Leland Dancing

Submission 791

Part of a series on RDCWorld. [View Related Entries]

About

Leland Dancing refers to a series of memes using an exploitable video of content creator Leland Manigo, part of the RDCWorld sketch comedy crew, dancing in a white sweater and black sunglasses to the song "Let Me Know" by Tamar Braxton. The dancing clip comes from RDCWorld's April 2024 video "How Future & Metro Were In The Studio After Drake Dropped His Diss" and became the subject of memes on TikTok that August where it's used as a reaction clip to express happiness over a given topic.

Origin

On April 14th, 2024, the YouTube^[1] sketch comedy group RDCWorld posted a comedy video titled "How Future & Metro Were In The Studio After Drake Dropped His Diss" in which members of the group play various rappers involved in the early stages of the Kendrick vs. Drake feud. Around the 2:27 mark, Leland, playing Diddy, is seen dancing in a white sweater and sunglasses (shown below).

On August 17th, 2024, TikToker^[2] @thenontruth posted a video set to "Let Me Know" by Tamar Braxton in which the clip of Leland dancing is placed under the caption, "How happy 🥷's get as soon as it's time to tell you some bad news about yo girl," garnering over 1.4 million views in just over a week (shown below). This is the earliest known meme to use the video.

@thenontruth ts got me in tears 😭 #leland #RDC #meme ♬ original sound – SyncedJay

Spread

The clip was popularized on TikTok throughout August 2024. For example, on August 18th, 2024, TikToker^[3] @movie_man06 posted a version of the meme captioned, "How happy 🥷's get telling you in great detail how they used to mess with yo girl," garnering over 890,000 views in a week.

On August 20th, the rdcworld1 Instagram^[4] page shared several examples of the meme in a slideshow, writing, "Leland Went Viral On TikTok 😂🤣😭😭😭," garnering over 260,000 likes in six days.

On August 21st, YouTuber^[5] DreamNuki posted a video reacting to the memes, garnering over 84,000 views in five days. On August 23rd, TikToker^[6] @mannyuja posted a video where he recreates the dance, garnering over a million views in three days.

@mannyuja Leland really hit that tho#mannyuja #mannyuja ♬ original sound – SyncedJay