Comedian Eric D'Alessandro jumped on teasing anti-maskers following Walmart's announcement of all ... [+]
Last week, comedian Eric D'Alessandro released a parody video mocking anti-maskers by remixing Future’s “Mask Off” song featuring Drake.
The lyrics were remixed to follow a “Karen” (D'Alessandro in a blonde wig) complaining to big-mart stores like Walmart and Costco for requiring her to wear a mask in their store. The chorus as follows:
Workers sick / I’ll make your workers sick
Manager / Go get your manager
Hey, what’s your name? / I’m filing a complaint
Mask off / I keep my mask off
“Usually I can tell how well a video will perform within the first minute. This one took time. I honestly thought, ‘Oh well, I still had fun making it and maybe down the road people will appreciate this,’" D’Alessandro told me through email. “Then Monday night, someone posted it to the front page of Reddit and it just took off. It's my most viewed video on every platform by far and it's getting shared by more and more people each day.”
WARNING: Explicit language in the video below.
With nearly 1 million views on YouTube and more than 820,000 views on Instagram, it’s by far D’Alessandro’s most popular video on his social platforms.
“The response has been insane. It has been way crazier than I ever could have imagined,” he told me. “I expected my fans to like it, but I didn't expect it to reach so many other people outside of my core audience. Being an Italian-American from New York, a lot of my material obviously talks about that, but there is so much more to me that people don't get from a first impression of me. This video is so awesome because it's not what I'm known for, but it's way more of my real personality.”
The creation process of the video took hardly any time at all. According to Los Angeles resident, he came up with the idea July 8 after a video went viral of “another angry woman flipped out about not wanting to wear a mask.”
“I just looked at her like, ‘I think it would be funny if I was Karen and I made a diss track to these stores making me wear masks,’” the 30-year-old comedian told me. “Then once my mind started going, ‘Mask Off’ instantly had to be the song, and I couldn't find anything online from anyone that did it yet. I ordered a 25 dollar wig on Amazon, wrote the song on Thursday night, recording the audio Friday, dragged my girlfriend to Burbank in the morning to film the video, edited it on Sunday, and posted it on Monday morning.”
D’Alessandro doesn’t believe Future has seen his remix yet, but he’s hopeful that he and Drake will be impressed with it.
As for the negative response, he hasn’t seen much of it.
“I do feel bad when fans of mine named Karen comment things like, ‘Oh great, now I have to change my name,’” he told me. “But I think many people get the joke. The ones who really hate it just ignore it or dislike it on YouTube to which my loyal viewers call them out for.”
