About

Yo Dawg, or Sup Dawg, is an image macro series based on portrait shots of American hip hop artist Alvin Nathaniel Joiner, better known by his stage name Xzibit, and humorous captions that are composed around the recursive phrasal template “Yo Dawg, I herd you like (noun X), so I put an (noun X) in your (noun Y) so you can (verb Z) while you (verb Z).” Since rising to popularity in early 2007, the series has been considered one of the most well-known and longest lasting examples of recursive humor on the Internet.

Origin

The original image macro first appeared on 4chan in early 2007 and experienced a resurgence in late 2008 on Reddit, Tumblr, and social networking sites. The Yo Dawg series has a unique characteristic in being recursive. This multi-layered structure in the Yo Dawg formula makes it reminiscient of the “strange loops” described in Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach.

About Xzibit

Alvin Nathaniel Joiner (born September 18, 1974), better known by his alias Xzibit (pronounced "exhibit"), is an American rapper, actor, television host, radio personality and record producer. He is known as the host of the MTV show Pimp My Ride, which brought him mainstream success. Before hosting the show, he achieved fame in the West Coast hip-hop scene as a rapper, debuting with his acclaimed At the Speed of Life and gathering chart success with his follow-up albums Restless, Man vs. Machine and Weapons of Mass Destruction, working with high-profile artists such as Eminem, Cypress Hill, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Knoc-turn'al, Timbaland, Limp Bizkit, Alice Cooper, Game, 50 Cent and Within Temptation, as well as being one of the first rappers to work internationally, collaborating with overseas acts such as Russian rapper Timati, Raptile from Germany, Bliss N Eso from Australia and Adil Omar from Pakistan.