An old composition of a Polish hip-hop group about “5 grams of coke” unexpectedly shot on Tik Tok. What lies behind the incomprehensible words and how to sing the song correctly?

Koksu 5 gram: Polish track became a hit in autumn 2020

“…Tylko jedno w głowie mam Koksu 5 gram…” (aka: “Polish song from Tiktok”) is a track by Cypis, which became a real hit this fall among Internet users, gained particular popularity as a background voice acting for memes with a dancing cow, dinosaurs and different cartoons in “tiktok” and “youtube”.

5 grams of coke (Cypis song) – what language?

The track with the official title “Gdzie jest biały węgorz? (Zejście)” is performed by musician Cypis Solo (another pseudonym of the author is Norman Price, which he borrowed from the character of the same name from the cartoon “Fireman Sam”). He first posted this track on his YouTube channel back in 2015, and judging by the comments under the video, until recently the track was popular only among the Polish-speaking audience. By the way, the language of the track is really Polish, although many mistakenly believe that the song is sung in Serbian or Czech.

The literal title of the track is translated into Russian as “Where is the white eel?”, But in meaning this name can be translated as “Where is the delirium tremens?”. And if the very name of the track may seem banal and uncomplicated, then the semantic translation of the entire text of the song may surprise many users.

Carefully! The original text contains profanity and references to drugs.

Cypis gdzie jest biały węgorz: text, translation and transcription of words

If you want to perform a composition on your own with friends, then transcription is indispensable. The verses are full of dubious expressions and few people listen to them. The interest of the public is riveted to two quatrains in the debut of the song:

Tylko jedno w głowie mam

Koksu pięć gram

odlecieć sam

W krainę za zapomnienia

W głowie myśli mam

Kiedy skończy się ten stan

Gdy już nie będę sam

Bo wjedzie biały węgorz

From the text of the song, it becomes clear that the performer is trying to talk about his pain due to drug withdrawal, about how bad he feels, what negative emotions he is experiencing. He cannot get rid of this addiction and he no longer has money for a new dose of drugs.

At the same time, the dance motive of the song makes you forget the meaning of the words of the track and make other associations with the song. This is what Internet users do, often using this track as a background soundtrack for video memes (vines). In addition, having gained popularity among Internet users, since the fall of 2020, the Cypis track has also reached the charts of radio stations and recommendations in Shazam.

Cypis – band or solo artist?

As for the performer of the composition, Cypis (or Cypis Solo, Norman Price) is a well-known musician among the Poles, a former member of the bands P.W.P., WMO, Projekt HC, etc. Cypis began his musical career in 2004. In Poland, he is also known for his other hits: “There is no Christmas” (Polish: “Świąt nie będzie”) – a vulgar underground adaptation of the well-known “jingle bells”, “When you feel bad” (Polish: “Gdy ci źle”) – Polish adaptation of the well-known hit “In My Mind” and others. His discography includes more than 20 discs, but many of them are unofficial releases. Currently, he performs on his own more often under the name Cypis Solo, has official social media accounts with the same nickname.

As mentioned, among Internet users, the Cypis track is “Gdzie jest biały węgorz?” became a hit only at the end of the summer of 2020. Who became the author of the first “meme with a Polish track” is unknown. But the first videos in which it was used were videos about a dancing yellow triangle and a dancing (lit.: “flexing”) cow. Later, these strange dancing vines were repeatedly re-uploaded by YouTube users with a loop for an hour or more. Right now, the most popular video on YouTube is an hour-long loop of a cow dancing to a Polish track, the video has nearly 4.5 million views. Subsequently, this video meme became so contagious that now, by searching for “cow flexes to Polish music”, you can find a huge number of video memes and each has hundreds of thousands of views. Moreover, the Cypis track began to be used as a background voice acting and other similar memes: on YouTube and Tiktok you can find flexes of famous cartoons, as well as ordinary Internet users who also actively flex to Polish music and even ( !) President of Poland – Andrzej Duda. As the saying goes: “Everybody dance!”.

In addition, now Internet users are massively creating vines with the effect that Cypis’s hit about “you know what 5 grams …” is sung by famous people in a drug frenzy (for example, the same President of Poland – Andrzej Duda, former President of Poland – Yaroslav Kaczynski , football player Robert Lewandowski, President of Belarus – Alexander Lukashenko and others) – this effect is created using editing. By the way, the author of the YouTube channel about the origin of the Lessons in Meme Culture memes expresses the opinion that the cow was used in memes for a reason – many residents of the United States and Western Europe associate Poles with the rural class or representatives of third world countries, cows are an integral part of their lives.