the world according to tay zonday

Summary

Podcast Summary: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) - "The World According to Tay Zonday"

Release Date: April 15, 2025
Host: Jamie Loftus
Produced by: Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction

In this episode of Sixteenth Minute (of Fame), host Jamie Loftus delves into the life and legacy of Tay Zonday, the internet sensation behind the viral hit "Chocolate Rain." Combining reported segments, interviews, and personal reflections, Jamie explores how Tay navigated sudden fame, the deeper meanings behind his iconic song, and the personal challenges he faced along the way.

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Tay Zonday's Early Life and Background

Tay Zonday, born Adam Potter in 1982, provides an intimate look into his upbringing. Raised in a biracial household by a black mother and white father in Chicago, Tay discusses the complexities of his identity and the lack of acknowledgment of his black heritage during his childhood.

Tay Zonday [55:58]: "I was born in 1982 while living in Chicago as the youngest of three by quite a bit... My parents were both school teachers... I felt very intensely and helicopter parented as a child."

Tay recounts his struggles with mental health from a young age, including periods of being non-verbal and grappling with undiagnosed autism and possible dissociative identity disorder. These early challenges set the stage for his later experiences with sudden internet fame.

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The Making and Meaning of "Chocolate Rain"

"Chocolate Rain" was conceived as a politically charged ballad addressing systemic racism and institutional injustices in America. However, its reception took on a life of its own, often being perceived as comedic rather than its intended serious critique.

Jamie Loftus [06:20]: "Being a political pop star, while stating clearly that I still believe and Sam Cooke's promise that a change was going to come."

Tay explains that the song was inspired by historical events and figures, weaving references from Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward to modern-day social issues. The deep lyrical content contrasts with the quirky presentation in the original 2007 YouTube video.

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Public Reception and Viral Fame

Upon its release, "Chocolate Rain" was featured by YouTube staff but was largely misunderstood by the internet audience. Rather than recognizing its political undertones, many viewers found the video entertainingly awkward, leading to widespread parody and viral memes.

Jamie Loftus [15:47]: "Adam Bonner, aka Tay Zonday. Your 16th minute starts now."

The viral spread was fueled by platforms like Digg and 4chan, culminating in appearances on mainstream media such as Tom Green's show and CNN. Despite the immense attention, Tay initially refrained from discussing the song's deeper meanings, fearing it might overshadow the fun and novelty that audiences associated with it.

Tay Zonday [36:45]: "Are you making get any money just yet off of this catchy tune, Chocolate Rain?"

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Impact of Fame on Personal Life

The sudden influx of fame had profound effects on Tay's personal life. Balancing graduate studies with the demands of internet stardom proved overwhelming, leading to the eventual departure from his PhD program. Tay also faced the challenge of maintaining his mental health amidst the relentless public scrutiny.

Tay Zonday [55:58]: "As Tay admits throughout this interview file, he does have a tendency to go on some real tangents."

Tay shares his experiences of depersonalization and derealization, exacerbated by the pressures of maintaining his public persona while dealing with personal traumas and undiagnosed mental health conditions.

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Evolution of Tay Zonday's Career

Post "Chocolate Rain," Tay ventured into various creative fields, including voice acting, which allowed him to channel his talents without the overwhelming spotlight of solo fame. Projects like "Robot Chicken" and "Epic Rap Battles of History" provided him with platforms to continue entertaining audiences while exploring his artistic boundaries.

Jamie Loftus [43:45]: "From mid July to the end of July 2007, I probably did 30 or 40 different media interviews and. But in none of them was I actually ready to be a person."

Tay experimented with both comedic and serious content on YouTube, attempting to balance the perception created by his viral hit with his true artistic intentions. This period was marked by a struggle to define his identity beyond the "Chocolate Rain" phenomenon.

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Reflections and Insights

In later interviews, Tay openly discusses the true intent behind "Chocolate Rain," revealing it as a heartfelt commentary on systemic racism rather than mere entertainment. This revelation came years after the song had cemented its place in internet culture, showcasing Tay's evolving understanding of his work and its impact.

Tay Zonday [48:44]: "Overall, Chocolate Rain was intended as a ballad about institutional racism."

Tay reflects on how the song's commercialization, such as collaborations with brands like Dr. Pepper, conflicted with his original message. He expresses gratitude for the song's enduring legacy while acknowledging the complexities of navigating fame as an autistic individual with deep-seated personal challenges.

Jamie Loftus [48:22]: "And when he was asked why he waited so long to talk about this in the years since, Tay basically cites his own work."

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Conclusion

Jamie Loftus wraps up the episode by highlighting Tay Zonday's unique journey from an unknowingly troubled youth to an internet icon grappling with fame and identity. The episode serves as a poignant exploration of how viral fame can amplify personal struggles and the importance of understanding the deeper meanings behind seemingly simple internet phenomena.

Jamie Loftus [88:00]: "And that's as good a place as any to end the first part of our Tay's On Day series."

Tay's story is depicted as a testament to resilience and self-discovery, providing listeners with a nuanced perspective on the intersections of internet culture, personal identity, and the enduring quest for self-acceptance.

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Notable Quotes

• Jamie Loftus [06:20]: "Being a political pop star, while stating clearly that I still believe and Sam Cooke's promise that a change was going to come."

• Tay Zonday [36:45]: "Are you making get any money just yet off of this catchy tune, Chocolate Rain?"

• Tay Zonday [48:44]: "Overall, Chocolate Rain was intended as a ballad about institutional racism."

• Jamie Loftus [88:00]: "And that's as good a place as any to end the first part of our Tay's On Day series."

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode, providing a clear and engaging overview for those who haven't listened to it. By focusing on Tay Zonday's personal journey, the creation and impact of "Chocolate Rain," and the broader implications of viral fame, the summary offers a deep understanding of the episode's core themes.

Transcript

[Jamie Loftus]

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[Tay Zonday]

Hello darlings.

[Jamie Loftus]

Pack your suitcase for a new season.

[Tay Zonday]

Of the Hulu original reality series Vanderpump Villa.

[Jamie Loftus]

Let's do this. Ciao. It's Stassi. Of course Lisa brought in her favorite to be resident chaperone of the Castle.

[Tay Zonday]

Stassi is an icon. She's my eyes and ears.

[Jamie Loftus]

I love this.

[Tay Zonday]

Get ready for the luxury and drama that awaits us in Italy. Cheers to all the toxic couples in The Castle. Season two of Vanderpump Villa premieres April.

[Jamie Loftus]

24Th, streaming on HU. Hello 16th minute listeners. It's Jamie. Just saying really quick at the top that a show that is my honor to produce on the iHeartRadio network. We the Unhoused has been nominated for a Webby and we need your help. If you haven't listened to the show before, first of all, I highly recommend you do. But it is a show that began in 2019. It's created, hosted and reported by the wonderful Theo Henderson. He began the podcast while living on the streets of la and it's grown significantly during that time, but remains the only podcast that tells stories that affect the unhoused and tells the stories of the unhoused while continuing to center their own perspectives and experiences. We've been nominated in a Webby category and we need your help. If you click the link in the description, it goes directly to our category. It's literally two clicks. It's a tight race, so I would really appreciate it if you both gave us a vote and also checked out the show. You can do both at the link in the description. I want to ask what your favorite protest song is, but I don't know if you're prepared for that question because protest songs over time haven't always been celebrated for their original intention. Okay, I'll tell you mine. It's from a pretty political artist who I grew up listening to. It's called Waiting for the Great Leap Forward by English singer Billy Bragg from 1988. My dad loved Billy Bragg. He's a punk dad staple. And Mr. Bragg, who's still with us, built his career on leftist politics that some fans will debate whether he remained completely consistent with many such punks. But regardless, I love this song and it's unflinchingly political, mixing pop and politics. He asks me what the use is. I offer him embarrassment, my usual excuses while looking down the corridor out to.

[Tay Zonday]

Where the van is waiting. I'm looking for the right Leap Forward.

