The composer behind the famous trending audio, Saxophones getting louder, made a social media reaction hearing his music decades later.
Taking to his official Instagram handle, the music composer, Stanley Clarke, responded to the trend, taking his phone and saying, “What the hell is this?” as he watched social media users set clips to the audio. “I heard that they were doing this,” he noted.
He then begins looking through the thousands of videos using the audio, saying, “Now what is this dude doing?” and “Is that a raccoon in the video?” His video then cuts to the scene from the movie in which the song first played. The composer behind a wildly popular trending audio on social media is responding to hearing his music decades after he created it for the 1991 classic Boyz n the Hood.
The “saxophones getting louder” trend sees TikTok and Instagram users posting footage of unsettling moments to ominous, saxophone-heavy audio.
The trend originated in a Dec. 30 TikTok post by the user “foreverhumblemarc96,” who shared a now-viral screengrab of the 2017 blockbuster Get Out with the overlaid caption, “POV: You in a 90s hood movie about to move out the trenches but you hear them saxophones going crazy so you know you finna get slimed”.
But the audio actually originates from Boyz n the Hood, and the trend even references the movie’s plot. During the film, the ominous saxophone line starts playing moments before the character Ricky is chased down by rival gang members and shot in the back.
The saxophone line in the film became a foreboding signal to viewers that something bad was about to happen.