The song, from Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail, which some octogenarian readers may remember arriving three days early through an app for the first million Samsung Galaxy owners, had already begun to creep into the younger generation’s consciousness. On July 18, a post from the user Bosshood featuring the track and a similarly outlandish dance racked up more than 471,000 likes. The song’s bubbly instrumental proved irresistible to young content creators already inundated with Jay-Z content this summer.
Raud’s version has proven especially contagious. Four recent posts in which he uses the song have amassed more than 550,000 likes. The largest has more than 250,000 likes, 12,000 saves, and 16,000 shares. The main TikTok sound has appeared in more than 10,000 videos, and commenters have already begun calling the song his theme music. Back when it was released in 2013, “Tom Ford” peaked at Number 39 on the Hot 100. This month, the song crossed 100 million streams on Spotify.
It comes as Jay-Z’s anniversary celebrations for Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint have placed the rapper’s legacy front and center in the culture. Following three shows at Yankee Stadium, during which he brought out everyone from Rihanna to Beyoncé, streams of Reasonable Doubt jumped 94 percent to more than 2 million over four days. The Blueprint rose 118 percent to more than 2.4 million. Jay’s Spotify audience has also climbed from 46 million monthly listeners in late June to more than 48 million today.
The song itself helps explain why this particular Jay-Z single has become such fertile material. Go back and listen to the beat on “Tom Ford.” Produced by Timbaland and Jerome “J-Roc” Harmon, it sounds sort of ridiculous, in the best way. It sounds like Jay trapped Timbaland in the studio and demanded something that sounded futuristic. And, you know what, he got it. The buoyant 808s ping-pong back and forth, sounding like an aquatic marching band ushering in a deep-sea championship team.
The production fits the era’s sense of sonic maximalism. This was peak 2010s, as EDM extravagance took hold of the pop landscape and seemingly every major rap song needed enough low end to rattle the trunk of a moderately priced sedan. Jay was also railing against a rap world that he viewed as overly childish, hence the emphasis on the designer known for his suiting. Ford had already directed the excellent A Single Man in 2009 and would go on to make Nocturnal Animals in 2016. He represented the combination of luxury, seriousness, and cultural legitimacy that Jay wanted to project. “I don’t pop molly, I rock Tom Ford,” Jay raps, completely straight-faced.
Here was Jay, drawing a line between the increasingly popular molly raps of the 2010s with his own penchant for luxury garments. Young listeners today encounter “Tom Ford” without any of this context. So, even though Jay spent the song drawing a line between his own sophistication and the rest of the rap world’s childish behavior, 13 years later, kids are turning his luxury flex into a silly dance. Thankfully, Jay’s legacy can withstand the joke, which is the true test of time.