[Jamie Loftus]

So there's already a lot coming up here. The title references Mao Zedong's disastrous Great Leap Forward Forward campaign in China, which promised progress but resulted in the death of millions by starvation, and its lyrics reference everything from the false promise of the Kennedy administration in the 1960s to Oppenheimer's optimism leading to again the death of hundreds of thousands to Che Guevara, Fidel Castro. The list of references goes on, but what I love about this song is how it addresses Billy Bragg's insecurities around being a political artist. In the verse I just shared, he says that he's embarrassed to be a political musician in an age where it didn't feel like his work was moving the needle very much, even when that music was successful for him personally. And maybe the most famous line from the song is this. So join the struggle while you make the revolutionist, just as you shall win the revolution is just a T shirt away. Come on, that's so good. He's cooking here, folks. Billy Bragg is talking about something that is still very present in today's culture, the tendency for protests to be quickly commodicized in some ways to make it more acceptable aside any of the feminist protests from the first Trump administration. And he wrote this song, as so many of these political songs have been written in the past in conversation with a song from a previous generation that he admired, that song being Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna come from the 1960s. Here's Billy Bragg talking about the song in an interview, saying that waiting for the Great leap forward was my way.

[Tay Zonday]

Of owning up to the ambiguities of.

[Jamie Loftus]

Being a political pop star, while stating clearly that I still believe and Sam Cooke's promise that a change was going to come. And that song is one you absolutely know.

[Tay Zonday]

I was born by the river.

[Jamie Loftus]

In.

[Tay Zonday]

A little tent oh and just like the river I've been running.

[Jamie Loftus]

Ever since it's been a long.

[Tay Zonday]

A long time.

[Jamie Loftus]

Coming But I know.

[Tay Zonday]

A change gonna.

[Jamie Loftus]

Come oh, yes, it will A Change Is Gonna Come was originally released in 1964 in the midst of the civil Rights movement, and was inspired by Sam Cooke and his entourage being refused rooms at a Holiday Inn because of their race and fun fact. The song was also inspired by Sam Cooke's love of the Bob Dylan song Blowin in the Wind from the previous year. I don't even like Bob Dylan, but music is so cool. Protest music is a genre so vast that it's easier to break it down into subcategories, whether that be by musical genre or just subject. There's Against Me's transgender dysphoria blues about lead singer Lara Jane Grace's transition. There's Loretta Lynn's the Pill, that scandalized country music for being overtly pro birth control, Tearing down your brutal house.

[Tay Zonday]

Cause now I've got the Pill.

[Jamie Loftus]

There was Peter Tosh's Legalize it about. Well, you know, There was Woody Guthrie's all you fascists are bound to lose.

[Tay Zonday]

Put it there, boy, and we'll show these fascists what a couple of hillbillies can do.

[Jamie Loftus]

And there's my man Billy Bragg again, with which he performs at rallies to this day. But one of the largest subcategories under the protest music umbrella is black American protest music, which has produced some of the greatest songs of all time. Swing Low. Sweet Chariot was not just an anti slavery folk spiritual. It was actually used as a political signal. The sweet chariot in question was the Underground Railroad. And the song being played meant that it was time to begin the dangerous process of escape. And while throughout history, white music executives have done everything they possibly can to erase the fact that black Americans invented both jazz and rock and roll in the 20th century politically charged hits kept coming. It would be impossible to mention them all, but some of the highlights. The late 1930s brought Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit, a song about public lynching of black Americans during the Jim Crow era.

[Tay Zonday]

Southern Trees bears straight blood on leaves and Blood at the Root.

[Jamie Loftus]

And While A Change Is Gonna Come is probably the most famous example of a 1960s civil rights protest song. There are so many urgently political, politically charged classics from this stretch of years, and you know them all. Nina Simone's Mississippi, Goddamn, James Brown's say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud, Edwin Starr's Aretha Franklin's Respect, My personal favorite, Marvin Gaye's what's Going on, which was a Motown release that protested the Vietnam War and then Governor Ronald Reagan's violent reprisal on student protesters. And I'm skipping around in history a bit here, but there's also a legacy of protest in reggae music. The Wailers Get Up Stand up is probably the most famous mainstream example, but a lot of Bob Marley's catalog stands out as having these revolutionary themes. And protest was critical to early rap music all the way to the present. In the earlier days, you have NWA's fuck the police, a song that Ice cube said was 400 years in the making. There's Public Enemies, Fight the Power, which shared a title and pulled a sample from an Isley Brothers protest song of the same name from the 70s, and soon after would become the iconic intro to do the Right Thing from Spike Lee. There's Tupac's Changes, Lauryn Hill's Black Rage, all the way up to Kendrick Lamar's most famous works before recently pivoting to ruin Drake's life. Songs like All Right, Stay Woke and On and On. But music, particularly music so successful that virtually everyone knows it, is a business, and plenty of protest songs are either misunderstood in their day or later have their meaning capitalized upon to sell something unrelated to its original message. Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come is actually a pretty decent example of this. Back in 2017, Alicia Keys covered that song for a Nike commercial. Nike being a company that's been credibly accused of their product being produced in sweatshops in East Asia. In the last couple of months, there have been criticism slobbed against Kendrick Lamar for headlining the super bowl due to, among other things, the NFL not being an institution known for supporting black lives. There's a great episode of Code Switch on NPR on this topic of the commercialization of hip hop and rap throughout time. From a couple months ago that I'm going to link in the description for more on that topic. But the point is that protest music is both in the DNA of music history, but that music's message is often sanitized in order to be monetized. But everything we've talked about here so far has had to make its way through traditional music hubs, record labels, promotional machines, even if those labels are independent or pretty small. Because for a long time that was really the only way to get your work out there until until you've got mail. The Internet was a new world when it came to music distribution, with so many of today's biggest acts getting their start by making music in their bedroom and uploading it to Bandcamp or soundcloud. Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X come straight to mind. Before that there was MySpace, which can take credit for basically every 2000s emo band that initially lacked studio backing. I had to check. But the most famous example is in fact Panic at the Disco. And of course there was early YouTube. As we've discussed on this show before, Justin Bieber is probably still YouTube's most successful pop star output, but there are plenty of songs that went viral in the 2000s on that platform that failed to catapult its singer songwriter to international lasting fame. I thought about playing Rebecca Black's Friday, but she actually has become a pop diva. It just took a little while. Love Rebecca Black. But there was one song that went viral on YouTube. To this day, probably the song that defines the platform that everyone knew but very few initially realized was indeed of protest song. It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time. Peanut Butter Jelly Time. Peanut Butter Jelly Time. Sorry, I had to. No, I am Talking about a YouTube video with the contrast levels set so high that the artist and his single microphone are flooded in light. A video that begins with an automated piano sample looping with the artist just out of frame, as many would parody later. You can see the top of his head in the lower left corner of the video before he springs into frame and starts singing Chocolate Rain.

[Tay Zonday]

Some stay dry and others feel the pain Chocolate rain A baby born will die before the sin Chocolate rain.

[Jamie Loftus]

Adam Bonner, aka Tay Zonday. Your 16th minute starts now. Welcome back to 16th Minute, the podcast where we talk to the main characters of the Internet, see how their moment in the spotlight affected them and what that says about us and the Internet and this week and Thursday and next week because boy, is this a dense topic. We are talking with one of the greats, the one and only Tay Zonday Tay, as you might expect, is easily one of the most popular requests for this show and has been from moment one. And I can promise you that this was worth the wait. This is a story that needs to be told in multiple parts and in a way that we've never done on this show before. What we're airing is less of an interview with Tay than Tay, AKA Adam, telling you his story directly. Okay, let me explain. I first reached out to Tay's on day almost a year ago now to see if he would ever be interested in coming on the show. And over the course of that year, we figured out what the best way to get deep into his history, not just with the Internet, but with any number of things he wanted to touch on, from race to neurodivergence to forming friendships with fellow Internet stars. And eventually, Tay decided it would be best if I sent him my questions and he would then record his answers in response. But what neither of us expected, I don't think, is not just Tay's story, but the way that his politics have evolved and changed over time. A journey that I think is well worth your time. So here's what we're going to do today. I'm going to give you the broad strokes of Tay's moment of massive viral fame. And then for the remainder of the series, I'm going to let him take it away. And whether he leans away from the mic to take a breath is up to him. But I'll say if he doesn't, I'm gonna freak out. Because if you know anything about Tay's on day, you will know he is a really smart and insightful guy. And not for nothing, his voice is way more fun to listen to than mine. But before we can get there, we have to go back to April 2007. A mass shooting at Virginia Tech leaves 33 dead and 29 injured to this day, the most deadly school shooting in American history. Talk radio host Don Imus says one of the most cruelly out of pocket casually racist and misogynistic comments about black women basketball players at Rutgers, which gets him fired. Don't worry, though. He got a redemption arc for some reason. And on April 23, 2007, a YouTube user going by Tay Zonday uploads what he Says was his 12th video ever, a video that would go down in chocolate rain. A complete unknown, Tay or Adam was a graduate student in Minnesota who was performing his original work at open mics around the city before realizing that uploading the songs to YouTube wasn't just more time efficient. It also stood to net him a much larger audience. Since entering college and going into grad school, Tay, and I'm going to call him Tay. Throughout the series, Tay had taken an increased interest in studying institutional racism, something he wouldn't talk about for years in the press. He's biracial, he was raised by a black mother and white father and is autistic, another facet of his life that he wasn't initially open to sharing about outside of performing at a fundraiser or two. All that to say, Tay's interest in the themes of discrimination that are explored in Chocolate Rain come from a very sincere place and were initially intended to make people think more than laugh. But he's rolled with it and continues to roll with it to this day. But believe it or not, Chocolate Rain wasn't even the first time that Tay's on day was noticed by the YouTube staff. His second video ever, which I'm just reading the title here, Love Original song by Kooby featuring Tay's On Day was also featured by the website on its front page after being hand picked by an employee. Here's a taste oh Taehy keep going.

