If you’re like us and your TikTok FYP or Instagram feed has been filled with the city’s new unofficial mayor, Tommy Violet, getting down to 414BigFrank’s and Sunny Lou’s song of the summer, “There It Is,” we’re here to break down this very-Milwaukee lore for you — with their help.
And, if you have absolutely no idea what we’re talking about, we got you, too.
“You never really know what’s going to happen to make something go viral,” Tommy told the Journal Sentinel. “Lou makes a very energetic song that’s like classic Milwaukee style. It’s got the Lowend, it’s got a very high-energy sample. You got Frank, who’s kind of like a Milwaukee staple coming in with high energy, just doing his thing. And then, you got a random white guy who’s hitting a dance. It’s like all these random things kind of happened at the right moment.”
From the creation of “There It Is” to how the song took on a life of its own and a breakdown of the main characters involved, here’s their story:
How ‘There It Is’ came to be
It all started when Lou, a producer, created a beat at his home studio that was “dog water” — his words, not ours. But, he took that beat’s structure and repurposed it into something “beautiful.”
“I would just be jamming the beat, like, man, this is fire,” said Lou, who co-runs the Milwaukee-based Run Along Forever record label. “I need someone to go crazy on this. And that’s when I thought of Frank.”
While Lou and Frank — one of the city’s best-known rappers — met through Lou’s brother, DJay Mando, forever ago, this would be Lou and Frank’s first time working together.
While one of Frank’s friends called the beat “weak” when Frank first showed it to him, the artist thought that was “crazy” and said: “All right, watch this.”
After hearing all the horns and getting his brainstorming on, Frank said, he came up with the “There It Is” lyrics and laid down the rap on BandLab on his phone at home.
“The song’s about the beat because it drags on for so long until the bass finally drops,” Lou said. “And, that’s when he said: ‘There It Is.’ There’s the bass. There’s the beat.”
Oh, and remember Frank’s friend who was a doubter? “I sent it to him. He was like, ‘Bro, I ain’t going to lie. I lied. This beat hard,'” Frank said, laughing.
“There It Is” dropped in July, on Frank’s birthday. Lou made it the first track on his 10-song mixtape, “This Ain’t High School,” featuring his favorite Milwaukee artists.
“This was like my grand opus — ’cause I never made beats before,” Lou said. “This is the first time I made beats. And that’s the first song that went crazy.”
How ‘There It Is’ took off: From going viral to the mayor’s office
Frank and Lou had their friends, including Tommy, make videos dancing to “There It Is” to post on social media as promos for the song. Lou and Tommy met in college at the University of Dayton a few years back.
When the video of Tommy dropped, Lou said, it “just went straight up.” So, the guys kept posting him. And, those videos kept popping off.
“We didn’t know people would love Tommy,” Lou said.
In many of the videos to the song, Tommy is doing side arm pumping, shoulder-thrusting dance moves that Frank and fellow local rapper J.P. previously popularized in Milwaukee culture that’s inspired by an Ethiopian dance called the “Eskista,” the group explained. Often, Tommy does it in sync with Frank, Lou and other locals.
Milwaukee’s moves, including those, were on full display in the “There It Is” music video, directed by Nolan Busalacchi, and the “From The Block Performance” video posted by music platform 4ShootersOnly, which has 1.31 million YouTube subscribers.
Busalacchi — Run Along’s founder — filmed the music video at Lou’s brother’s annual Wisconsin lake house party.
After filming two or three performance takes of party-goers dancing, the intro of Frank walking into the event and other shots from the day’s festivities, Busalacchi said he turned it around in just two or three hours of editing.
The video was released July 15 and has been viewed over 208,000 times on YouTube.
“There It Is” has since taken on a life of its own, with strangers from Brew City and beyond dancing to it or using the song for their own videos. The song has been used on more than 4,400 TikToks and over 900 Reels.
Tommy’s follower count on TikTok has sky-rocketed from 400 to 66,100 and from 1,500 to 9,100 on Instagram.
