An Interview With the Legend Behind the "Why You Always Lyin'" Video

Nicholas Fraser is a 21-year-old college student living in Queens, N.Y. and earlier this month, he created a Vine that could, potentially, be the Song of the Summer. In the ode to liars, Fraser—who is on Vine and Instagram under the username @downgoes.fraser—flips the lyrics to Next's classic hit, "Too Close."

Fraser joined Vine around two years ago and began releasing videos that gained a bit of traction although some went viral uncredited. Thanks to some re-Vines and shout-outs, his following ballooned from a few hundred to 55.8K on Vine and 37.1K on Instagram. After his "Why You Lying" video went viral, we spoke with him about the making the Vine, why he has a toilet in his backyard, and being a viral star.

Everyone has been saying you have the Song of the Summer.
When I hear that, it's crazy. I walked outside of my house and my brother's friends came to me and was like, "You know you're famous now?" I'm like, "What!"

Everything from the outfit to the editing is so well done. How did this start?
It was late at night and I was gonna see some girl, right? But before I was gonna see the girl, I was going to go to 7/11 to buy a donut and I didn't feel like walking so I decided to take my mom's car while she's sleeping. I took the car and I connected my phone to the car to play music. The original song—Next's "Too Close"—started playing on Pandora. I was listening to R. Kelly radio or something. I knew all the words so I pulled it up on YouTube to play it from the beginning and I just randomly started changing the lyrics to "Why you always lying." And I was like, "Oh." I'm always changing up lyrics but this time I was like, "This is really crazy." I have another video where I changed the lyrics to Rae Sremmurd's "No Type" to "Passion of Christ." Changing the lyrics to Next was relatable to everyone in the world. I started singing it over and over and said, "I'm really about to kill them tomorrow."

At the same time, you're lying because you stole your mom's car to go get a donut. Did you end up meeting up with the girl?
Yeah, for a little bit.

You dipped to go plan the Vine?
Exactly. The next day came and I recorded the voiceover to put on the audio. The original idea wasn't for me to be outside, the original idea was for me to show my face with the song playing in the background but I said, "That's not good enough. I don't wanna just do the video, I wanna make an R&B video." It's an iconic song. I asked my brother to come downstairs and film me outside.

From the outfits to the dance moves, you really planned this perfectly.
That's how I usually am all the time. The way I was dancing, I do that all the time. It's weird. The part of the song where I say, "Mmmmmmmohmygod" I've been saying that for so long.

So, every time you say "Oh my God" you say it like that?
Yeah. It's weird. It just comes out and is really loud and is always like that.

What happened next?
I made the video and I sat down and thought to myself, "Should I put my name on this video?" I thought it would get 100 likes, and what's 100 likes nowadays? It's worth like, what, two hot dog buns? It's not worth anything. I took the chance and I didn't put my name on it. The guys I know through Vine told me to connect all of my social media to Vine so at the same time, I posted it everywhere—Vine, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. I went to bed and when I woke up, I was like, "OK what is going on right now?"

I have to ask, why do you have a toilet in your backyard?
You know, certain questions you can't answer because there's really no answer. Basically, I remodeled my house—my bathroom—a couple months ago and the old toilet got taken outside and, for some reason, we never took it out. It's just been there the whole time. I just thought, "This might just add to the video." Everyone keeps asking me about it.

Who has reached out to you? I saw Diddy, Chris Brown, Wiz Khalifa were all posting about it.
They posted about it at first but they didn't tag me. I told my followers to tell them to tag me. Most of them eventually tagged me in it.

What are some of your favorite mashups?
Oh my god. There's one where they took my head off and edited it into the Next music video. That might be one of the best ones.

Has anyone from Next reached out to you?
Yeah one commented on the video which surprised me, I thought they'd be upset but they thanked me. I wish I had the actual comment to show you, it was a good appreciated one.

Do you think you'll do a remake of the entire song?
Honestly, the way my mind is set up, I don't want to be know as the "Why you lyin" guy because I'm funnier than that video. I just needed that one video to let people know I'm creative so I think that me making a song could be bad or good. It could either make me or completely mess up my whole... career or whatever I'm doing.

What do you wanna do?
I thought about being a comedian but I don't know if I want to be. I'm just funny. I have good ideas so I think that maybe I could be on somebody's show or have my own show. I could maybe be in a Madea movie. You never know! My life is pretty funny.

What happened with the girl who you went to see the night you thought of the Vine?
I don't know how to describe that friendship. She was like, "I'm so proud of you, finally you got to where you wanna be." [Laughs]

Anything else you want to add?
All I really want to say is thank you to everybody. Five days ago, I was just a guy making funny videos that were getting 30 likes. Now, everything is getting more likes. I just appreciate everybody and I don't want to be that guy, I want to talk to people and let people know who I am. I want people to look up to me and I think if I put enough work into what I'm doing, I could get somewhere with it.

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