# Once You Go Black You Never Go Back (TikTok Trend) A text-to-speech promo for Damal Restaurant, a Somali spot in London, turned into a TikTok sound in July 2023 after women began lip-dubbing its opening line about dating Black men. By late July, Black male creators and a viral Twitter screen recording helped push the audio across platforms as a flirty bragging format. ## Origin On July 6th, 2023, @damalrestaurant uploaded a promo for Damal Restaurant in London, England, built from stock footage and a text-to-speech voiceover that opened with the "Once you go Black, you never go back" line before pivoting into praise for owner Mohammad Abdi[1]. Within a month the clip reached about 2.1 million plays and 251,400 likes on TikTok[1]. The meme format itself appeared on July 21st, 2023, when @luvv_.heaven posted the first known lip-dub of the audio with a friend, which gathered roughly 487,000 plays and 114,000 likes over its first 10 days[2]. - **Platform:** TikTok (Twitter viral spread) - **Creator:** Damal Restaurant (@damalrestaurant) - **Date:** 2023 ## Overview The trend hinges on a stilted AI-generated voice reciting, "Once you go Black, you never go back. This was just a saying to me until I experienced it myself firsthand," before namedropping Damal Restaurant owner Mohammad Abdi[1]. Creators strip the restaurant branding off the back half and treat the opening line as a punchline, usually with a smirking lip-dub to camera or a text overlay about an ex[2]. Two flavors of the trend ran side by side. Women posted lip-dubs claiming they switched to dating Black men and never looked back[3], while Black male creators used the sound in self-aware thirst traps and reaction edits[4]. The joke lands on the clash between the proverb's old-school connotations and the robotic, cheerful text-to-speech delivery lifted from a Somali restaurant ad[6]. ## How It Spread Through late July 2023, lip-dubs of the Damal audio stacked up on TikTok. On July 27th, @lavahoee posted a version that collected around 128,400 likes in four days[3]. Three days later, Black male creator @loveorhatesk flipped the format with his own take, picking up roughly 174,800 plays and 28,300 likes in a single day[4]. Cross-platform attention arrived on July 30th, 2023, when Twitter user @Zvbear uploaded a screen recording of himself scrolling through the lip-dubs, captioning it, "This TikTok trend is going to start a war." The tweet gathered about 20,000 likes within a day[5]. Know Your Meme documented the sound shortly after, framing it as a sound-driven trend rather than a visual format[6]. ## How to Use A typical post uses the Damal audio under a woman smirking into the camera, often with a caption naming an ex or an on-screen text about who she was dating before[3]. Black male creators tend to film themselves confidently mouthing the line, sometimes cutting to flirty poses or stitches reacting to the women's versions[4]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Once You Go Black You Never Go Back (TikTok Trend)? It is a TikTok sound and lip-dub trend built around an AI-generated line from a Damal Restaurant ad, used by women claiming they switched to dating Black men and by Black male creators flipping the joke back[6]. ### Where did Once You Go Black You Never Go Back (TikTok Trend) come from? The audio comes from a July 6th, 2023 promo for Damal Restaurant in London posted by @damalrestaurant, which paired stock video with a text-to-speech voiceover namedropping owner Mohammad Abdi[1]. ### What does Once You Go Black You Never Go Back (TikTok Trend) mean? The line is an old slang proverb about preferring Black partners after dating one, and the trend treats it as a bragging punchline because the voice is a cheerful AI pulled from a restaurant commercial[1]. ### How do you use Once You Go Black You Never Go Back (TikTok Trend)? Creators typically lip-dub the opening sentence to camera, often with a caption or overlay about a past relationship, as @luvv_.heaven did in the first known version on July 21st, 2023[2]. ### Is Once You Go Black You Never Go Back (TikTok Trend) still popular? The sound peaked across TikTok and Twitter in late July 2023, with @Zvbear's viral screen recording calling it a trend that would "start a war"[5], and it has since settled into a classic reference rather than an active trend[6]. ## References 1. [https://www.tiktok.com/@damalrestaurant/video/7252769706791275803]() 2. [https://www.tiktok.com/@luvv_.heaven/video/7258450933820968235]() 3. [https://www.tiktok.com/@lavahoee/video/7260286443572989227]() 4. [https://www.tiktok.com/@loveorhatesk/video/7261276592918334747]() 5. [https://twitter.com/Zvbear/status/1685692795116216320]() 6. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/once-you-go-black-you-never-go-back-tiktok-trend]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/once-you-go-black-you-never-go-back-tiktok-trend Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library