21 Savage Supervillain

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About

21 Savage Supervillain refers to a series of image macros featuring a picture of rapper and recording artist 21 Savage that people online say looks like a comic book villain.

Origin

On March 1st, 2017, rapper 21 Savage appeared on ESPN's Highly Questionable. During the appearance, 21 Savage appeared via satellite with a new haircut and in front of a green screen of a cityscape. The appearance became a breif source of controversy after the rapper was cut off by ESPN, presumably for rapping one of his songs while self-censoring inappropriate language with coughs.

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Later that week, on March 8th, Twitter user @Trashvis^[1] tweeted a screenshot from the interview with the caption "why this pic look like 21 Savage is a supervillain interrupting a broadcast to reveal his evil plan to the world." The post (shown below) received more than 113,000 retweets and 215,000 likes in three months.

Spread

That day, singer Justin Bieber shared the @Trashvis' tweet on his official Instagram account. The post garnered more than 1 million likes within three months.^[2]

Over the next few days, people continued to share the original tweets and to write new posts comparing 21 Savage to a supervillain (examples below).

Several news outlets covered the popularity of the meme, including Fader,^[3] Heavy,^[4] BET^[5] and more.

Donald Glover Recreates The Meme

As part of the promotional material for his upcoming film, American Dream: The 21 Savage Story, Donald Glover recreated the 21 Savage supervillain meme in January 2024. It was first spotted by fans after the release of the trailer for the film, uploaded on January 8th, 2024 by 21 Savage on YouTube. The trailer (seen below) earned 950,000 views in less than two days, and the moment in which the meme appears occurs at timestamp 2:46.

After fans spotted the meme, it gained notoriety for its remake on X (formerly Twitter). X^[9] user @DiscussingFilm posted the image from the film, earning 42,000 likes in two days (seen below).

In The Year 2100 Animated Series

On June 28th, Savage 21 announced that he would voice himself as a supervillain on the animated series In The Year 2100. The first of six one-minute episodes (shown below) premiered on the @webuygold Instagram account, where the episode received more than 189,000 views and 1,500 comments in 24 hours.^[6] In the show, 21 Savage plays himself and controls the world through his music.

Several outlets reported on the premier, including The Source,^[7] Billboard^[8] and more.