Big Boogie’s $5M scholarship claim will also be viral

Rappers are known for exaggerating their street cred. Mainly to create an aura of authenticity or myth to get fans to buy. It’s the nature of the game. But there is an exaggeration, and then it is just a lie.

A dangerous piece of horrifying lies is at it again, three years later. From Memphis rapper Big Boogie’s Feb. 17, 2023, appearing on Bootleg Kev podcast, where Boogie says he was offered a scholarship to be a drum major at “a great college in Jacksonville.” (Drum majors lead the marching band and keep it in tempo. Not to be confused with the drum line.)

With Boogie, he turned down a request to focus on rap. The offer was worth $5 million, he says – although he started at $15 million before quickly calling it quits. After Bootleg Kev presses him with an apparent daze, the number softens again to “somewhere…in the millions.”

What makes the clip so interesting is the intensity of the lie. Boogie clearly has no idea how college scholarships work, and clearly doesn’t care. The entire exchange takes place within the first 3 minutes of the 40-minute podcast. Kev spends your segment confused about Boogie being paid to “play drums,” even though Boogie had just clarified that he’s a drummer, not a drummer. Oh, and the school wanted him for ten years, too. Ten years of undergrad drum majoring.

None of this requires fact-checking. But I have time.

The largest school in Jacksonville is Florida State College in Jacksonville, which does not have a marching band. The dollar has no power: the highest paid NIL (name, image, and likeness) athletes in college sports top out at around $5-6 million in high-level play for a full season. Meanwhile, the powerhouse band program at Ohio State University operated with an estimated $15 million as of 2019; no party can beat a third of its budget with one big drum. And even putting money aside, no new person comes in and becomes a great drummer on day one. At Ohio State, you can’t even become an assistant drum major until your sophomore year.

And yet here we are, three years later, watching Big Boogie’s big lie over and over again.

Clip farms and response accounts have been retweeting Boogie’s lies for months, with one account doing it once a day for a year. Some accounts take it a step further, using the clip’s name as a script for sketches of various situations. One has a cameraman asking a salesman about the biggest money he’s ever lost. One has two Mormon missionaries at the door, one explaining to the other why he dropped out of college. There is also an account called Big Band in Jacksonville (one of the few), which posts a character as the school’s social media student, insisting that the offer was real.

Why the three-year-old patch reappeared, who knows? But it’s relatable in the way we all had a friend in middle school lie about really stupid things.

To his credit, Boogie returned to Bootleg Kev in 2024 to patch things up. According to him, the offer to “play the drums” was real – not just a million dollars. He also agreed to do the numbers because he wanted the clip to go further.

So yes. In the end, Big Boogie is still lying.