2Rare XXL Cypher / Freestyle

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About

2Rare XXL Cypher / Freestyle is a freestyle by rapper 2Rare that was a part of the 2023 XXL Freshman series of rap cyphers. The video was posted to YouTube in July 2023 by XXL magazine. 2Rare's freestyle subsequently led to memes and slander due to the perception that it was a bad freestyle, mostly because 2Rare started dancing to finish it. 2Rare originally made a name for himself on TikTok for his dancing videos.

Origin

On July 14th, 2023, XXL magazine posted a video to its YouTube^[5] channel that was a trailer for its 2023 XXL Freshman Cyphers, which included a clip of rapper 2Rare's freestyle at the end. The video gained roughly 187,200 views in eight days. On July 19th, XXL magazine posted the cypher that included 2Rare to YouTube.^[1] The cypher also included rappers Rob49, Luh Tyler, DC The Don, SleazyWorld Go and TiaCorine. At the video's 4:37-minute mark, rapper 2Rare's freestyle started (shown below). Over the course of five days, the video gained roughly 839,100 views.

On July 14th, 2023, after the trailer video was posted to YouTube,^[5] Twitter^[6] user @weloveyouhassi was the first to go viral for a negative reaction, captioning the trailer video, "might be the worst xxl cypher of all time (luh tyler is fucking garbage)," receiving roughly 15,600 likes in nine days (shown below).

On the day that 2Rare's cypher was posted to YouTube,^[1] various influencers, streamers, TikTokers and YouTubers posted reaction videos to the cypher. The most notable reaction from July 19th was from streamer Kai Cenat who specifically focused on 2Rare's freestyle. A clip of Cenat reacting to 2Rare was posted by TikToker^[2] @clippedquik on July 19th, and received roughly 2.7 million plays and 352,900 likes in four days (shown below).

Spread

On July 20th, 2023, TikToker^[3] @adstripeso posted a meme using 2Rare's freestyle, writing in text overlay, "Bro ran out of words so decided to start dancing to kill time," gaining roughly 2.5 million plays and 416,500 likes in three days (shown below, left). On July 22nd, TikToker^[4] @bmtiktok2much posted a POV meme in which he made fun of 2Rare's dancing, gaining roughly 2 million plays and 426,900 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Reactions and memes continued to spread on TikTok^[7] going into late July 2023.