Redbone is a 2016 Childish Gambino song that became a Twitter audio-remix meme in May 2017, built around muffled edits captioned as the track playing from a house party bathroom[1].

Where did Redbone come from?

The meme started with a May 14th, 2017 tweet from @chloestixx that captioned a heavily muffled edit of the song as what it would sound like while making out in a house party bathroom[5].

What does Redbone mean?

Outside the meme, "redbone" is slang used within Black American communities for a light-skinned person with red undertones, and historically for a specific tri-racial group in Louisiana[8]. In meme context, it's shorthand for the Childish Gambino song and its muffled-audio remixes[1].

How do you use Redbone?

The format typically takes a muffled edit of the song and adds a caption placing it in a specific scenario, often a bathroom setting, sometimes layered with extra sound effects or rapper adlibs like @YungMondi's Famous Dex version[2].

Is Redbone still popular?

The muffled-bathroom Twitter format peaked in May 2017 during the initial remix wave, and the song itself is still a widely recognized Childish Gambino hit thanks to its Get Out placement and top 40 chart run[1].

Redbone

2017audio remix / catchphraseclassic

Published September 26, 2026

Redbone is a 2016 Childish Gambino single that became a Twitter remix format in May 2017 after user @chloestixx posted a heavily muffled version captioned as what the song would sound like from a house party bathroom. The joke spawned dozens of situational audio remixes that flipped the sensual R&B track into an absurd sound design exercise.

audio memes audio edit memes hip hop memes music memes 2017 memes

Overview

Redbone is a Childish Gambino song from his 2016 album Awaken, My Love! that became a Twitter audio-meme format in May 20171. The joke rides on a specific sonic quality: heavy low-pass filtering and muffled reverb that makes the track sound like it's playing through a wall. Users caption these edits with increasingly specific scenarios, most of them set in the bathroom of a house party2.

The format works because Redbone's slow, bass-heavy groove already sounds moody and distant, so cranking the muffled effect up sells the bit instantly3. Once @chloestixx set the template, remixers stacked new sound layers over the muffled audio, urination sounds, video game noises, rapper adlibs, so each variation reads as a mini sound-design gag rather than a straight repost2. The song was already culturally charged from its use in Jordan Peele's Get Out, which helped keep it lodged in listeners' heads through the spring of 20171.

Origin & Background

Platform

Twitter

Creator

@chloestixx

Date

2017

"Redbone" was released on November 17th, 2016 as the second single off Awaken, My Love!, and Donald Glover's original video was uploaded to YouTube the same month4. It became Childish Gambino's first top 40 hit and later played over the opening and closing credits of Get Out1.

The meme itself started on May 14th, 2017, when Twitter user @chloestixx posted a heavily muffled edit of the track with the caption "What Redbone would sound like while you're making out in the bathroom of a house party." The tweet pulled in tens of thousands of retweets and set the template for everything that followed5 1.

How It Spread

On May 21st, 2017, Twitter user @alanmora1 replied to @chloestixx with his own edit captioned "what redbone would sound like while you're peeing in the bathroom of a house party," layering toilet sounds over the muffled track6. That reply is what turned a one-off tweet into a repeatable format, and a wave of situational remixes followed within days1.

One of the biggest offshoots came from Twitter user @YungMondi, who dropped Famous Dex adlibs over the muffled Redbone audio7. XXL covered the remix on May 22nd, 2017, quoting Mondi's blunt explanation for why he made it: "People on Twitter are stupid"2. Other variants imagined the song playing while someone was vlogging like Adam22, playing Gamecube, or heard in reverse, each riffing on the same bathroom framing1.

The pileup got confusing enough that a user posted to /r/OutOfTheLoop on May 23rd, 2017 asking what the Redbone meme was about, which is a decent marker for how quickly the joke saturated Twitter that week1. The format stayed a clean touchstone for muffled-audio jokes long after it faded from the timeline.

Redbone

Overview

Origin & Background

How It Spread

Frequently Asked Questions

References (8)