Swag Like Ohio

Submission 22,242

Part of a series on Lil B "The Based God" / Brandon McCartney. [View Related Entries]

About

"Swag Like Ohio", also known by the lyric "Down In Ohio," is a hip-hop song by rapper Lil B featuring lyrics about being in the state of Ohio. The song was originally posted to MySpace in September 2010 and went viral on TikTok around August 2022 alongside the Only In Ohio meme in which users post scary or weird footage of creatures and bizarre situations, claiming it's footage from Ohio.

Origin

On September 13th, 2010, Lil B released "Swag Like Ohio" on MySpace, which was later re-released on Lil B's album The Complete Myspace Collection, Vol. 4.^[1] That day, YouTuber^[2] CLEVELANDmusic uploaded the song, garnering over 598,000 views in 12 years (shown below). The blog Done Waiting^[3] shared the song on September 14th and Lil B tweeted^[4] about it on September 15th, asking his followers to call and request the song to Ohio radio stations, tagging the Cleveland-based station Z107.9 in the post.

Bitches suck my dick, 'cause my swag on a hundred
(Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh)
Down in Ohio, swag like Ohio
Down in Ohio (Oh), swag like Ohio (Swag)
Down in Ohio (Oh, oh), swag like Ohio
Down in Ohio, swag like Ohio

Spread

The song gained a following throughout the 2010s along with Lil B himself. For example, on May 28th, 2011, YouTuber^[5] mii viral posted a music video created with clips of Lil B for the song, garnering over 424,000 views in 11 years (shown below). On May 7th, 2019, Lil B posted the song to his YouTube^[6] channel, lilbpack1, garnering over 2.3 million views in three years.

Only In Ohio Meme Trend

In August 2022, TikTokers began using the song as the backing track to a series of Ohio vs. The World memes, also known as "Only In Ohio." In the videos, images of scary CGI creatures and bizarre events are posted alongside a caption like "only in Ohio" or "can't even X in Ohio," with X being a mundane task. The song is also widely used in more non-specific memes about Ohio. By November 29th, 2022, the TikTok original sound^[7] for the song was used over 197,000 times (examples shown below).

On November 10th, 2022, Twitter^[8] user @strangestmedia posted a video of an unsafe rollercoaster over the song, garnering over 90,000 likes and 7,200 retweets in two weeks (shown below).

Swag Like Ohio 2

On November 26th, 2022, Lil B (@lilbthebasedgod) tweeted,^[9] "SWAG LIKE OHIO 2 COMING SOON – Lil B," garnering over 17,000 likes and 2,400 retweets in three days (shown below).