About

I See Kareem is a viral video of ice cream shop worker Emad Alshalabi singing, "Ice cream, ice cream," in front of his shop, which has been interpreted by many as sounding like "I see Kareem" due to his accent. Alshalabi started posting videos singing the song on TikTok and Instagram in March 2025. Later that year, the videos began going viral, inspiring memes and videos referencing Alshalabi, which became further popularized in January 2026. In particular, a remix of the song by TikToker and producer @prodplu became the subject of dance videos.

Origin

On March 31st, 2025, TikToker^[1] and Instagram^[2] user @emad.alshalabi6 (Emad Alshalabi) posted a video of himself singing a song while standing outside of an ice cream shop, garnering over 80,000 views on the former in 10 months. The song consists largely of the repeated phrase, "Ice cream, ice cream," which has been misheard by viewers as "I see Kareem."

The TikToker continued to regularly post videos performing the song over the following months, with some gaining millions of views as the year continued.

For example, on December 27th, 2025, the TikToker^[3] posted a video performing the song that gained over 33 million views in a month.

Spread

As the TikToker went viral through December 2025 and January 2026, his content inspired memes, edits and more.

On December 24th, 2025, TikToker^[4] @prodplu posted a video where they remix Emad Alshalabi singing the song into a ringtone, garnering over 750,000 views in a month.

The original sound for the video by @prodplu gained over 70,000 uses in the same span of time, including dance videos.

For example, on January 18th, 2026, TikToker^[5] @miley.nyc posted a dance video set to the song captioned, "us cause we went a whole day without arguing," garnering over 4.5 million views in 10 days.

On January 21st, TikToker^[6] @jt2jacob posted a video dancing to the song under the caption, "How I feel after making Dubai chocolate matchas for 6 hours straight," garnering over 7.4 million views in a week.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References