[Tay Zonday]

Haven'T come and don't you hear we got laid over under here Stick it out and never down cause we can turn the world around I love you.

[Jamie Loftus]

Okay, so we've Talked about how YouTube curation has changed significantly in past episodes of this show, our series on Lena Morris, the overly attached girlfriend, as well as liam Kyle Sullivan, aka Kelly from Shoes. But to refresh your memory, the YouTube of 2007 had 20 million monthly visitors to their now 2.7 billion monthly visitors, and the recommendation pages were curated by staff members, not algorithms, as they are today. And that doesn't mean that the site was a total meritocracy, but it was certainly much closer and there was far less competition from other users. So as Tay explains in our interview and in many others he's done, this first bump of encouragement on the platform was what motivated him to finish and then upload Chocolate Rain, a song he'd been tooling around with for months that, if you pay attention to the lyrics, is very obviously about systemic racism. And Tay would later confirm systemic racism he had experienced or witnessed firsthand. So before we get into how the 2007 world received chocolate Rain, let's actually listen to the song and we're going to take it verse by verse.

[Tay Zonday]

The song begins Chocolate rain Some stay dry and others feel the pain Chocolate rain a big baby born will die before the sin Chocolate Rain. The school books say it can't be here again. Chocolate rain. The prisons make you wonder where it went.

[Jamie Loftus]

Chocolate. So in short, Tay is talking about the liberal notion of a post racial society, one that Adam Bonner was raised in during the 80s and 90s while Black Americans continued to suffer. He also mentions a baby will die before the sin, a possible reference to black infant mortality rates. And the prisons will make you wonder where it went. The prison industrial complex that disproportionately imprisons black men. He's saying this right out the gate, so let's keep going. The next few verses expand upon the idea of a post racial society. Lyrics like zoom the camera out and see the lie. Only in the past is what they say. And then he gets into more issues. Let's listen.

[Tay Zonday]

They say Chocolate rain with your neighborhood insurance rates. Chocolate rain makes us happy living in a gay. Chocolate rain made me cross the street the other day. Chocolate rain made you turn your head the other way.

[Jamie Loftus]

Okay, now we're getting into housing discrimination and redlining, as well as the very common fear mongering around black people as dangerous to be in your neighborhood. And look, I want to go through the whole song, but to be honest, it is quite long and I would like to get to the Tay interview. So to summarize the other issues mentioned in Chocolate Rain, reference everything from the public gaslighting that happens to people of color who insist that systemic racism is still alive and well. And there are many more references to the prison industrial complex. Lines like this.

[Tay Zonday]

The same crime has a higher price to pay. The judge and jury swear it's not the face turns that body into gdp.

[Jamie Loftus]

He mentions the Bell Curve theory, a very racist notion that is popular within MENSA that dictates that black people are genetically less intelligent than white people. Here's the line.

[Tay Zonday]

The Milka blames the baby's DNA.

[Jamie Loftus]

The song also tries to acknowledge international racism and then closes on this verse.

[Tay Zonday]

Chocolate rain is 3 quickly crashing to avenge Chocolate Rain, using you to bow back down again.

[Jamie Loftus]

Chocolate Rain is an intense song, one whose agenda is very clear, particularly when you're just listening to the song without any music video kind of visual. Because sure, Tay's voice is unusually deep, but personally I don't find that distracting because there's plenty of famous singers with voices just as low or even lower. The great Paul Robeson is a great example. A civil rights activist who most famously sang Old Man Ribbon.

[Tay Zonday]

He must know something, but don't say nothing.

[Jamie Loftus]

But this is YouTube in 2007 and I would be lying if I said that as a kid I understood the song Chocolate Rain or was even bothering to listen to the lyrics when it first came out. No, Chocolate Rain was not received as an anti racist anthem. It was received as comedy. So let's get into a few reasons why that may have been. First, let's talk about the visuals, because there's no getting around. The visuals of the Chocolate Rain video are distinct, as Tay is quick to acknowledge himself in the 2007 video. He is a very young looking skinny guy with this deep bass voice and the juxtaposition is a little jarring at first. Not to mention the camera he's using is pretty low quality and Tae's body language, well, it rules. But it can be a little bit distracting from the songs message. The most famous and still iconic to this day example of this is every time that Tay, then 25 years old, wearing his white T shirt and glasses, takes a breath during the song. He leans really far away from the microphone and kind of like inhales from the side of his mouth. It's a little weird to be sure, but what makes it iconic is that Tay in the video adds text on screen that further draws attention to this writing into the annals of history. I move away from the mic to breathe in. Amazing, incredible poetry. Yes, it's awkward. Yes, Tay is clearly not a professional performer yet. But let's be it is not Tay's fault that the Internet audience of 2007 completely failed to interpret this clearly political song for what it was, because he famously moves away from the mic to breathe in. The problem is. Well, the problem is kind of what Tay is singing about in the song. The liberal idea of a post racial society soothes people of many races, an idea that assured them that America used to be a racist place. But it isn't now. And while certainly not everyone drank this Kool Aid, a lot of people did. And that's kind of what Tay's fighting.

[Tay Zonday]

He sings Chocolate Rain Worse than swearing, worse than calling names Chocolate Rain say it publicly and your insane Chocolate Rain. No one wants to hear about an El Chocolate Rain which real heart it goes away somehow.

[Jamie Loftus]

So to answer the question, did anyone really get it when YouTube reached out to Tay to see if they could feature his work on their front page again? No, not really. It is framed almost universally as comedy. And as with a lot of early YouTube success stories, it's actually a second party website that ends up making the video take off a couple months after it was posted. And here's Tay Zonday explaining what he thinks was the initial appeal of Chocolate Rain to the Internet in a video for Know youw meme back in 2021.

[Tay Zonday]

I think there was an appealing aspect of Chocolate Rain that was found footage. It was like someone just put a camera in their living room and this is what you see in that period of time. The Internet was driven by novelty, finding new interesting things that hadn't been seen before and kind of getting to know each other in that way. And it changed around 2011, 2012, and after that, you know, videos did not go viral in the same way.

[Jamie Loftus]

In future interviews, Tay would credit the link sharing site Digg for really drawing attention to the video. And Digg was kind of a prototype for the Reddit model. And the early characterization of Chocolate Rain was not. Hey, this kinda weird guy has a really salient point to make about racism in America. It much closer aligns with headlines like this from the Edmonton Journal.

[Tay Zonday]

Mo Chocolate, Mo Money.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah. Mainly framing the video as novelty comedy. And this remained consistent for nearly a decade, which especially sticks out now when you see how many of Tay's early fans were prominent white people. The closest that publications get to meaningfully analyzing what the song means is with a little bit of bewilderment. This is from the Honolulu Star advertiser from August 2007. As the initial puzzlement wears off and you begin to listen to the lyrics, you quickly become aware of Chocolate Rain's central contradiction. Hold on a second. Some stay dry and others feel the pain. This is a song about racism, but racism is not funny. But Chocolate Rain is funny.

[Tay Zonday]

Or maybe it's not, but isn't it?

