Reaction Videos Are Helping UK Rappers Reach a U.S. Audience
Today, the most-viewed clips on YouTube are not cats leaping at the sight of cucumbers or babies biting lemons, but music videos. And on YouTube, videos beget videos. Just as people used to film their reactions to the latest viral clip, more recently a whole cottage industry has grown around the concept of the music reaction video. Filed alongside unboxing clips and inane but sharply-cut vlogs, these reaction videos are extremely straightforward in format: You watch someone watch a music video, listening as they comment on particular lyrics, expressions, shots, locations, outfits, and other details. What makes some more watchable than others ultimately comes down to how entertaining or insightful the reaction is, more so than the music video itself.
One surprisingly compelling subgenre of these clips comes from American YouTube personalities who are hearing, seemingly for the first time, rap tracks from the United Kingdom. There’s something oddly wholesome about the cultural cross-pollination that goes on in this space: A trawl through the comments won’t unearth the slew of racist jibes and misogyny that otherwise litter YouTube; instead you get intercontinental slang translations and suggestions of more songs and artists to check out next. The people making the videos—like No Life Shaq, ZIAS!, and Lost In Vegas, to name just a few—are typically enthusiastic, seemingly unrehearsed, and occasionally flabbergasted by what they’re seeing and hearing. At best, they can rack up views by the million. And reaction clips are the only way to watch certain UK drill videos, after British police began ordering YouTube takedowns supposedly related to knife violence.
Clearly the internet has made the world feel like a much smaller place, but for UK music scenes like grime, drill, and road rap that grew up in largely distinct corners of London, YouTube has presented a new universe of possibility. The site is now a vital hub for these subgenres, and artists have been absorbed into YouTube culture, for better or worse. Could this be their ticket to international stardom? While grime favorites like Stormzy and Skepta have been able to cultivate a stateside fanbase, no UK rapper has managed to emulate their homegrown successes across the pond. But in today’s world, if you want something badly enough, sometimes you just have to work out who you need to pay to get it.
Louisville, Kentucky’s Tremayne Yocum, 25, spends his time outside of work filming reactions to UK rap videos under the moniker Mansa Mayne. Yocum originally launched his channel in April 2018 to document the growth of his dreadlocks. Within a few months, one of his UK-based subscribers, Dan Gill, sent him a message suggesting he respond to British rap. Per Gill’s recommendation, the YouTuber started surfing key UK rap channels like GRM Daily and Link Up TV, looking for tracks to include in reaction videos. As he embraced the format, his subscriber numbers grew from hundreds to thousands—and the most dedicated among them had plenty to say. “I’ll be honest with you,” Yocum says with a chuckle, “I had no type of knowledge of UK music. It was so bad because I was pronouncing people’s names wrong, and I would hear about it in the comments section.”
While Yocum maintains that his channel is mostly about entertaining people, he also acknowledges that his videos provide a platform for UK artists to reach a broader audience. “Somebody like me, I’d never heard of these artists before,” he says, referring to rappers like Fredo, Dave, and Stormzy, “but now I know other Americans who’ve heard of them because of me.”
That’s exactly what marketers are counting on.
Popular YouTube channels posting reaction videos “automatically brings more eyes to UK artists and spreads [their music] to a totally different territory,” says Cat Park, the founder of Ten Letter PR, whose roster reads like a who’s who of UK rap talent (67, Mist, K Koke, Krept & Konan). When No Life Shaq first posted about Manchester rapper Aitch’s “Straight Rhymez” freestyle, he could barely believe the original clip had only been viewed 67,000 times. Today, Shaq’s reaction has been seen almost 300,000 times and the freestyle itself, propelled on by its viral appeal, has clocked more than 12,000,000 views.
But Alice French, the UK publicity manager for online music distributor Ditto Music, wonders to what extent reaction video views translate into streams on Spotify or Apple Music. Still, she cites the clips as an important tool for connecting with young, hard-to-reach demographics abroad. She refers to one of her artists, Avelino, a UK rapper known for his intricate lyricism, as an ideal subject for reaction clips. “It’s just opened up a different area of notoriety for him,” she says, “but I don’t think people, as yet, have seen the full potential it can have.”
Neither Park nor French are sure where exactly these video-makers sit in the marketing mix: Should they be treated like critics or influencers? At present, they seem to float indistinctly between the two. Luisa-Christie is a London-based “micro influencer” who also works within the music industry coordinating influencer marketing campaigns for major record labels. She says that reactions videos “do fall under the influencer umbrella,” but are still considered something of a niche within YouTube culture. One relatively crude way to differentiate the two is by whether these YouTubers are being paid to film their reactions. Increasingly, money is changing hands.
Yocum says that offers for payment are becoming much more common, while Park says that marketing plans that include reaction videos will have money set aside in the budget accordingly. Fees, however, remain relatively small—at least in comparison with the eye-watering amounts that top-tier Instagram influencers and video game streamers charge for posts. A rap reaction video could run anywhere from $100 or so, up to a few thousand. Both Yocum and Park expect those rates to continue rising exponentially. French sees it having “a similar trajectory to YouTubers, who now do a lot of paid or sponsored content,” and suggests that could lead to viewers losing trust in what they’re watching. “I think it’s inevitable that’ll happen,” she says, “but I kind of hope that it doesn’t because it would be nice to keep that authenticity.”
All of this raises the question of whether reaction videos should be taken with the ounce of salt that typical influencer content requires. For Yocum’s part, he doesn’t see the introduction of money into the equation as an issue. “I wouldn’t say it would change the way I react,” he says. “If I don’t like [a song], then you’ll be able to tell that I don’t like it. It’s kind of hard to fake.” More recent videos have seen him emphasize this desire to be received as authentic.
For many viewers, these videos serve as ephemeral entertainment rather than music criticism; whether positive reactions have been paid for is perhaps beside the point to them. But there should be more transparency in these cases. (For example, Gill, the subscriber who first suggested Yocum make UK rap reaction videos, says that he was unaware that there is often payment involved.) “We live in a modern world and everyone’s finding their own way of making money, but it can be a bit scary if it’s not controlled correctly,” adds Park, likening the situation to Instagram influencers not disclosing sponsored content.
There is some hope for the preservation of these more genuine spaces, however, and that they might avoid being absorbed into the influencer industrial complex. Between the sharp rise of TikTok and the increase in “collaborations” between labels and Instagram influencers (mostly resulting in background music), reaction videos may become a less appealing option for marketers with money to spend. “YouTube has been around for a long, long time so it’s not the ‘hot new thing,’” says Luisa-Christie, adding that the appeal of reaction videos is in how “unexpected and impromptu they are, so to put #ad before that might be ruining the authenticity.”
Whether that authenticity can sustain the weight of industry check books remains to be seen, but it’s clear that Yocum takes as much pleasure from interacting with his fans as anything else. “I look at it as a passion,” he says, “I’m entertaining people, inspiring people.” And the money? “Money is a bonus.”
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
