Who Is Paul McCartney?

About

"Who is Paul McCartney?" (Only One Trolling) is a series of satirical and incendiary tweets posted by fans of American hip hop artist Kanye West under the pretense of not being able to recognize the famed British singer-songwriter and founding member of The Beatles, which were prompted by the release of Kanye West's 2014 soul pop single "Only One" featuring Paul McCartney in late December 2014.

Origin

The phrase origin dates back to 2012, with paul mccartney´s appearance at the grammys which prompted multiple tweets questioning his identity^[13]

However the phrase didint took off until 2 years later.

In late August 2014, Kanye West revealed that he hopes to collaborate with Paul McCartney sometime in the near future to create an album. Upon the announcement of the West's intention to work with the founding member of The Beatles, the news was met with grievances and criticism from some of the fans of Paul McCartney and The Beatles.

On January 1st, 2015, Kanye West's new ballad single "Only One", featuring Paul McCartney on the piano, was released online via iTunes and subsequently announced on Kanye West's Twitter account.

Spread

The release of the song instantly sparked even more backlash and laments from fans of the Beatles, which in turn prompted Kanye West's fans to fire back by ostensibly inquiring who Paul McCartney is, with many facetiously remarking that McCartney's music career will take off as a result of his collaboration with the rapper. Unsurprisingly, the tweets only added more fuel to the fire, generating further negative responses from the worked up fans of The Beatles.^[5]

News Media Coverage

Starting on January 2nd, 2015, a variety of music and entertainment news sites began reporting on the Twitter feud between the fans of the two musicians, with many outlets initially reporting that younger fans of Kanye West are oblivious as to who Paul McCartney is,^[1][3][4][6] including ABC's Good Morning America which highlighted the tweets in a concerning light (shown below):

Notable Examples

Follow-Up Coverage

On January 5th, the music site Billboard^[8] wrote about how people should calm down, as the tweets were trolling and they fell into it. That same day, Twitter user Desus Nice (@desusnice), believed to be one of the first commenters to jokingly ask on Twitter who Paul McCartney is, shared a Vine video clip featuring an excerpt of a TV news program segment discussing the tweets and voice in the background exclaiming "poor folks, they just don't know any better."

On the next day, Vice's Noisey music blog also reported on how the news media got trolled into thinking that Kanye West fans are unaware of who Paul McCartney is, which was submitted to the hip hop subreddit r/HipHopHeads^[7] later that same day. In the next 72 hours, the Reddit post to the article garnered more than 1,800 upvotes and 470 comments.

Search Interest

External References