[Jamie Loftus]

The next Internet forum to take notice of chocolate rain was 4chan, which sounds a little scarier in this case than it actually was, because at this time, 4chan had yet to escalate to the full on hate group generator that they would become in a few short years. But they were still overwhelmingly male and good at organizing shitposting campaigns, a system they would never use for evil. Gersand La Fleche was attacked by an online group of gamers whose activities are known as Gamergate. Initially a social media hashtag for discussion of ethics in gaming journalism, it has increasingly become a catchphrase for the online harassment of female gamers. And it's here where things really start to heat up for the video. Because remember, it did take much longer for Internet stars to get their foothold in the mainstream. Back in the 2000s, you could still become an overnight star a LA William Hung in 2004. But not without the help of a nationally successful media conglomerate like American Idol. In 2007, YouTube was still too niche to turn someone into a household name without a lot of help. And that help came in the form of Tom Green. Somehow, the Freddy got fingered guy. Never seen it. Don't really want to. But a group of 4chan users organized a shitposting campaign in order to flood Green's livestreamed call in show and start singing Chocolate Rain. Until Tom Green had to ask them what the fuck they were doing. And when he learned the video they were referencing, he loved it. And so while there's no exact moment that Tay's on Day Goes Supersonic, this first celebrity cosign seems to be what got the ball rolling. And very soon after, Boy, oh boy, did people love Tay Zonday. He embodied all that was eccentric about how the Internet was perceived at the time. And it was almost a sign that you knew what the kids were into by knowing who he was. Which led to covers from other artists. Here's John Mayer. Plus about a million expectedly bad parodies. Here's the most popular one, for some reason called Vanilla Snow. Wow, Good one. Vanilla Snow.

[Tay Zonday]

My basketball laundry hill became Vanilla Snow. Open doors with Hot Spaghetti's Vanilla Snow.

[Jamie Loftus]

7.3 million views. No accounting for it. But add this Internet engagement to the appearances in traditional media that Tay made that first year, and he was becoming famous. And I mean, a lot of appearances going viral can be a nightmare. But make no mistake, Tay was not resisting the attention.

[Tay Zonday]

Hey, Tay. Hey. We're digging your Chocolate Rain song. What? We love the song. Oh, what? Can you repeat that? I didn't get it.

[Jamie Loftus]

We like. We like your song a lot.

[Tay Zonday]

Chocolate Rain.

[Jamie Loftus]

Chocolate Rain.

[Tay Zonday]

Yeah. Well, thanks. Are you making get any money just yet off of this catchy tune, Chocolate Rain? You know, I mean, I can't talk about that in too much detail. You know, nothing that changes my life at this point, but, you know, maybe a little bit here and there, but, you know, I take it a day at a time. Who knows? Come on now, come on now. A little bit here or there.

[Jamie Loftus]

Come on.

[Tay Zonday]

How much we talking about? That's all I can say. You know, it's not going to retire to my penthouse in Dubai easily. Gets my vote for song in the summer.

[Jamie Loftus]

From Minneapolis, please welcome Tay Zonday with the song Chocolate Rain to tonight's Internet.

[Tay Zonday]

Talent showcase, Tay Zonday. Wow, Tay, that was a real treat to see you here live in person. Was that your first live performance? It was pretty Much. I did one last week, but pretty new to it. I didn't know if your voice really was that deep or just your singing voice was that. No, that's my voice. It's real Israel. What do you do for a living? I'm a grad student. And can you believe all the attention.

[Jamie Loftus]

That you've gotten for this show?

[Tay Zonday]

No. You know, you just kind of put something silly up on YouTube and it gets lots of attention. So what do you think? I had no idea you could be the next Darth Vader, you know, or at least say, this is cnn. Let's just see. This is cnn. And do you, do you get recognized.

[Jamie Loftus]

In the street and stuff now?

[Tay Zonday]

I do. It was funny. I was at a White Castle fast food chain in the US the other day and, you know, this person was just sticking out the way window as I was trying to order a burger, just like, you know, practically in my car, like Chocolate Rain. Chocolate Rain. So, you know, it does happen.

[Jamie Loftus]

This is just a sampling of Tay's on day's TV and radio appearances from 2007 into 2008. You just heard him on Opie and Anthony, on Jimmy Kimmel, on CNN and on Lily Allen's BBC talk show. And even when he didn't physically appear, he was mentioned on basically every TV institution of the day across genres from the Daily show to Maury and everything in between. Tay also got a bump from traditional print media, which was only just starting to take an eventual nosedive into obscurity. RIP to all my friends jobs. And in a lot of print media, people also tracked tayzonday's journey to attempt to monetize the sudden fame that had come with Chocolate Rain. And so, like a lot of early online successes, we just spoke with Liam Kyle Sullivan about this recently. There weren't any systems in place that could take an online star into a mainstream star in the way there is now. In part because the Hollywood people with money didn't yet understand how the Internet worked really. People who became famous online were viewed as flashes in the pan. And even if they weren't, as Tae explains in her interview and in others, virtually every major music label was trying to work with him at the time that Chocolate Rain got really big. Most big institutions didn't know what to do with Tay. Many publications at the time compared Tae's On Day to William Hungary, basically a novelty act who didn't seem to be in on the joke. Which in my opinion is also a pretty ableist way of assuming that neurodivergent people are incapable of being in on the joke. We'll circle back to that. But what we see Tay try to do to monetize his career and turn it into something more. Because, yeah, he dropped out of grad school shortly after, just like William Hung and Lena Morris did after they went viral. But what we see him do is kind of the playbook we've discussed on the show before, very much the 2000s Internet famous playbook. He sells MP3s, although because chocolate Rain had been up online for so long, it seemed difficult to get much return on investment there. He sold ringtones, he takes meetings in Hollywood, he does public appearances with Mario Lopez. He wins an obscure award from an award that wouldn't exist two years later. He moves to Los Angeles in 2008 and he starts a career in voice acting, which he would later successfully parlay into gigs on Robot Chicken and epic rap battles of history. And because of where he went viral, Tay Zonday makes more videos. And while nothing ever goes anywhere close to as viral as Chocolate Rain, Tay's work on YouTube in the few years that followed the hit seemingly experimented with how to stay relevant on the platform while remaining true to himself. So the question seems to is he going to lean into the perceived comedy of Chocolate Rain that people took away at the time, or was he going to continue with the core motivation behind his first hit, extreme musical earnestness? He tries out both. Here's one of the comedy songs, do the can't dance from September 2007.

[Tay Zonday]

Some do the river dance, some do the salsa dance, Some do the Chittic dance. I do the cancer.

[Jamie Loftus]

And here is a very sincere ballad. This is called Someday and it is also from September 2007.

[Tay Zonday]

You close your eyes and hear my name Someday I'll be talked about. I failed a lot but tried to help I I love you child.

[Jamie Loftus]

But.

[Tay Zonday]

Someday I'll be gone.

[Jamie Loftus]

And then there's the work that kind of falls somewhere in the middle of these two categories, as July 2007's song Internet Dreams best demonstrates. I actually really like this song. It plays for jokes while making some light critiques of people being addicted to the Internet and the nature of viral fame, as Tay was right in the middle of experiencing it himself.

[Tay Zonday]

Man, this Internet is something else kind of Closely the dishes turn green, Everyone chasing their Internet dream. Some like it hot in a triple X funk. Winning the auction, turning money to junk, Camping the flag in a virtual dash. Skipping your wedding to playing a match, shut out a blind zone. You might have been seen sitting alone with your Internet Dream.

[Jamie Loftus]

And at the height of his name recognition, shortly after he'd been established as a reliable tv, radio, and print fixture, Tay gets what I have to assume is the biggest paycheck of his career when he was the face of a Dr. Pepper commercial in November 2007. I give you Cherry Chocolate Rain.

[Tay Zonday]

Allow me to introduce myself My name is J, It's T A Y, T a Y to the Z this is the web and it's gonna murder your TV it was Chocolate Rain wrote a song about that history Chocolate Rain Now I'm paid a hefty, hefty fee Chocolate Rain Listen to the funky rams I weep Chocolate Rain I move away from the mic to breathe he moves his mouth away from the mic so he can breathe. Breathe.

[Jamie Loftus]

Okay, as much as we're enjoying this amazing verse, I'm gonna cut it off here because you can hear and not see this. This is a high budget video where Tay is advertising chocolate Dr. Pepper, which even as a fan sounds repulsive. But the aesthetics of the video are cool and definitely echo how William Hung was presented in his earlier high budget appearances after he first got famous on American Idol.

[Tay Zonday]

Hey, William, I'm Tony the record company guy. Nice to meet you. I want you to meet your new girlfriend.

[Jamie Loftus]

In both of these videos, the viral star is surrounded by hot, scantily clad women who are all over him. And the underlying suggestion is, isn't it funny that women want to be around this awkward guy? Lazy. It's lazy. And in Tay's case, the closest we get to knowing what the original intent of Chocolate Rain was in this video is that early in the song reference to history. But the paid song quickly moves on, mainly focused on Tay's newfound fame and clout. Here's a bit of the second rap guest verse.

