Ghostemane – Mercury: Retrograde
2017
7.9M Likes
Best comments
1.“Step 1: Buy headphones. Step 2: Listen to Ghostemane. Step 3: Buy ears.”
More comments
- 2.“That ghost waited almost 90 years to find his soundtrack.”
- 3.“Bass hit so hard my grandpa thought the Germans were back.”
The story
Ghostemane is Eric Whitney, a Florida artist whose sound runs from hip-hop through hardcore punk to black metal, mostly landing in the dark basement where trap meets metal. Mercury: Retrograde is the song most people know him for, thanks largely to this video.
It isn't really his video. In late 2017 the TRASH GANG channel took a Fleischer Studios cartoon from 1933, Betty Boop's Snow-White, and cut it to his track. That's the one where Koko the Clown gets turned into a ghost and dances through St. James Infirmary, his moves rotoscoped from footage of Cab Calloway. Roland Crandall animated almost the whole short by himself over six months, and the Library of Congress put it in the National Film Registry in 1994.
A 1933 cartoon ghost plus 2017 trap metal shouldn't work. It does. The edit has passed 600 million views. Cab would want a cut.
