Chocolate Rain (2007) - The Story Behind Mzansi's Viral Memory

Adam Bahner, a graduate student in Minneapolis, wrote and recorded Chocolate Rain himself and uploaded it in April 2007. The lyrics are about systemic racism and inequality. The delivery is a deep, unexpected bass from a slight young man, and he leans away from the microphone to breathe, adding an on-screen note explaining why.

It reached the front page of major aggregator sites in July 2007 and became one of the defining clips of YouTube's second year, at the exact moment the platform was working out whether it was a video host or a culture.

The original upload passed 130 million views, with tens of millions more across remixes, parodies and cover versions. In 2007 that placed it among the largest non-corporate uploads on the internet.

It also earned Bahner real income and commercial work, making him one of the first people to convert an accidental viral moment into a sustainable creative career rather than a single news cycle.

The subject matter landed differently in South Africa than it did elsewhere. A song about race, poverty and who gets left out of the story is not abstract here. Many South African listeners took the lyrics seriously while the rest of the internet was busy quoting the breathing note.

It also spread through the same channels as everything else in 2007 Mzansi: office email, MXit chatter, and burned CDs of downloaded clips shared at school. For students in that period it was proof that you could publish something political from a bedroom with no budget and no permission.

Tay Zonday is still active online, still performs the song, and speaks openly about how strange it is to be permanently attached to one 2007 upload. He has released other music and voice work over the years.

As of 2026 the original video remains available on his channel and is regularly revisited in discussions about early YouTube, about novelty versus substance, and about how the internet decides which serious work it will treat as a joke.