new abominable remix uses the part of the song made to sound like “freeze” to highlight something. When I say it is everywhere, I mean it. It is on Fashion TikTok, Fitness TikTok, Cooking TikTok, etc. The song is also now widely used on Instagram Reels.
The song samples Nina Simone’s cover of “Strange Fruit.” The original 1939 song by Billie Holiday itself is an adaptation of the 1937 poem “Bitter Fruit” by Jewish school teacher Abel Meeropol. Each one of these versions is a statement on the lynching of Black people in the U.S. The recent Academy Award-nominated film