Somewhere in the sleepy suburbs of Philadelphia, a 23-year-old jokester is committed to a bit that will either make you laugh, get you to sing along, utterly baffle you, or all three.
Earth Kenan Salazar has found his calling in creating pitch-perfect covers of classic rock songs that sub in nonsensical Gen-Alpha slang for the original lyrics, cracking up his 12,000-plus (and growing) followers on the daily. He’s made lots of fans — and maybe even a few enemies, if you count the algorithmic takedown notice he got after posting a mind-melting take on the Eagles’ 1972 hit “Take It Easy,” hijacking the original backing track to lilt “Skibidiiiiii rizz” in sun-dappled, four–part harmony.
Granted, Don Henley didn’t cease-and-desist Salazar personally. Chances are he doesn’t know his name. Either way, that clip got taken down from Instagram in several territories just as it was taking off. “As far as I know, it was blocked in Australia and the United Kingdom,” the singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer tells Rolling Stone outside a bookshop-café in Blackwood, New Jersey, near where he lives with his parents and sisters in Deptford Township. (A spokesperson for the Eagles says, “The Eagles were unaware of the post until contacted by Rolling Stone and did not issue a takedown.”)
None of that’s liable to stop him. Content creation can seem to be an opaque zone, where the copyright and algorithmic winds blow hither and yon — but he’s hanging on. Part of that’s due to his savvy; another is that he simply came up with a great idea. Sure, he works in the format known as “brainrot” — basically any vehicle for meaninglessness for the sake of meaninglessness. But Salazar accomplishes more than rotting brains: His account not only captures the magic of songs we love, but acts as a crash course in the Dadaist, internet-damaged, rapidly propagating subculture of today’s youth.
Born in 2001 in Manila, Salazar immigrated with his family from the Philippines to Philadelphia about when he lost his baby teeth. He grew up in a so-so neighborhood, watching SpongeBob SquarePants, obsessed with music. By 11, he was making YouTube videos, mostly covering songs he dug, like Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”
While he was attending Berklee College of Music a few years later, someone remarked that his singing voice sounded a lot like Donald Fagen’s. He kept that under his hat as he continued experimenting as a content creator; he made waves early last year — to the tune of half a million views — crafting a pitch-perfect anime song. Then, the eureka moment: He’s plugged into Twitch and YouTuber culture just as much as he is sus chords and 9ths. What if Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ in the Years” took a very different turn?
“Your everlasting mewing streak, you see it fading fast/So you go to Freddy Fazbear’s pizzeria for a snack,” an uncanny, ersatz Fagen sings over the familiar shuffle — stringing together references to a very-online trend involving jawline exercises and the viral game/movie Five Nights at Freddy’s. “Well, you wouldn’t even know an impostor if you had him in your chat/The things you think are bussin’, I can’t understand.” If you’re not laughing by the radiant refrain of “skibidi sigma gyatt” — well, see that last line.
(If you don’t know any children or have access to the Internet, skibidi is a reference to a bizarre YouTube series featuring an army of decapitated heads manning moving toilets. Michael Bay is reportedly in talks for a film and TV franchise about it. And, gyatt… just Google it.)
The video blew up. At press time — six weeks after its July 2 posting — Salazar’s remake of “Reelin’ in the Years” has been viewed more than 5.7 million times. That’s roughly 75 percent of the population of New York City. The comments are a sea of tickled disorientation — not just at this aggressively random confluence, but at honest mystification at the lingo. “I was born in 97,” goes one. “wtf is a fanum tax?” (I’ll let Rolling Stone’s Jeff Ihaza field that one.)
Salazar has kept the Dan brainrots rolling, following them up with equally inspired riffs on “Peg,” “Do It Again,” “Josie,” “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” — on and on and on. He’s since branched out to the Doobie Brothers, King Crimson, Hall and Oates, Rush, and, of course, the Eagles. He’s gone as far afield as the post-hardcore band Pierce the Veil. But for now, his so-called Steely Brainrots, he says, are the main attraction.
He doesn’t use AI, thank you very much; these are 100 percent organic, and if he can’t use a backing track, he’ll build a meticulous recreation from scratch. To keep the bit fresh — there are only so many times he can trot out “skibidi” or “rizz” or “Ohio” — he keeps many references as bleeding-edge as possible. (The Internet is currently buzzing about controversial creator Adin Ross gifting Trump a Rolex and aCybertruck, which could sound pretty glorious out of Henley’s lungs: hint, hint.)
If all of this isn’t maniacal enough, Salazar keeps a detailed spreadsheet titled “Gen Z/Alpha Word Rhyme Bank.” From “$16 big mac meal” to “zesty,” Salazar details the rhyming values and syllable counts, so as to make each track flow just right.
A portion of the spreadsheet that Salazar uses for writing lyrics, with slang terms listed next to their rhyming equivalents and syllable counts
Courtesy of Kenan Salazar
Still, as the kerfuffle with the Eagles song demonstrates, Salazar’s schtick isn’t without its hurdles. Salazar’s Gen Alpha take on Steely Dan’s “Babylon Sisters” — “Yapathon sigmas, shake it!” — got instantly pulled down in August. “I have a feeling it only happened because my account was already flagged as a ‘previous offender,’ so to speak,” he says.
The issue, he says, is that he used the iconic songs’ actual backing tracks, instead of recreating them from the ground up. “As much as possible, I would like to use the original track, for accuracy’s sake,” he says.
Salazar — sweet, brainy, introverted yet loquacious — doesn’t take it too personally when classic rock gods or their copyright enforcers pull rank. Much like the titanically popular multi-instrumentalist and educator Rick Beato on many a YouTube rant, he simply questions the would-be censors’ long game.
“It’s this intangible thing, that is at the same time so tangible,” Salazar reflects on this music, which he only intended to pay loving, silly tribute to. “Whether you disagree or not, it kind of belongs to the culture at that point.”
In the end, the Eagles and Dan takedowns didn’t really matter: For both “Take It Easy” and “Babylon Sisters,” he whipped up new backing tracks, and got better numbers as a result. (Well, hardly anyone got to watch his first take on “Babylon Sisters,” but still.)
Just over a month after his first Steely Brainrot dropped, Salazar is just getting started.
“I’m somebody who doesn’t like when someone tells me to shut up after a joke,” he says. “If I feel like the record companies are trying to shut me up, I’m like, ‘No. I’m going to tell this joke louder, and I’m going to figure out why you don’t like this joke, and I’m going to make sure everybody hears it.’”