[Tay Zonday]

Most downloaded video clips Most explosive video.

[Jamie Loftus]

Chicks making big videos we big city.

[Tay Zonday]

Bros got mad witty flows that give.

[Jamie Loftus]

Any dough oh, make it pop Cherry.

[Tay Zonday]

Whoa TikTok to the clock Little berry flow.

[Jamie Loftus]

And just like that, in short order, it's become a Dr. Pepper commercial. And so here, Tay makes an interesting full circle with this outwardly political song. In the space of a couple of months, he's changed the meaning of Chocolate Rain in order to sell something for someone else. Just as so many political songs have been transformed to warp their meaning before him, he actually commented on the process of working with Dr. Pepper at this time. Ten years later, in an interview with.

[Tay Zonday]

BET, Dr. Pepper approached me to write a song about diet cherry chocolate Dr. Pepper. They didn't like any of the Songs that I made, they said, why don't we just do this song you've already done? And they did a fancy video.

[Jamie Loftus]

So did anyone criticize or even point this out about Chocolate Rain to Cherry Chocolate Rain at the time? Well, not really, but to be fair, Tay himself was pretty avoidant about acknowledging how intensely political the original song was himself. Here are more clips from those same Opie and Anthony and Lily Allen interviews.

[Tay Zonday]

Yeah, I mean. I mean, I think. I mean, it has undertones about, you know, racism and institutional racism. Yeah, yeah, I felt that.

[Jamie Loftus]

But I didn't know if you had, like, a meaning to everything or some.

[Tay Zonday]

Of it was just the kind of words coming at you. So what Tay's trying to say is that Voss was wrong. Again, it's not about her, which, of course, Voss is not. Yeah, he's pretty set to obvious question next.

[Jamie Loftus]

What is Chocolate Rain?

[Tay Zonday]

You know, I always say that the question is more important than the answer.

[Jamie Loftus]

So even when interviewers did ask about the meaning of the song, and I'm honestly kind of impressed that fucking Opie and Anthony thought to. For about 10 years, Tay avoided ever talking about its meaning explicitly, usually saying some version of the song means whatever you think it means. But that would change over 10 years later in 2018, in that same interview with BET titled Haze on Day's Chocolate Rain was more woke than we realized.

[Tay Zonday]

I grew up in a biracial household. My mom's black, my dad's white. We never talked to each other, referred to each other as black and white. So it was a little bit of a shock to go out into the world as I became a teenager. Like, wait, there are these things, and they don't really speak to my life or who I know human beings to be, I guess. Overall, Chocolate Rain was intended as a ballad about institutional racism.

[Jamie Loftus]

And when he was asked why he waited so long to talk about this in the years since, Tay basically cites his own work. Here he is last year talking with Anthony Padilla from Smosh alongside friend of the show Lena Morris.

[Tay Zonday]

For 10 years, I refused to answer that question. I dodged the first time. I actually just came out and said, hey, it's a bad about a ballad about institutional racism was a. A bet interview in 2017. I hate to say it, but I didn't want to ruin everybody's fun. A lot of the perception of it going viral was that it had a comedic potential or people didn't take it super, super seriously. And 80% of people who heard Chocolate Rain believed it was a funny joke and only maybe about 20% of people saw a deeper meaning, whether it was, you know, Black Lives Matter or Trayvon Martin. A lot of people would come back to that and be like, oh, I thought this was about defecation when I was a child, but now I'm looking back and like, I really see this as a serious story about institutional racism. And I'm like, oh, well, thank you.

[Jamie Loftus]

He thought that being overtly political would ruin the fun and probably sabotage his commercial prospects. The only value a song has to capitalism is its ability to sell something, after all. And that's a cynical thing to say. But remember what era this song came out into? Barack Obama had announced his candidacy for President in February 2007, and Chocolate Rain came out in April. More than ever, it was a moment for many liberals of what they called optimism, dare I say hope and change. So let me be clear, that extended this 1990s Clinton era liberal post racial attitude. If a black man could be considered a viable candidate for the American presidency, doesn't that mean racism is over? So for what it's worth, it did seem like a uniquely challenging time to be pushing a radical as well as kind of pessimistic idea with regards to American racism, even though the message of Chocolate Rain itself is true. On YouTube, particularly before that BET interview in 2018, Tay seems most comfortable in the world of infotainment, so there's always a comedy bent to his work, but as you'll hear, he still wants to explore some pretty complex ideas. This is from November 2011 after a few years in LA and weathering the recession, a song called Mama Economy.

[Tay Zonday]

Are you confused about the economy? Well, have no fear, I'm going to explain the American economy right now. Now the dollar Just think of a lack of promise from the government, but the value of the dollar has to be there to be relevant. The value of the dollar comes from China and Iran when they put the cash reserves and a US Dollar plan. They buy treasury bonds from the Federal Reserve.

[Jamie Loftus]

And while plenty of these videos do well as time goes on as Tay alternatively works in voice performance, chases the occasional YouTube trend, but after a while he mainly switches to covering songs he likes. As with Liam Kyle Sullivan's experience performing as Kelly, Tay remained an iconic, beloved early YouTube character. But the timing of his fame made it nearly impossible to capitalize on. And like many early YouTube stars, he didn't have any desire to be a YouTuber, as that came to be known in the years to come. Here he is in a vlog from March 2018, part of the reason is.

[Tay Zonday]

That YouTube has changed so much and I legit don't recognize the platform anymore. Not in a bad way. Just to the point where it's like I'm looking at videos that go viral now and it's like I spent 24 hours in Coca Cola where someone fills a bathtub with Coca Cola and that goes viral. Or I flew using leaf blowers. Which, you know, by the way, he doesn't actually fly in the video, but hey, good, good for him. It went viral. There's this tremendous pressure now to be sensational and extreme.

[Jamie Loftus]

So while Tay participated in Internet retrospectives in the years that followed your classic buzzfeed, I accidentally went virals your Anthony Padilla videos. Tay moved forward in his life, not sharing very much in the meantime. How does he look back on all of it now? Well, it's complicated. So when we come back, the world according to Tay's On Day Bring spring to your door with target circle 360. Get all you need for Easter hosting spring get togethers and more with unlimited same day Delivery through Target. Circle360. From Easter Basket goodies to fresh florals, getting everything the same day is easy. Open the Target app and bring the magic of the season to your door with unlimited same day delivery through Target. Target Circle 360. Visit target.com circle or the Target app for more details. Subscription required. Same day delivery is subject to terms. Applies to orders over $35. Does this podcast make you happy? Of course it does. That's why you're here. But it only comes out once a week for happiness. Every night. You need Adam and Eve. Yes, I'm talking about sex toys. It's cool. It's cool. You have earbuds in right? Adam and Eve, America's most trusted source for adult products, has been making people very happy for over 50 years with thousands of toys for both men and women. Just go to AdamandEve.com now and enter code IHEART for 50% off. Almost any one item plus free discreet shipping. That's AdamandEve.com code IHEART for 50% OFF Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn [e-mail] credit card based on the February 2024 Nielsen report. You're a hustler. You get things done, but you don't always do things for yourself. With JLO Beauty, it takes just a few minutes a day to look like facials are a regular part of your routine. JLO Beauty's Fresh and flawless Skincare Kit includes six skincare products that work as hard as you do. They'll hustle to brighten, firm and hydrate your complexion morning and night. This skincare kit is a one and done solution that is clinically proven to visibly tighten and lift for instant and long lasting results. Cleanse, treat, moisturize, protect. The fresh and flawless Skincare kit does it all. See why the kit's a best seller today? Visit jlobeauty.com deluxe and get an extra 25% off your first shipment plus free gifts with code Deluxe. If you're not satisfied, return the bottles within 60 days for your money back. See the website for details. That's JLo Beauty.com Deluxe to get that JLo glow. Ladies and gentlemen, Tae on day or Adam Bonner. I'll let him tell you. And this interview has been edited for time and clarity.

