‘I Just Lost My Dawg’ is a rap lyric from Roddy Ricch's song "Ricch Forever" that became a viral meme on TikTok and other social media apps. It started going viral in 2023 and shifted to a poorly-sung cover meme in 2024.
What does ‘'I Just Lost My Dawg' mean?
The 'I Just Lost My Dawg' meme doesn’t have any real meaning behind it, but rather cover versions from TikTokers such as TRINITY (@trinitystreet) and Don Blanco (@donblancoaventuras) have been utilized as rap sounds for sh*tposts and photo and video slideshows.
Meme origins
The meme’s sound originates from rapper Roddy Ricch's song "Ricch Forever" where he sings about a friend of his who died too soon but taught him “how to chase the bag” before he passed away.
The song was released on September 27th, 2018, and never was given an official music video despite being one of the rapper’s most popular songs. An unofficial music video was posted by Hip Hop/R&B Lyrics (@hiphoprnblyrics1) to YouTube on October 24th of that same here, where it has gained over 27 million views and 236K likes in nearly six years.
The opening lyrics of the song are:
I just lost my dawg
[N-word], my brother taught me how to chase the bag
Get right in the field, I had to make a bag
The day he lost his soul, wish I could take it back
‘I Just Lost My Dawg’ goes TikTok viral
Before its status as a sh*tpost audio, the sound went viral in 2022 after TikToker @hav7x shared a video with a progressively sped-up version of the "I just lost my dawg" lyric. The audio was later used by other TikTokers along with meme edits and slideshows that had nothing to do with each other.
The meme evolved further after an anime fan used the lyric in the Gojo Backshots meme, editing clips from the popular Jujutsu Kaisen anime series to show main character Satoru Gojo in seemingly compromising positions. It also crossed over into other shows, like Naruto.
Finally, in 2024, the sound has evolved still further, in large part due to inexpertly sung covers of Roddy Ricch’s original song. The two main TikTokers in question are TRINITY (@trinitystreet) and Don Blanco (@donblancoaventuras), whose TikTok sounds have become the backdrop of “YTP” (YouTube poop) meme edits of clips, photos, and memes that are completely disconnected from each other.
These style of videos were described in a Consequence of Sound blog post as “a recycling of videos from YouTube, often consisting of nostalgic pop culture footage and other video memes—chopped, screwed, de-molecularized, and manhandled into a goulash of video nonsense.”
People in the comments immediately knew that the sounds were going to become a meme, and even the comments themselves took on a meme-like quality.
