Rick Ross Pears

About

Rick Ross Pears refers to a series of photoshopped parodies and Vine remix videos inspired by the quote"I eat pears and shit like that" originally said by the American hip hop artist while talking about his recent weight-loss efforts during an interview with Tim Westwood in 2014.

Origin

The interview with Rick Ross was conducted by English DJ and TV presenter Tim Westwood in the backstage during the rapper's European tour concert in Camden, London on May 18th, 2014. In the interview, Ross addressed different ways in which he has been trying to lose his weight, including his self-branded fitness program RossFit, a spin-off of the popular Crossfit regimen, but most notably, he highlighted eating pears as his main change in diet habits. on May 21st, the footage was subsequently uploaded to Tim Westwood's YouTube channel (shown below).

On October 18th, 2014, Vine user Willyjoy posted a video clip highlighting Rick Ross' quote "i eat pears and shit like that, shoutout to all the pears" from the interview, racking up more than 24.1 million views, 218,100 likes and 180,900 shares in the following two months. That same day, Willyjoy's Vine clip was re-uploaded as a video by Spencer Mutsch to YouTube,^[2] where it gathered nearly 540,000 views and 3,731 likes within the same time period. Meanwhile, Tim Westwood's original interview video also drew several hundreds of thousands of views on piggyback through the popularity of the Vine clip.

"I eat pears and now shit like that. [flashes the shaka sign] A shoutout to all the pear."

Spread

Following the viral takeoff of the quote in October 2014, a number of parody videos began to surface under the hashtags #RickRoss and #Pears, many of which sampled Ross' enunciation of the word "pear" and the memorable quote "shoutout to all the pears," along with fitting tunes of well-known hip hop songs. On November 9th, YouTuber Dirkaz posted a trap-themed remix featuring Ross' quotes from the interview (shown below), followed by BuzzFeed's compilation^[3] of notable remixes in a post titled "People Can’t Stop Making Vines About Rick Ross Eating Pears" and published on November 11th.

On November 12th, Vine Trends Compilations highlighted a video compilation of "Rick Ross Pears" clips on their YouTube channel, where it garnered more than 640,000 views in just over a month (shown below, right. On November 25th, yet another compilation of "Rick Ross Pears" Vine clips was submitted to YouTube by Vine Trends (shown below, right)

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References