[Tay Zonday]

I'm Tay Zonday. I sang the song Chocolate Rain which was one of the early viral videos on YouTube. As I'm recording this, I'm almost 43 years old and at the time I was on the cusp of turning 25. So April of 2007 is when the video got uploaded. And of course I've done many other things, as is often the case in entertainment and life here. Do hundreds of things and a couple of them get more attention. William Shatner is primarily known for being Captain Kirk and maybe the Priceline spokesperson in Boston Legal. And he's done hundreds and hundreds of things. The surprising future that was hard to get a perspective on while I was living that moment is that I became sort of this torchbearer and this common point of experiential reference for a moment in Internet history and a moment in, in viral video experience history, I'll see young people commenting on my video saying oh, my parents sent me here as though Chocolate Rain is like the most immaculately preserved tyrannosaurus via this, this, this, this embodiment. You know, the entire world used to be filled with these things and along with some other viral videos of the time like Evolution of Dance or the Shoes video, it became a common touchstone and point of reference. A positive memory that's widely shared. Like people widely share a lot of negative memories. Like everybody who has passed a certain Age remembers where they were when they found out Michael Jackson died or if they're a bit older, John Lennon. And so viral videos are kind of this happy memory that people can come, oh wow, this is a happy memory. A positive memory that many of us share. I was born in 1982 while living in Chicago as the youngest of three by quite a bit. My siblings are 6 and 11 years older than me. My parents were both school teachers. My dad was a high school science teacher. My mother taught elementary school and eventually served 25 years as a principal. Is served is the right word there? I guess you say it's a public service. I mean I definitely had many, many memories of being alone in gigantic school buildings as a child with my mom because she started her principal career when I was about 6. And if you didn't know, principals are often coming in and doing work on Saturday and or Sunday. So not just the five school days of the week. This was before cell phones, so if my mom wanted to talk to me she'd just get on the building wide intercom. I guess if your family owns a bodega, you grew up learning about the food retail business. It kind of felt like elementary schools were our family business. We moved around quite a bit partly because of my mom's principal career. So I had 10 different schools that I attended from kindergarten through 12th grade. Not having a consistent cohort of kids to grow up with or landmarks to interact with over time probably contributed to a sense of loneliness as well as just being the youngest in my family by quite a bit. I felt very intensely and helicopter parented as a child. As school teachers, my parents had plenty of examples of who they did not want their kids to turn out like. I've had the privilege of growing older with both of my parents, so that's been an interesting perspective. Because I barely survived my teenage years. I experienced some bullying in junior high and the start of high school. Anyone who remembers me from that time probably would say more than some. But also for reasons I'll get into that were not completely my parents fault, ended up being self mutilating, suicidal and eventually from about ages 16 to 19, completely non verbal at home and non verbal at home really meant I could not be verbal anywhere. I believed there was any possibility of my parents hearing me speak, which also meant the outside world. I remember being 17 years old attending my therapeutic day school as a special ed placement and my therapist outside of her job description said we needed to do our sessions walking around outside. It took her multiple weeks to convince me that My mother or father might not, incidentally, be among the cars that passed by as we walked outside. And therefore it was safe for me to speak. And the school was in Wilmette, Illinois, which is a very storybook and bucolic place to walk around. A lot of people would ask me later on, what was it like when your voice got deep? And the truthful answer is, I was grunting like a toddler and completely nonverb and terrified of being verbal. Eventually, that same therapist, again, outside of her job description, did family therapy between my parents and I when I was about 18 and a half and I finally started to at least occasionally and awkwardly be able to speak. I didn't appreciate when I was a teenager that getting to know my parents as a teenager, and then during my 20s and then in my 30s and then in my 40s, I would be getting to know different dimensions and different layers and different vulnerabilities of both of them, which would then give me new insights into what happened in my childhood. There's a lot that I was not allowed to do in terms of pop culture when I was a child. I was not allowed to own any toys with weapons. So no GI Joes, no he man, no she ra, no watching Indiana Jones or MacGyver or any of those other things that one might have thought would be iconic for a 1980s childhood. I resented while growing up the way that what I perceived as over parenting forced me into this mold of being like a Steve Urkel or Carlton Banks, the archetypical nerd and model child. I realized much, much later in life that my parents had their own traumas that were unique to them, that informed the way that they parented me, and then that I'm also autistic and had certain sensitivities in the ways that I reacted to stimuli. You know, there was a lot happening that nobody was particularly conscious of at the time, but everybody did the best that they knew how to do with, you know, the person that they could bring to the table in those moments. I was a loved child, and my parents loved each other. They've been together more than 50 years as of this recording. They're still alive. Knock on wood. Cross your fingers. As people get older, my father would want me to clarify to you in this story that I was a provided for child. We were never rich, but we were also never poor. And it's one of his proudest life accomplishments. So, yeah, I was born in 82, and a lot of the things that you can mention, pop culture wise, I just wasn't allowed. To Ninja Turtles not allowed. Terminator 2 not allowed. Wayne's World not allowed. Beavis Butthead not allowed. MC Hammer and other rap music not allowed. Kurt Cobain or Nirvana crunch music not allowed. South park, which eventually parodied me. I wasn't allowed to watch that when I was 15 years old. @ the time that it launched. I would say that black affect and vernacular was not allowed, but it was really just that anything that was not highly educated affect and vernacular was not allowed. I did become quite a Star Trek fan starting around age 9. Both of the original series, then Star the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, Star Trek and then especially characters like Spock and Data and Odo existed on sort of a nerdpass island that did not set off my parents anxieties and therefore it was allowed. There were aspects of my childhood family life that could be emotionally immature and tumultuous, not always have the healthiest dynamics. And so characters like an Android or a Vulcan who have no emotion, I retreated into those characters to process that the same way that Star Trek got a pass. I felt like Disney and Broadway music was the only thing I was allowed to listen to musically. I felt a tremendous pressure at all ages as a child to both cosplay being older because my siblings were older and cosplay being a future governor or senator or future pinnacle of human achievement. In some ways, particularly my father could lean towards being sad. And I kind of realized in retrospect, I became sort of this cosplay of an Ayn Rand protagonist, this little seedling who over signaled my trajectory of being a future perfect human in order to soothe and assure both parents. My parents, being baby boomers, were never the type to be particularly vulnerable with their feelings. On one hand, it can be good, I think, to not turn your kids into your therapist. But on the other hand, when feelings and irrationality and subjectivity that we each have inside of us just kind of present without any interrogation or explanation, that can be disorienting for a child because speaking on those things in a way that is honest and that validates everybody involved is a life skill. Instead of learning that skill, I learned to care for my parents by pretending to be perfect and repress my true self, which probably leaned towards wanting to be more of a wild child. My parents would ardently say this was never their intention, but at times in my life it has felt like that has been the only pathway to validation from them or my family. Both Gene Roddenberry with Star Trek and Disney Renaissance movies had a sappy vision of life being a post racial utopia very imperfectly. If you think of some original Star Trek episodes or movies like Pocahontas and Mulan. We didn't talk about race in my family. My dad's white, my mom's black. I. I do not present as white passing at all. I present as black. I was not ever allowed to identify as being black. And I think my parents meant well. Their love blossomed towards the end of the civil rights movement, and they truly believed that a post racial utopia was America's future. And whether or not that was happening in America, I think they tried to create that in their vision of the family. My parents would say that theirs is a true love story, that race never occurred to either of them. And it's kind of this dumb idea that the world retconned onto the trajectory of their lives. So if at any point in my childhood I even deigned to suggest that the black identity was a key and salient experience in my own life, my mom would immediately redirect me and say, you come from two heritages. Black was like the F word in my household if used in the first person by us as children. My mom might rarely use it if she was talking to one of her best friends on the phone, but she really didn't use it either. That created plenty of interesting tensions for me as a teenager in the 1990s, which, if anyone recalls, was not a post racial utopia. And in some ways, I feel like my mom did not ever want my father to feel left out of my life experience or for me to feel like I was somehow less the son of my father, which America did not give my mom an easy job because that's exactly what it tells me, that I am less the son of my white father. I mean, our first black president was biracial. He didn't get to use his mom's racial identity. There's a lot more to be said about my teenage years especially, but I'm gonna zoom ahead on the timeline to being age 21, because there was an awkward moment when I was an undergrad. That's a very teachable moment. And we had moved to Washington State by this point. I had started learning more, as often happens in college, about marginalization theory and critical race theory and radicalism and bell hooks. And I was having lunch with my parents at Hometown Buffet, of all places. Remember those restaurants? And I started excitedly parroting the language used by bell hooks and talking to my parents like, yeah, the world is run by white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. And my father started to cry and as a little tear started to run down his eye, it's almost like a part of him was saying, not me. And I feel like that moment is this micro encapsulation of American society and the way that some terminology like capitalist patriarchy, like white supremacy as part of critical race theory, as part of sociological marginalization theory can land cause. My father was not alone in that type of reaction. I think a lot of people react by feeling aghast, feeling sad, feeling personally attacked, and not just white people. Because my mom was present, she was not crying, but she also did not like to hear that language. I want you to pause the story of my life in this moment with my father, because I'm gonna use this moment to unpack a whole lot of things in a whole lot of different timelines. In seeking to answer this question, why did my white father cry when 21 year old me enthusiastically celebrated learning about white supremacist capitalist patriarchy from bell hooks?

