About

Jay-Z Diving is a photoshop meme featuring an exploitable cutout of American rapper Jay-Z awkwardly jumping into the ocean from a luxury rental boat off the coast in Stromboli, Italy. Since the publication of the paparazzi photographs in early September 2013, it has been superimposed into many other celebrity photographs for comedic effect.

Origin

On September 5th, 2013, The Daily Mail^[1] published an article with paparazzi photographs of the celebrity couple Jay-Z and Beyonce Knowles vacationing in Stromboli, Italy on Knowles’ 32nd birthday, which included an image of Jay-Z awkwardly diving off a luxury boat into the ocean (shown below).

The same day, Twitter user ReedoBrown tweeted a photoshopped image of rapper Lil’ Wayne falling off a skateboard with Jay-Z diving behind him. In the first four days, the tweet gained over 180 retweets and 45 favorites.

Spread

Also on September 5th, Twitter user AwkwardZombie shared another photoshopped instance of Jay-Z chasing after the American pro tennis player Serena Williams.

On the following day, Redditor Keeks_marone submitted an Imgur gallery of notable Jay-Z diving photoshopped pictures (shown below) to the /r/HipHopImages^[7] subreddit, accumulating more than 290 up votes and 10 comments in the next 72 hours. In the coming days, various slideshows and compilations highlighting notable examples from the series were posted on several pop culture news sites, including UpRoxx,^[3] Complex,^[4]MTV,^[5] Vibe^[6] and Rap Genius,^[9] with many of the articles mislabeling the original photograph as Jay-Z "diving into a pool."

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References