Two years after it was uploaded, Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again” surpassed Psy’s “Gangnam Style” as YouTube’s most-watched video of all time.
Khalifa’s video surpassed the South Korean pop-sensation’s video by more than 2 million views at approximately 1 p.m. Tuesday, July 11, when the official count was 2,897,619,778 versus 2,895,111,556, according to Hip Hop DX .
Posted in March 2015, the song was part of the soundtrack for Fast and Furious 7 , which was released in April 2015. It was included in the credits at the end of the film as a tribute to actor Paul Walker. Walker had starred in the Fast and Furious franchise from the beginning but died November 2016 in a car crash , three months into the film’s production.
That year, “See You Again” became the first hip-hop video to earn more than one billion views in the website’s history. Wiz Khalifa made history again in September 2016 , when he became the second artist behind Psy to earn 2 billion views on a video, thanks to the continued popularity of “See You Again.”
Khalifa tweeted a Forbes article about the achievement on Tuesday and added no comment. He later released a statement saying that he was super excited and grateful to everyone who supported ‘See You Again by streating it on YouTube.
Charlie Puth, Atlantic Records singer and songwriter who wrote the song for Khalifa, tweeted “For the record, I joined @Youtube in 2007 hoping to make a video that would reach 10,000 views. Just heard about See You Again…wow.”
The combined views for the video played consecutively would take 21,759 years to watch from beginning to end, according to the BBC .
“See You Again” was the top-selling song of the year in 2015, and was nominated for Best Song for both the Grammys and the Golden Globes. It won Best Song from the Critics Choice Award in 2016.
Despite the song’s success, the Puerto Rican song “Despacito” may soon overtake it. Released in January 2017 by Luis Fonsi and featuring fellow Puerto Rican sensation Daddy Yankee, the Spanish language song is already approaching 2.5 billion views in six months, making it the fifth most popular video on YouTube in less than half a year.
[Featured Image by Bennett Raglin/Getty Images]
