Mannequin Challenge: 'Black Beatles’ by Rae Sremmurd reaches No 1 after making world stand still

Being the soundtrack to a meme now means big sales

Rae Sremmurd’s Sremmlife 2 has had a very swift and powerful second wind the last couple of weeks, its main single ‘Black Beatles’ steadily climbing the Billboard Hot 100 thanks to the Mannequin Challenge.

The track wasn’t actually synched on the very first video of choreographed stillness, which came from students at Jacksonville’s Edward H. White High School, but quickly became the go-to track for Mannequin Challenges and Rae Sremmurd were swift in jumping on it themselves, posting a pretty cool one they made on stage at a show in Denver which got a ton of retweets (below). Even Paul McCartney used the trap banger for his very dad effort at the challenge.

‘Black Beatles’ is set to sell more than 120,000 downloads for the week ending 10 November and have been streamed over 35 million times, according to Billboard, which would put it ahead of Chainsmokers and Halsey’s ‘Closer’, which has been number one for 12 weeks now.

Update: It did it; 'Black Beatles' is No, 1. Rae Sremmurd collaborator Nicki Minaj celebrated with a freestyle over the track.

Rae Sremmurd consists of Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi, two rappers from Mississippi. Though little known among mainstream hip-hop/pop fans, they’ve amassed a sizeable following for their feel good, party-orientated anthems. Kendrick Lamar is among their fans, and Swae Lee was behind the melody for Beyonce’s ‘Formation’.

Their previous highest-charting song was Sremmlife's 'No Type', which peaked at #16 back in 2014.