The early contender for song of the summer is a TikTok-fueled remix of a sexually explicit evangelical sermon about margaritas.
Allow me to explain.
Earlier this spring, a 65-year-old evangelical Christian named Cindy Smock — better known as Sister Cindy — delivered a sermon on the Louisiana State University campus. Smock’s performances have become wildly popular on TikTok, where she has amassed nearly half a million followers. (In this video, Smock says she’s “here to do some good old-fashioned slut-trying”.)
On the LSU campus, Smock listed the sexual acts that a hypothetical promiscuous woman would act out drinking multiple margaritas. The crowd cheered and shouted along – most of them seemed to take Smock’s words as tongue-in-cheek performance art.
“If you buy her one margarita, she’ll spread her legs,” Smock yelled into the crowd. Subsequent margaritas were associated with increasingly explicit sexual acts, eliciting enthusiastic cheers from the crowd. Think of it as an X-rated riff on the classic children’s book “If You Give a Moose a Muffin.”
The sermon went viral on TikTok and caught the attention of Angel Laketa Moore, a comedian and actor. “Listening to it I was like, I know what she’s trying to do and God bless her, but I was like ‘this feels more like a rap,'” Moore told me.
So she turned it into a message, turning Smock’s original message upside down.
Moore’s lyrics become more and more explicit with each additional margarita, describing sexual acts you’ve almost certainly heard cannot be described here.
Artists Carl Dixon and Steve Terrell remixed Moore’s rap over a new beat and posted it to TikTok. In the end, they teamed up with Moore to make a longer version that you can stream right now. Of course it is not safe to work.
The song is a hit. Lizzo even posted a video. It’s really catchy! I’ve found myself behind my booth muttering “give me five margaritas” quietly to no one in particular on several occasions. Move over Jimmy Buffett!
“I think the beauty of a lot of female rappers is that they take back ownership of their sexuality and their need or desire for sex.” Moore said. “It’s not like you’re going to give me a margarita because you hope I’m going to do this. I tell you, ‘give me a margarita and I’m a blessing that this thing opens up for you.’”
Smock, for her part, says her original sermon was an interpretation of Proverbs 20:1, in which she warned “against the dangers of alcoholic beverages.” She spent years preaching on college campuses and spearheading what she calls the “Ho No Mo Revolution.”
“The Bible is actually a very vulgar book in places, especially when God described sin,” Smock told me.
She also told me that while she uses satire in her sermons, she is not joking.
“Most people know I’m real, but the younger people on TikTok don’t get it,” she said.
Sister Cindy has also since come out with her own margarita song.
“She’s talking about drinking holy water. I’m trying to drink that booze,” Moore said of the song. “I think there is room for all of us.”
Internet candy
Here’s what else is happening online this week.
Ducking autocorrect
“Today marks the beginning of a new era for computing,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this week. He was talking about the big item at the conference: the Vision Pro headset, which my colleague Vanessa Friedman wrote makes the wearer look like “a super cool bench slalom master from a land far, far away.”
But at $3,500, it’ll be a while before the Vision Pro changes the lives of most consumers. The announcement that will mark the beginning of a new era for the rest of us is the company’s overhaul of autocorrect, which will soon use a large language model similar to the one at the heart of ChatGPT.
At the moment, autocorrect works by comparing word for word against a dictionary. But with iOS 17, expected to be released later this year, autocorrect will start considering entire sentences to determine if the words are correct. It should also respond better to the flourishes in each user’s vocabulary — including the use of profanity, according to Apple’s Craig Federighi.
“In those moments when you just want to type an evasive word, the keyboard learns it too,” Federighi said at the event.
You can read more about the planned changes to autocorrect here (plus a fun look back at some of the most notorious blunders in autocorrect history).
We’d love to hear from you: What’s your worst autocorrect mistake? Which word substitution makes you craziest? Let us know at iho., and we may use your answers in a future newsletter.