President Joe Biden set a goal to have 70% of U.S. adults partially vaccinated by July 4, but currently just 67% of American adults have received at least one shot of a vaccine.
So, the dating app BLK has partnered with rappers Juvenile, Mannie Fresh and Mia X to turn their hit song “Back That Thang Up” into the vaccine anthem “Vax That Thang Up.”
“I just wanted to do something positive for my people and to stand in the front to show that I’m willing to sacrifice my life not just for me, but also for my family,” Juvenile said. “We don’t know what we’re facing right now, but we really do all need to be vaccinated so we can continue to do our thing and survive.”
It marks the first official collaboration between artists from Cash Money Records and No Limit Records. The former is repped by Juvenile and Mannie Fresh, who were featured on the original 1998 track. The latter is repped by Mia X, called “the mother of Southern gangster rap.”
The track opens with the iconic head-nodding and booty-bouncing “Back That Thang Up” beat. Juvenile maneuvers through iconic bars with his signature Southern drawl, before Mannie Fresh pulls up with quotable and confident bars, punctuated by a clear call to action to get vaccinated.
Meanwhile, Mia X’s magnetic hook captivates listeners, urging them to get vaccinated before hooking up with “some dude named Scott.” The music video overflows with nostalgic New Orleans bounce energy with an important and powerful message: ”Go, go, go, go get the shot!”
“We have a direct line to the audience that needs to internalize this message,” BLK Head of Brand & Marketing Jonathan Kirkland said. “The song may be playful and fun, but the underlying message is as real as it gets.”
The campaign was created in partnership with Majority, the marketing agency co-founded by Shaquille O’Neal earlier this year that’s built upon a diversity-led talent model.
“To be young is to feel invincible,” Majority founder Omid Farhang said. “BLK is uniquely positioned to meet this historic moment, not through an academic lecture or sober manifesto, but through pop cultural content that speaks directly to the benefits of dating IRL once you’re vaccinated.”
In addition to the video, BLK also unveiled the “Vaxified” badge on its dating app, allowing singles to promote their vaccinated status to prospective matches. In less than a month, over 100,000 BLK users have added the “Vaxified” badge to their profiles.
“We want the Vaxified badge to be to dating what the blue checkmark is to Twitter,” Kirkland said.