“How everybody is so in love with Beyoncé, they lose their mind or lose their whole cool,” Frank said. “They do the same thing for Tommy.”
He’s even been nicknamed the “mayor of Milwaukee.”
How did that happen? Tommy thinks “it caught fire” after one of his friends posted a TikTok of him that jokingly referred to him as such. Commentors have been calling him that, too, leaving out-of-staters confused on whether or not he actually is Milwaukee’s mayor (He’s not, BTW).
This would eventually lead to a video collab with the city’s actual mayor, Cavalier Johnson. With Lou having gone to high school with someone who works in Johnson’s office, the “There It Is” crew was invited to City Hall.
“Off a joke, we’re in the mayor’s office,” Lou said. “And, he’s playing in on the joke. The mayor is trolling with us. It’s the ultimate full circle.”
The “There It Is” group also recently helped the Milwaukee Public Library — also TikTok-famous — promote the opening of its new Martin Luther King Jr. branch.
“It became a really big community thing,” Busalacchi said. “And, we also kind of flipped it into trying to turn it into a really positive moment … Just trying to shine a positive light on Milwaukee … There’s all these people that are hearing about it for the first time. And now, they’re actually taking an interest in stuff that’s going on here.”
When Frank was asked if he had any idea the song would take off the way that it did, he said: “I didn’t. I didn’t. It was so shocking.”
“Bottom line is: If you have no idea what’s going on, you’re watching this video and you’re smiling. You’re having fun. You’re enjoying it,” Lou said. “You don’t have to know why. You just are. So, it’s fun. And that’s all it is.”
In other words … “There It Is.”
Who is 414BigFrank?
414BigFrank, aka Frank Lee, was born and raised in Milwaukee.
Frank has always been into music, but his first passion was basketball.
“We were supposed to go to the league,” he joked. “And, I got big. I started eating a lot. And, my momma said: ‘Baby, you got to chase another dream.'”
That would eventually become posting comedic video skits on Facebook, YouTube and Vine, what he calls “the original TikTok.”
In 2018, when Frank posted a rap parody to Migos on Facebook, he said, “People were saying, ‘Yo, you should really rap for real.'”
He gave it a serious go, but “it didn’t really catch the eye.”
“I was happy getting 10 likes and three likes and one comment,” he said. “I was appreciating the little stuff. It was the little stuff that mattered. Then, everything was just going up and I was feeling it.”
That came when he dropped the songs “AW or SUM” and “BackPack,” a rap parody sampling the tune of the same name from “Dora the Explorer.”
In the midst of “BackPack” “catching plenty attention,” he said, he was invited in 2022 to open for 21 Savage at Morehouse College in Atlanta.
“I’m in there. I’m getting ready. My people are geeking me up,” Frank said. “Then, I looked on the side, I see Lil Yachty get out of the car. I’m like, ‘Lil Yachty wasn’t on that flyer. What’s he doing here?”
Then, along came Drake. And, Rae Sremmurd, too.
“The list is going on,” Frank said. “So, it’s a lot of celebrities in the house … I was like, ‘Wow. I did not expect this to go down.'”
Not being in his own city, Frank said, he was scared and nervous about how the crowd was going to respond to him. But, as he opened with “BackPack,” the audience started “vibing out.”
While Frank may have not gotten to meet the rap royalty afterwards, he can say he performed on the same stage as them, he said.
“I can tell my grandkids that,” he said.
Since then, Frank’s been on “On the Radar,” which has 1.51 million YouTube subs, twice since June 2024, with another appearance coming up.
In 2024, Frank made his Summerfest debut as one of the openers for Lil Uzi Vert and was part of the One World Music Festival at the Riverside Theater for what was like “The Avengers” of local hip-hop showcases.
Also last year, the Journal Sentinel named Frank one of 18 leaders essential to taking Milwaukee rap to the next level and shouted out “Eat Her Up,” the cheeky breakout that kicks off his fun and funny album, “Can Never Make Me Hate You.”