[Jamie Loftus]

We'll be back with more tays on day Bring spring to your door with target circle 360. Get all you need for Easter hosting spring get togethers and more with unlimited same day delivery Through Target Circle360. From Easter Basket goodies to fresh florals, getting everything the same day is easy. Open the Target app and bring the magic of the season to your door with unlimited same day delivery Through Target Circle 360. Visit target.com circle or the Target app for more details. Subscription required. Same day delivery is subject to terms applies to orders over $35. Does this podcast make you happy? Of course it does. That's why you're here. But it only comes out once a week. For happiness, every night. You need Adam and Eve. Yes, I'm talking about sex toys. It's cool. It's cool. You have earbuds in right? Adam and Eve, America's most trusted source for adult products, has been making people very happy for over 50 years with thousands of toys for both men and women. Just go to AdamandEve.com now and enter code IHEART for 50% off. Almost any one item plus free discreet shipping. That's AdamandEve.com code IHEART for 50% OFF. Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn [e-mail] credit card based on the February 2024 Nielsen report catch the new Hulu original comedy Mid Century Modern from the creators of Will and Grace, executive producer Ryan Murphy and director James James Burrows. When three best friends move in together, Palm Springs will never be the same. Bunny, Jerry and Arthur are already close friends, but when they decide to live together, it's a new chapter with a new family. And speaking of family, don't forget Bunny's mom, Sybil, who's along for the ride. Whether it's a trip to Fire island or a local congresswoman with a wild side, these roomies know how to do it with style. They're fun, they're fabulous, and they're turning life's lemons into spiked lemonade. So shake up a batch of cocktails, relax by the pool and get ready for some serious shade. A new comedy with heart, soul and sass, Mid Century Modern stars Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer, Nathan Leigh Graham and Linda Lavin. All episodes of Mid Century Modern are now streaming on Hulk.

[Tay Zonday]

