Entry · catalog no. 1007
there go your best friend
/ /ðɛɚ goʊ jɔ bɛs frɛn/ /thair-GO-yo-BES-fren
phrase · U.S. South (New Orleans) · 2010s
✓ Verified
1.
A call-out phrase used to point at, hype up, or clown a friend caught in the act — dancing, showing out, acting the fool, or doing something so "them" that it needs to be announced to whoever's watching. It leans on the AAVE zero-marked verb "go" (instead of "goes"), a grammatical feature of the dialect and not a mistake, and can be said with pride, humor, or gentle roasting depending on tone.
“Camera pans to her doing the most on the dance floor — "there go your best friend right there!"”
Origin & Attribution
The grammar underneath the phrase — dropping the third-person -s so "goes" becomes "go" — is a long-documented feature of African American Vernacular English, not slang or error; linguists studying Black speech in Northern and Southern cities have logged this verb-agreement pattern for decades. The specific catchphrase form got a viral spike from Black social media culture around 2015, tied to New Orleans Vine and Instagram personality Tokyo Vanity, whose clip captioned "That's my best friend" (filmed with fellow Viner Summerella) turned into a hip-hop novelty record.
1960s-70s
Sociolinguists studying Black English in Northern and Southern cities document the zero third-person -s verb pattern ("he go", "she say") as a systematic AAVE feature.
2015
Tokyo Vanity's viral New Orleans-shot Vine/Instagram clip with Summerella, captioned "That's my best friend," spins off into a hip-hop novelty song and a wave of "go best friend" hype remixes.
2015-16
"There go your best friend" circulates on Vine and early Instagram as the pointing/narrating version of the same hype-man phrasing, used both to celebrate and to clown.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
U.S. South (New Orleans) · 2010s
Spoken by
Black Southern speakers generally, and Black social media users of the Vine/Instagram era specifically
$THEREGThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Peaked11 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
38/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2015
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
That's My Best Friend, viral Vine/Instagram clip and novelty song by Tokyo Vanity
video/song, 2015
■
+ Cite a source"Go Bestfriend" remix compilations circulating on Vine and YouTube reuploads
video compilation, 2015
See also