Four years after Takeoff was killed in Houston, the internet has made his last great performance its newest canvas. What do we owe the dead when their image becomes a meme?
Two men stand in front of a wall of burnt orange. There is a single microphone, no stage, no crowd. For four minutes, an uncle and his nephew trade verses on a song about a hotel lobby, and it looks effortless.
That is the COLORS performance of “Hotel Lobby,” by Quavo and Takeoff, two-thirds of Migos, recording as the duo Unc & Phew. COLORS is the Berlin-based platform famous for exactly this look: one artist, one bold color, nothing else. The song, released in May 2022 as the first single from their album Only Built for Infinity Links, reached No. 55 on the Billboard Hot 100 and went platinum.
November 1 marked four years since Takeoff, born Kirsnick Khari Ball, was shot and killed outside 810 Billiards & Bowling in downtown Houston. He was 28. And this fall, that orange room has become one of the internet’s favorite playgrounds.
The trend
This fall, fans have been “flipping” the COLORS session with artificial intelligence, swapping celebrities and movie characters into the frame while the song plays on. One edit features Spider-Man and the Green Goblin. Black America Web called the trend one that “has legs,” even as more young people push back against AI.
The trend has now reached the richest men in tech. In one widely shared clip, AI versions of Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman take Quavo and Takeoff’s places at the microphone. Neither man filmed it. The faces, the voices and the moves are all generated by software.
Explainer videos now trace the meme back to the original COLORS session, and step-by-step tutorials teach anyone how to drop a new face into Takeoff’s frame in a few minutes.
Most of the remixes are playful. Some are clever. But every one of them begins with the same footage, and with a young man who is no longer here.
The questions behind the joke
The trend arrives at a heavy moment. The man charged with Takeoff’s murder, Patrick Xavier Clark, is scheduled to go on trial in Houston this month, with jury selection set to begin November 5, according to Houston’s KPRC 2. Clark has maintained his innocence, and he is presumed innocent until a jury decides otherwise.
So the remixes raise questions worth sitting with. Who owns a person’s image after death? When technology lets anyone put new faces, or new words, into a dead man’s performance, where does tribute end and erasure begin? And what does it mean for Black artists, whose images have so often been borrowed, copied and sold without them, to be reanimated for laughs?
Until the lion learns to write, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
African proverb
The proverb reminds us that whoever holds the pen, or now the software, shapes the story. Quavo has kept writing his own chapter of it. He released “Without You,” a tribute to his nephew, in 2023, and he and Offset performed “Hotel Lobby” together in Takeoff’s honor at the BET Awards that June.
Why it matters
We are thinking, feeling, willing people, and we can choose what we do with what we watch. Share the original. Credit the artists. Before you post the next remix, ask whether it honors Takeoff or simply uses him.
Four years later, the most powerful version of “Hotel Lobby” is still the one with no special effects at all: two family members, one color, and a song. Watch it, and remember Takeoff as he was.
Sources: COLORS; Black America Web, “Quavo & Takeoff’s COLORS ‘Hotel Lobby’ AI trend” (Sept. 24, 2026); AllHipHop and KPRC 2 on the trial date; ABC7 on the 2022 shooting; Billboard on chart history and Quavo’s tribute.