by Moe Zilla

Created on: February 05, 2008

Tay Zonday was 24 years old when he became famous - for all the wrong reasons. He'd recorded a song called "Chocolate Rain," and uploaded it to YouTube. But soon his video had people laughing - both with him, and at him.

Tay's song was a serious attempt to bemoan racism and injustice in the world, arguing that "Some stay dry and others feel the pain." But the song's serious tone and deep voice seemed to clash with the young, insecure face singing it. Tay's head first peeked shyly into the frame as the song began, and then he stared with childish intentness as he stood nervously front of the microphone. The pretentious melody just made Tay's odd behavior that much funnier.

And there were other signs of pretentiousness. Tay's face looked strange as he sang, straining to over-enunciate every word. Giant capital letters spelled out his name, followed by even bigger letters urging viewers to download his free mp3. 23 seconds into the video, there was a superfluous subtitle explaining a nuance of Tay's recording session: "I move away from the mic to breathe in." Yes, he even spelled microphone "mic." All these oddities made Tay's video a likely target for re-mixes - and soon the web community had sprung into action.

In one re-mix, the song is sung by Darth Vader, in another, by a puppet version of "McGruff the Crime Dog." Probably the funniest involved ventriloquist Willie Tyler and his dummy Lester. A prankster simply redubbed the dummy's dialogue in a 30-second ad for McDonalds, so that no matter what the question was, his answer was "Chocolate Rain."

Tay, whose real name is Adam Nyerere Bahner, had just earned his proverbial fifteen minutes of fame. The 25-year-old graduate student in Minneapolis was suddenly asked to appear on Jimmy Kimmel live, and found himself written up in major newspapers including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. Despite the laughter, Zonday ultimately achieved something many artists dream about. He performed his song on nationwide TV, and received attention from other song writers like John Mayer and Green Day's Tre Cool.

Tay has uploaded new songs to YouTube, but he seems to have written his own epitaph on "Chocolate Rain." In November of 2007 he recorded an alternate version of the song called "Cherry Chocolate Rain" with rapper Mista Johnson, accompanied by a slick video created by Dr. Pepper. In the song Tay alluded to his own story, saying he "wrote a song about that history," but then added its ultimate outcome.

"Now I'm paid a hefty, hefty fee."

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