“It’s just something about performing and then when the people just know your songs and the energy there, you get that feeling in your chest,” Frank said. “You can just feel it. And, that be feeling real good. I just can’t wait until we get to the Travis Scott level. Bro, he be performing in front of 100,000 people.”
Who is Sunny Lou?
Sunny Lou, born Luis Saafir, grew up in Wauwatosa and is a proud graduate of Pius XI Catholic High School.
After injury cut his football aspirations short, Lou turned to music to fill that void.
When he got to Dayton — where he studied entrepreneurship and marketing — he immediately dove into the school’s recording studio club. And, after graduating in 2019, he returned to Milwaukee.
“I love Milwaukee, man,” Lou said. “Everything I know and love is in Milwaukee.”
While working, including a stint as a mail carrier, Lou started tapping into the local music scene. If he wasn’t on the job, he said, he was in the studio, recording artists.
“One of my favorite things is building up music in Milwaukee that people really vibe with and that people would consider a staple to the city,” he said.
In 2024, he said he took his recording studio operation full-time.
“I’m recording people in my studio for a year — hate it,” he said. “I was like, ‘OK, I need something new.'”
That something new would be making his own beats and going to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for his master’s in marketing. He plans to graduate in spring 2026 and has interest in the sports industry.
Right up his alley, considering he’s also a part-time boxing coach at Dropout Fight Club.
Who is Tommy Violet? Is Tommy Violet actually the mayor of Milwaukee?
Tommy Violet, born Elijah Redman, grew up around Dayton and went to the university to play Division I soccer.
After deciding he wasn’t going to pursue the sport professionally, Tommy retired from the game, switched his major from engineering to philosophy and landed an internship with the Institute of Applied Creativity for Transformation.
It was at that internship in summer 2017 that he met and became friends with Lou. While they were hanging out in the kitchen of the office building, Tommy was singing.
“I like to sing and dance, just I’ve always done that,” Tommy said, noting that his parents actually met dancing.
When Lou heard Tommy singing, he asked if he had ever recorded.
“I was like, ‘No.'” Tommy said. “He was like, “Do you want to?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, sure. Why not.'”
That night, they went to the campus recording studio — and the rest is history.
“I wanted to make music and he could sing. I was like, ‘Boy, you’re going to make me famous,'” Lou laughed. “Then, he happened to be a cool guy, too.”
Delving into bedroom pop, Tommy’s most popular song is “Corduroy,” which has been listened to on Spotify more than 198,000 times.
Besides being a singer, songwriter and “happening into being a content creator,” his day job is being an administrative assistant at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Who is Nolan Busalacchi of Run Along Forever?
Busalacchi has always done photography and videography as a hobby.
“I was really passionate about Milwaukee music,” he said. “I would just find any excuse to go shoot music videos for my friends or people that I knew that made music.”
After graduating from Whitefish Bay High School in 2021, he attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied communications.
“I really wanted to find a way to make music and video stuff a career,” he said.
He came up with the idea to start the media company Run Along Forever, which has since transitioned into a record label, he said.
“Here, just because it’s been a place that’s historically been overlooked and overshadowed or not really given it’s time to shine, the city has kind of cultivated this crazy scene and movement,” Busalacchi said. “If you make music here, it’s not like doing something anywhere else.”
“I really like DIY music movements,” he said. “I think that’s why I feel so connected here and want to keep contributing here.”
While in college, he started gaining traction on his music video-making and began managing tours for artists, he said.
With one of those tours overlapping his graduation, him and his friends drove nearly 30 hours from Pioneertown, California, to Madison for his May ceremony.
He arrived at 6 a.m. the day-of, took an hour nap, suited up, then headed to the graduation and celebratory dinner. The next day, he was back on tour.
Busalacchi wants people to respect Milwaukee’s music scene and its artists in the same way as those in cities like Atlanta.
“Milwaukee has the same level of talent,” he said.
What’s next for 414BigFrank and Sunny Lou?
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Breaking down the ‘There It Is’ lore with 414BigFrank, Sunny Lou and Milwaukee’s unofficial mayor Tommy Violet
Reporting by Hannah Kirby, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