I finished my undergrad in Communications in 2004 at the Evergreen State College where as a footnote, I was the 2021 commencement speaker. In late summer 2004, I moved to Minneapolis and began the PhD program in American Studies at the University of Minnesota. I still see Minnesota like a Minnesotan. I have extended family in Minneapolis who I visited as a child, so I was always a part time Minnesotan. Even growing up in Chicago, I did not thrive as a graduate student. To enjoy being a graduate student, I put enjoy there in quotes. You have to either really love research or love teaching, love pedagogy. And I just I had so much personal stuff going on I couldn't focus on either of them. There are aspects of my childhood and the way I was raised. As well as being autistic, I was first diagnosed at age 15, where I ended up being very emotionally regressed. I love my parents dearly, but it's probably not inaccurate to describe my life as ages 0 to 18. Me becoming a legal adult and then ages 18 to 36 is me kind of figuring out how regressed my childhood actually left me. And the next 18 years we're figuring out how to retread the first 18 and mature to being a viable human being in society. So age 36 was my age 18, so with any luck, age 100 will be my age 50. Anyway, by the summer of 2007 when chocolate rain went viral, I was a distracted and middling PhD student dealing with a lot of unseen internal baggage. I apologize to any undergrads who had me as a teaching assistant during this period of time because I think I was a hot mess. Although to be fair, institutional pedagogy is also a hot mess, so it was sort of a tango. Instead of being passionate about teaching and research, I had been passionate about independent music pursuits for the prior three years, and I intermittently performed at open mics throughout the greater Minneapolis metropolitan area. Honestly, I was never a great performer or singer live. I've learned that I'm very, very sensory overwhelmed, both in hapophobia, sensitivity to touch, hyperacusis, misophonia, sensitivity to sound, photophobia, sensitivity to light, and all of that kind of overwhelms me in live environments or honestly, just everyday society environments. But I didn't know that quite as clearly at the time. YouTube came along and it was easier for me to sing in my living room than it was for me to drag an amp and keyboard and other stuff along to an open mic. So I started uploading content to YouTube. I invented Tay's On Day, which is not my birth name. My birth name is Adam Potter. But Tay's On Day was this alter ego for my music pursuits, and I assumed it would never have any intersection with my serious career, which at the time was on the trajectory of finishing my PhD and and eventually presumably becoming a professor or researcher of some sort. My first YouTube videos I was singing and playing the stage piano, the same thing I did at open mics, and eventually I wrote a song over a backing track that had been created by an Australian who goes by the moniker of Kubi. Michelle Flannery, who was YouTube's music editor at the time, reached out to me to ask if I would like to have that video featured. The song is titled Love on YouTube's front page, and that was the email that every YouTuber dreamed of receiving. In early 2007, it felt like winning the lottery to be featured on the front page. I knew the week that the love video was going to be featured, and I also knew that I could sort of double dip on the exposure that that feature created for me by having another video in the automatic or default player of my YouTube channel so that people who watched the featured video on the front page would click and see this other video on my channel. So I had already written the lyrics to Chocolate Rain over the prior six weeks and I had the arrangement idea in my head for a number of years. A lot of my songs are like that they come together in various conceptual pieces in my brain and eventually I decide to assemble all those pieces. So I rushed Chocolate Rain to completion the weekend before. I knew this other video would be featured on YouTube's front page, and so I released it. It did not immediately go viral. It was uploaded in April. I'd say By June of 2007 it had about 30,000 views. Then somebody posted it on digg.com, which is kind of an earlier version of Reddit with a slower cycle time. Someone saw it on that social bookmarking site Digg, and decided to post it on 4chan. 4chan was an Internet forum primarily known as an image board and also known for being, let's just say, very inclusive, to put it mildly, with regard to the content that surfaced on their BE sub forum. Other than my own experience, which is that when Chocolate Rain was posted on 4chan in 2007, I entered a succession of nerds that 4chan both embraced and helped to spread on social media. Prior nerds, including Gary Bosma and Tom Green, whom are both more than able to tell their own stories. So that's the story of my recollection. My first aha moment that Chocolate Rain might be going more viral was in early July of 2007 when 4chan successfully prank called Tom Green's late night show that he was at the time doing in his living room and a caller broke out and randomly busted out singing Chocolate Rain. And you know, Tom Green being a good improv comedian, he took it as a prank call and yes, added yes, drunk the rain and slammed the phone and hung up. And I was kinda like, oh wait, I've heard of Tom green before. After theding.com and then 4chan exposure, chocolate rain began to take off as a wider cultural phenomenon. A day or two later, Carson Daly, who was doing a late night show on I believe NBC at the time, featured it on his show. And in mid July it took off as a national news story where media outfits began feverishly attempting to contact me. I did my first radio interview ever on Opie and Anthony, which was not a small platform, and my first television interview ever on CNN Saturday morning, which was not an obscure show. I was a terrible, awkward, inexperienced interviewer. I spoke like a nerd who had had very little human contact and who was socially regressed, being plucked out of my living room and stuck in front of a national spotlight because that's who I was. There was a magical Santa Claus aspect about the way Chocolate Rain was going viral, because it was not going viral as a deep ballad about institutional racism. It was going viral as an oh, wow, there's the funny guy who moves like Mr. Bean with a voice like Barry White and has absolutely no awareness of it. So from mid July to the end of July 2007, I probably did 30 or 40 different media interviews and. But in none of them was I actually ready to be a person. Because I said earlier that there was a little bit of strategy in my not just blurting out polemically my intended meaning for Chocolate Rain. And you're kind of sitting back, oh, yeah, it's kind of a joke. And let it be a joke. The deeper reason is that while autism spectrum disorder is probably my most public and formal diagnosis, I probably also experience dissociative identity disorder, also formerly known as multiple personality disorder, which is basically a trauma response that happens when you are, for whatever reason, not able to naturally develop and cohere a healthy individual identity in your childhood. That's not all it is, but that's what it is for me. And what happens in many experiences of dissociative identity disorder, including my own, is you end up being kind of a receiver of identity, and you never built any infrastructure to push back on that. And so with me receiving no autism diagnosis until I was a teenager, my parents, through emotional intuition, sort of improvised their own applied behavior analysis methodology for me to live. I've never been a parent, and it's kind of like fighting in war. You shouldn't speak too authoritatively on it without actually doing it. But I think there's a day to day drudgery of it, of how do I get this sentient bag of liquids out the door someday and able to thrive. So like I said before, my parents are passionate, loving, imperfect people. Part of their parenting is informed by their own traumas. But I was not an easy project to raise, and it's kind of amazing I developed into any type of functioning adult, regressed or not. So I can't take everything that I know in 2025 and ask, well, hey, why wasn't that done in 1985 when I was 2 and 3 years old? All of this is important backstory for why I dodged and hemmed and hawed and did not talk about the intended meaning of chocolate rain for 10 years when I say I did not know how to be a person while I believe I was trending worldwide on Google as Chocolate Rain was going viral. That's not hyperbole, that's not metaphor. It's psychiatrically true. Now imagine me not knowing this about myself at the time when I'm appearing on Jimmy Kimmel, three out of the four major music labels of the time wanted to do deals with me. Random wealthy people were contacting me to like please come sing at my kids Bar Mitzvah publishers wanted to do book deals with me. I quickly began to feel like I was floating in space and just a spectator to this cult of personality called Tay Zonde. Depersonalization Derealization Disorder. DPDR is another psychiatric diagnosis that can be a comorbidity of autism. I feel like I should stop listing psychiatric diagnoses because I've often joked that the DSM 5, the prevailing authority on psychiatric conditions. It's just my memoir but even as the momentum of Chocolate Rain and its attention continued that October I opened for Girl Talk at First Avenue, which is made famous by Prince and his Purple Rain song. I did a big remix with Dr. Pepper. The following spring I was parodied on South Park. I did did Weezer's Pork and Beans video that brought many viral stars together. The following summer 2008, I won a Webby Award, all while neglecting my graduate studies and being politely asked to leave the PhD program after four years with a master's degree, an offer that I accepted. Notice how I describe this period of my life through headline grabbing events that I participated in, but that were largely initiated by other people, not myself. Because While I was 25 and 26 years old on the outside in 2007 and 2008 on the inside, I was still six or seven years old and learning how to process being in contact with an overstimulating world that my parents had largely said, well, just don't be in contact with it. You're not allowed to be in contact with it. Well, you know, that life strategy kind of sort of worked until I accidentally went viral. And of course nobody knew what going viral was. It was kind of the first time, or one of the first times, like being launched with Sputnik. Well, we think it's going to orbit the earth and be called a satellite soldier boys in another one with his crank dad video. If Russian dressing heard that terrible accident would pretend to be Awkwafina. So while I was great at conceptualizing Tay's On Day as a recognizable and iconic brand, Adam Potter, who I actually am outside of Tay's On Day, lacked the developmental and life skills to hew that brand coherently out of a chaotic world. It's hard to describe the magnitude of just the sensory experience that overwhelmed me just walking around in public or being anywhere as Chocolate Rain blew up and continued to become sort of a phenomenon. Because you know, I'd be in the drive through at White Castle and the person practically falls out the window into my lap trying to take my picture as they're handing me my sliders. And it's not just my face that's recognizable, just my body and movement style and mannerisms stick out like big birds. A DHL driver almost crashed his courier van rolling down his window yelling Chocolate Rain. And I was on my bike. I had my helmet on, I had sunglasses on. I did not have an inch of skin exposed. If I robbed a 7 11, completely covered up the entire world, that's Tay Zonday. Even if they hadn't thought about me for 15 years. Just put microphones at all the intersections. He'll be trapped because he moves away. I don't know if my jokes are funnier or this moment where I feel like I have to break the fourth wall and acknowledge each one. Like a three year old who just has to show everybody the picture I drew. So I just described some of the magnitude of public attention that entered my life kind of permanently after Chocolate Rain blew up. Now keep that in mind. Now combine that with the fact that being unremarkable and blending in had been my life and heart and soul's passionate desire from the time I was very young. Cause it's exactly what I was forbidden to be. I couldn't just be a kid. I had to be the teacher's son, the principal's son. That couldn't be my age. I was always surrounded by older families, so I had to be older. Plus my father might have some of my special needs diagnoses. But undiagnosed being a boomer who just mental health care wasn't acceptable when he came of age and he just never believed in it. I know in my own life experience that I've developed many maladaptive beliefs and behaviors to cope with being autistic in a neurotypical world. My crude definition of a maladaptation is an adaptation that helps you survive a specific environmental hostility, but can itself be injurious or counterproductive. One maladaptive attitude of mine was that hey, if I'm never allowed to be normal and never allowed to do normal things, my only permitted pathway to confidence and self esteem was to lean into being weird and bizarre. And that maladaptive behavior was very much modeled by my father. Because my father can often be shy and or sensitive, but he is manic and confident when he has an opportunity to dramatically demonstrate both being weird and correct. Some of you go wow, Tay, you don't say. But my point is that while during my childhood proud weirdness was my only existential option and a behavior that was modeled for me that conflicted with my true desire that all I wanted was to dump this affect and have some actual friends and consume some actual popular culture, dabble in actual vice and have it all be unremarkable. So I obsessed over my heart just went pitter pitter pat. My entire childhood from the youngest ages I can remember like three, all the way to like being non verbal and and taken five years to graduate high school at age 19. Like my entire childhood and even early adulthood, I just obsessed over this desire to be more normal. Now in practice, when I got a little bit older, got to know some more people and some more intimate details of more people's lives, I kind of found out that a lot of people got some messed up stuff in their closets. I don't know if anybody's that normal. You ever have that experience where you believe that your family has all these problems and then you learn about somebody else's family like oh shoot, okay, guess we're okay sometimes. But I still to this day struggle with a limiting self belief. It's a belief that goes back to childhood trauma that if I'm in a predicament or encountering adversity, the problem is that I need to be more normal or be more conventional, more of what's expected. Because I lived my whole childhood in what felt like some upside down, staring at, ogling at normalcy, as if the world was in a cage and everything outside my parents control was this menagerie. The truth is I was in the menagerie and often felt it when I got teased by or had to interact with other kids. A big takeaway of feeling involuntarily shoved into an embrace of weird affect while actually wanting to be less remarkable. Is that independent of race, gender, sexuality, height or any other personal attribute, I. I felt constantly marginalized as a child and harmed by that marginalization and resentful towards it. So even without sociological marginalization theory or critical race theory, I am feeling from ages barely beyond being a toddler, like I am missing things that are key to connecting with and belonging in the rest of the species. So you can bet that when I first encountered those types of theories in college, I took to them like a lawnmower dumped in the battles grave on I'm like stop the movie. I am mowing all of this. I'm the main character now. I didn't even know Grass existed. They told me I was a snowblower, that one. I feel like I lost some people. Not everybody, but I lost some people because y'all aren't overall that imaginative. Sometimes I really have to think, am I staying within the abstraction bandwidth of my audience?

[Jamie Loftus]

And that's as good a place as any to end the first part of our taeu's On Day series. He's the best, and this Thursday day we're going to hear more from him. As Tay admits throughout this interview file, he does have a tendency to go on some real tangents. So I assembled what really amounts to the story of his political awakening. Spurred on by this moment, he just spoke about his father crying when hearing what Tay had discovered about writing and theory around race in America. So this Thursday, the political work world according to Tayzon Day 16th Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It is written, hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad13 voice act acting is from Grant Crater and Pet shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my cats Flea and Casper, and my pet rock bird who will outlive us all. Bye. Bring spring to your door with Target Circle360. Get all you need for Easter hosting spring get togethers and more with unlimited same day Delivery through Target Circle360. From Easter Basket goodies to fresh florals, getting everything the same day is easy. Open the Target app and bring the magic of the season to your door with unlimited same day Delivery through Target Circle360. Visit target.com circle or the Target app for more details. Subscription required. Same day delivery is subject to terms. Applies to orders over $35. Does this podcast make you happy? Of course it does. That's why you're here. But it only comes out once a week. For happiness, every night. You need Adam and Eve. Yes. I'm talking about sex toys. It's cool. It's cool. You have earbuds in, right? Adam and Eve, America's most trusted source for adult products, has been making people very happy for over 50 years with thousands of toys for both men and women. Just go to AdamAndEve.com now and enter code IHEART for 50% off. Almost any one item plus free discreet shipping. That's AdamAndEve.com code IHEART for 50% OFF. Hello, it is Ryan and we could all use an extra bright spot in our day.

[Tay Zonday]

Couldn't we?

[Jamie Loftus]

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[Tay Zonday]

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[Jamie Loftus]

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[Tay Zonday]

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[Jamie Loftus]

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[Tay Zonday]

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[Jamie Loftus]

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