The Gregory Brothers feat. Charles Ramsey – Dead Giveaway
2013 · Directed by The Gregory Brothers
360K Likes
Best comments
1.“Remember... don't always be too trusting of someone you eat ribs with.”
More comments
- 2.“You always gotta check who you eat ribs with. This is why we can't have nice things.”
- 3.“This ain't just a meme – this man is a hero. He saved those girls.”
The story
On May 6, 2013, Charles Ramsey heard screaming from a house on Seymour Avenue in Cleveland. A woman was trying to get out. Ramsey kicked in the door, and out came Amanda Berry, who had vanished in 2003 just before her seventeenth birthday. Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were inside too. The three had been held captive for about a decade. That night News 5 reporter John Kosich caught Ramsey on camera telling the story, and ABC and CNN had the clip within the hour.
Ramsey told it like nobody on the evening news ever tells anything. Blunt, funny, a little rambling, and the line that stuck was a frank read on race – what it meant when a young white woman came running to a Black man for help. Within 24 hours the Gregory Brothers, the YouTube family band behind Auto-Tune the News and the Bed Intruder Song, had turned the interview into a song. Sarah Gregory even recorded a jazzier take without the Auto-Tune. It neared four million views in two days.
The best part: Ramsey didn't want the credit. He told Anderson Cooper he didn't feel like a hero and said any reward should go to the women he helped free. McDonald's tweeted at him anyway. A horror story with a real neighbor in the middle of it, and the internet set him to music.
