About
Biggie Cheese is a rapping mouse character from the 2006 computer-animated comedy film Barnyard, who is named after the deceased rapper Biggie Smalls. Online, the character gained much notoriety after being featured in a series of screenshots depicting an erotic chat conversation.
Origin
On August 4th, 2006, Barnyard was released by Nickelodeon Movies. It centers around a farm of anthropomorphic animals who sing and dance while humans are not present. In the film, a rapping mouse named Biggie Cheese performs a cover of the 1995 dancehall song “Boombastic” by Shaggy. On May 7th, 2010, YouTuber sytg100 uploaded a clip of the scene, which gained over 360,000 views and 300 comments over the next seven years (shown below, left). On April 4th, 2011, YouTuber amir bayatra uploaded the Biggie Cheese scene with the 1996 rap song “Big Poppa” by Biggie Smalls playing in the background (shown below, right).
Spread
Over the next five years, the character received few mentions online. On November 6th, 2016, a parody YouTube channel for Biggie Cheese called “BiggieCheeseVEVO” uploaded its first video.[4] On November 20th, the Unironically Exposing Furries Worldwide Facebook[5] page posted screenshots of a chat conversation in which a person demands to role-play a sexual encounter with Biggie Cheese (shown below). The original post has since been deleted.
On November 21st, 2016, YouTuber Fudge uploaded a dramatic reading of the chat conversation (shown below, left). On November 23rd, YouTuber Gook Spook uploaded a remix of the song “Straight Outta Compton” over a spinning image of Biggie Cheese (shown below, center). Later in the month, a parody of the Watermelon Chicken video featuring a poorly-animated Biggie Cheese began circulating the internet. The parody (viewable here) gained thousands of smiles on iFunny after being posted by Hand_Eyes, an account specializing in videos based on Oobi hand puppets.[7] Biggie Cheese memes would go on to become closely associated with Oobi, as described in the “On iFunny” section below.
Also on November 23rd, Urban Dictionary[1] user Choose another name submitted an entry for “Biggie Cheese,” defining him as “one of the best rappers coming in 2017.” The following day, Redditor Hatewrecked submitted a post recommending viewers “buy all Biggie Cheese stocks ASAP” to the /r/MemeEconomy subreddit.[2] A subreddit called “Biggie Cheese Sanctuary” was also created. Meanwhile, the original roleplay screenshots were reposted on Imgur[3] by user Curiouspolice.
In December, Biggie Cheese developed a large ironic following on iFunny through images depicting him as a beloved icon of both furries and rappers. Over a thousand different posts on the site have been tagged with “biggiecheese” since the first Biggie image surfaced on November 28.[6] The “Biggie Cheese Challenge,” in which users pretend to bring Biggie Cheese into their roleplay chats, has become fairly popular on Facebook.[8]
Various Examples
On iFunny
On sites such as iFunny, images of Biggie Cheese are commonly associated with Otis the cow from Barnyard and the hand-puppet characters from Oobi (partly due to an episode of the show where they dress up like rock stars). In a fashion similar to Drakeposting and Triggering, many of these images exploit Biggie’s facial expressions to make it appear as if he is expressing approval or disapproval of other characters (below, left).[9]
Search Interest
External References
[1]Urban Dictionary – Biggie Cheese
[2]Reddit – Attention – Buy all Biggie Cheese stocks ASAP
[3]Imgur – Biggie Cheese Memes
[4]YouTube – BiggieCheeseVEVO
[5]Facebook – Unironically Exposing Furries Worldwide
[6]iFunny – Biggie Cheese
[7]Hand_Eyes – Biggie Cheese Watermelon Chicken
[8]The Daily Dot – How the Rapping Mouse From ‘Barnyard’ Mounted a Meme Comeback
[9]iFunny – Triggered Boombastic