Khaby Lame Mechanism and Brother Noah song start big debate on TikTok

Viral memes featuring the Khaby Lame Mechanism and a weird Brother Noah song are spreading fast across TikTok – and sparking a funny debate about what the song’s words are and where it comes from. All is explained below.

A TikTok sound from the song is being used in some of the most popular of the current wave of memes about the Khaby Lame Mechanism, a creepy robot based on the world's most followed TikToker – as well as other brainrot meme trends and one-off viral videos.

Italian content creator Khaby Lame has 160 million followers on TikTok and his robot likeness, which first appeared in a YouTube video four years ago, was designed to replicate his signature blank expression and palms-up shrug in reaction to watching complicated life hack videos – like the one below from 2021 with 25 million views.

TikToks on the meme trend typically involve bizarre scenarios where things go wrong and someone's soul is sucked into the mechanism – cursed to spend eternity doing the Khaby Lame shrug. The one below references another current niche meme, PS4 Repairman, where the joke is about it being the hardest and best-paid job in the world because of the expertise it takes to fix a PlayStation 4.

What is the Brother Noah TikTok sound?

The sound on the videos is a huge talking point in its own right, with people guessing and disagreeing about the words – popular guesses include Kevin Durant, Heaven Durag, Herman the worm, Brother Noah and Huzz in Dubai. It’s inspired lots of “Which one do you hear?” TikToks like this one:

People are comparing it to the big “green needle or brainstorm” debate when people were puzzled why the words they heard changed depending on which was written on the screen.

The TikTok below is from the camp who say the song’s about American basketball player Kevin Durant. Comments disagree: “It does NOT say Kevin Durant it’s say Herman the worm”; “Heaven durag🗣️🗣”, “It’s Brother Noah”; “Fell in the well”; “Heaven knew her heaven knew her 🔥🔥🔥”.

Comments on other TikToks say things like: “Crack me if I'm wrong but I think ... when we look at dif words our brains read it and tricks us into thinking it's that"

So what’s the real answer?

The sound was created by a TikToker with the handle @1700brody who posts lots of short digital music edits that are often picked up to use as sounds on videos:

He based it on a song from 2020 called Pedal Up by Dasgasdom3, a musician and Kick livestreamer. The full track, which you can hear on the YouTube video below, opens with a sample from a 1944 song called Noah by the Jubalaires, an American gospel group.

Dasgasdom3 spotted all the buzz about the sound on TikTok and posted about it on X on October 26:

Here’s the original Noah song by the Jubilaires. The lyric "Brother Noah" appears at 0:28 and 1:26. One of the top comments from two years ago is: "only 1940s kids remember this banger". A more recent comment says: "All roads lead to Khaby Lame mechanism”, one of the common comments on the many memes all over TikTok.

Just to add to the confusion, a TikToker called Lil Godd has released a full version of Brother Noah as a song on YouTube, Spotify and Soundcloud, saying it's by Kevin Durant.

The mask-wearing Lil Godd, who has more than 500k followers, is known for jumping on TikTok trends and creating songs based on them. Previous releases on Spotify include The 6 7 Song and Chicken Stars.

We’ve been using Shooglebox to track the rapid appearance, growth and disappearance of niche memes over the past few months. The niche meme community have set out to speed up the lifecycle of memes so only insiders can keep up. As soon as a niche meme goes mainstream – as has happened with the Khaby Lame Mechanism – the community drop it and move on to the next one.

If you know both your niche AND mainstream memes you’ll know what this next TikTok is all about. Or if you don't, you might agree with some of the comments: “Flying cars they said”, “What a world we live in”, “what happened to human evolution💔”

Buzz from Shooglebox

The Khaby Lame Mechanism is just one of the many social media trends and cultural talking points quickly spotted, illustrated and explained by our Buzz service for brands and others who need to be ahead of the curve on things different audiences and communities are seeing, doing and getting excited about.