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Culture

This Just In: The Yeehaw Agenda Is Thriving & It’s Time You Hop On Board, Partner

Felicity Warner

Okay, I have to address something — there has been a huge shift happening in pop culture and music right now and I could have never predicted this new frontier. Lil Nas X just dropped the Old Town Road remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus (what parallel universe are we living in RN), Solange’s latest album was serving us all the yeehaw vibes as an ode to her beloved H-town, and everyone on Stan Twitter has become a shameless fan of country artist Kacey Musgraves. 

I’m not sure what moment marked the beginning of my love for the yeehaw movement — deciding the cowboy emoji is and will always be my favorite emoji of all time, retweeting a million of those “Howdy I’m The Sheriff Of ___” memes, or even the spiral of sub-memes that came out of the admittedly adorable “What in Tarnation” Shiba Inu meme. What I do know is that yeehaw culture is officially my favorite trend on the internet and everyone else seems to be sipping the yee yee juice. 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

YEE HAW SPOTLIGHT: Stills from Fashion Film ‘Lonely Cowboy’ via @nataalmedia ✨ (Spotted by @chika.okoli!)

A post shared by The Yee-Haw Agenda (@theyeehawagenda) on

So, where did the yeehaw agenda come from?

Let’s get to the roots of the yeehaw agenda, coined by Bri Malandro on Twitter. Better known as the black yeehaw agenda, this explosion of cowboy imagery and language has taken over our Twitter and Instagram feeds.

The black community is no stranger to this yeehaw culture — from Destiny’s Child to Mary J. Blige, several hip-hop and R&B artists have found inspiration in their southern roots. The yeehaw culture goes even further back, with AFROPUNK reporting that 1 in 4 cowboys during this time period African American, a fact that has time and time again been whitewashed from history lessons.

Black pop stars of today like Solange, Beyoncé and Cardi B have further embraced and celebrated the yeehaw life, reclaiming the meaning of the western culture that has always been their own.

While black people have always been a part of southern culture, southern culture hasn’t always been a space that welcomes and recognizes the role that black people play in its existence. In a way, the sudden explosion of yeehaw culture via mainstream music and memes has created this space.

Enter: inevitable meme culture

Meme culture has embraced all things yeehaw — as someone who spends way too much time on Twitter, I’ve seen the language completely shift within the last year or so — ‘yeehaw’, ‘howdy’, ‘howdy PARTNER’. Everyone and every meme account has jumped on the bandwagon if you will.

 

 

Some are saying yee-naw

The yeehaw agenda hasn’t been all fun and memes for everyone — Lil Nas X, a prominent Twitter user and rapper, was launched into the limelight after dropping his single ‘”Old Town Road”, a song with some very obvious country music influence.

With the emergence of the TikTok #YeeHawChallenge, the song became a viral smash that skyrocketed across several Billboard Charts. After the tracks immediate success, Billboard took down the song from all of the country charts and released, claiming that “it does not embrace enough elements of today’s country music to chart in its current version” in a statement for Rolling Stone. People were rightfully outraged: 

Felicity was previously the Style Editor for Her Campus Media. Felicity graduated in May of 2018 from Florida State University with a double major in Editing, Writing, & Media and Media/Communication Studies. Before joining the team full-time, Felicity was a staff writer, content editor, the managing editor, and the campus correspondent throughout her four years at the FSU chapter. She has interned with Better Homes & Gardens, Sarasota Magazine, and Sachs Media Group during her college career. In her spare time, Felicity likes to explore new coffee shops, go to any local concert, or hunt for new finds at her favorite thrift stores. Felicity was previously the Style Editor for Her Campus Media. Felicity graduated in May of 2018 from Florida State University with a double major in Editing, Writing, & Media and Media/Communication Studies. Before joining the team full-time, Felicity was a staff writer, content editor, the managing editor, and the campus correspondent throughout her four years at the FSU chapter. She has interned with Better Homes & Gardens, Sarasota Magazine, and Sachs Media Group during her college career. In her spare time, Felicity likes to explore new coffee shops, go to any local concert, or hunt for new finds at her favorite thrift stores.