Lil Yachty’s “Poland” is 83 seconds lengthy, jarringly repetitive, and purposefully obtuse. And but, within the fingers of TikTok, it’s turn into a smash, cracking the highest half of the Billboard Hot 100 and turning into the delight of its namesake nation.

Not that Yachty meant any of this. “The song was a joke,” he mentioned in a reaction video with YouTuber ZIAS! “Like, I was just trolling.” The hook—“I took the Woooooock to Polaaaaand”—is one thing he improv’d one night time after seeing somebody sipping a Poland Spring bottle within the studio. So the Poland he’s singing about might technically be Poland, Maine. (“Wock,” should you’re questioning, is a nod to Wockhardt cough syrup.) As the track went viral, web sleuths tried to search out out when Yachty may’ve gone to the Central European nation and largely came up empty-handed. The 25-year-old Atlanta rapper didn’t even plan to release the track, however he ended up placing it on SoundCloud after it discovered its approach on-line.

The leak proved fortuitous. After “Poland” hit SoundCloud, TikTokkers reworked the track’s malleable refrain into gags about taking motion stars abroad (“I took the Rock to Poland”) and staple objects again to burrito chains (“I took the guac to Chipotle”). Someone even made a loaf of bread emblazoned with the lyrics. It impressed greater than 20,000 creations in per week.

No small variety of these got here from Poland itself. One video known as Yachty’s name-drop a “top 10 moment in Polish history.” Rapper Pat wrote, “This is the proudest I’ve been as a Polish person since [soccer player Robert] Lewandowski scored five goals in 9 minutes.” Another person referred to it as Poland’s new nationwide anthem.

Nikodem Rachoń, a spokesperson for the Polish embassy in Washington, DC, says that he hopes the rapper will sooner or later go to the nation, and that the embassy could be glad to facilitate the journey. He even added a little bit of music criticism: “I’m fairly certain that on such an event, he would have a lot of alternatives to search out some new inspiration for the following verses the track nonetheless apparently wants.”

Rapper Kinny Zimmer says that as soon as he heard the track, he was “sure it would become viral.” As someone who loves modern Polish culture, he hopes that Yachty’s song will root his home country in the minds of Americans and teach his countrymates “how beautiful our Polish aesthetics are.” Rapper Pezet confessed to preferring a “more old-school sound” than that on “Poland” but liked its “cool new vibe” and hoped it could inspire collaborations between Polish and US hip-hop artists. 

Others are embracing the track much more totally. Bedoes has dropped a “Poland” remix; within the video, he’s shirtless on a boat with an ax and a glow-in-the-dark shield. “Lil Yachty mentioning my country was a meme to me,” he says, “but it was also kind of surrealistic, because him being a top artist, known worldwide, rapping about my country was really special. I knew all the ways that it probably was a coincidence that he mentioned Poland, but still, that was really special.” He, too, hopes the strange hit leads to an increased appreciation of Polish culture. “Maybe pierogis with Wock?” he jokes. 

Unexpectedly for such a enjoyable lark, there’s a thornier geopolitical angle concerned with “Poland.” As Lil Yachty’s track unfold, messages started circulating on Twitter that Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki had invited the rapper to go to his nation. Local media quickly debunked the rumor. Anyone fearing elevated authoritarianism in Europe is perhaps happy to know that Yachty isn’t truly liaising with Morawiecki, who represents the ruling Law and Justice Party, which has been criticized for a crackdown on judicial independence and a common slide away from democratic principles. 

As of this writing, TikTok movies tagged #lilyachtypoland are hovering near 6 million views, search outcomes for the track top 1 billion. Yachty’s personal “Poland” video has been seen greater than 14 million instances. Ultimately, it is unclear if his track may have an enduring affect on appreciation for Polish tradition worldwide, however in a message from the artist on that video’s YouTube page, the rapper makes clear it’s a song for regular folks: “You’re welcome Polish people, you now have Wock.”