TikTok’s ‘Music Detective’ Jarred Jermaine Teams Up With Froot Loops To Celebrate 1,000+ Hip-Hop Shoutouts

Jarred Jermaine, the viral TikTok “music detective” famous for uncovering samples and sharing song history, has teamed up with Froot Loops for the brand’s new “Follow Your Ears” campaign. 

With more than 1,000 hip-hop shoutouts to Froot Loops over the years, the collaboration highlights the cereal’s surprising cultural footprint. Jarred brings his signature sound-sleuthing style to the campaign, celebrating the intersection of music, nostalgia, and pop culture for his millions of followers.

Jarred sat down with The Blast to talk about the partnership with Froot Loops, jewelry designed for the campaign by Kristopher Kites, as well as his wildly popular social media presence. 

Jarred, "CEO of music and audio knowledge" according to his TikTok bio, has attracted a huge following on social media while helping people find songs. When Froot Loops reached out to him, he was happy to partner with them.

"I knew Froot Loops was popular, but they are mentioned in like a thousand hip-hop tracks," Jarred told The Blast exclusively. "I know this is the best cereal ever, but yeah, it shocked me. I was like, 'Okay, go ahead, Froot Loops.' I thought that was really cool."

The campaign, "Follow Your Ears," carries a different meaning when you have an ear for music like Jarred does. When asked what it means for him as a creator and a music creative, he said it means to "go with the flow of life and listening."

"Wherever I am, I'll kind of take in what I hear in a moment and attach it to a memory of what happened in that place and that's kind of what 'Follow Your Ears' means to me," he shared. "What's crazy is following my ears has made me have so many new tastes in music and memories."

Chicago-based jeweler, Kristopher Kites, also partnered with Froot Loops to create wearable art that fuses cereal nostalgia with modern culture.

“My brand is based and built off of nostalgia. And Froot Loops, they’ve been looking for a big mark to make," Kites previously told The Blast. "With this new campaign, they changed up, their true quote that has been their motto for decades, which is ‘follow your nose’ but now it’s ‘follow your ears.’ They’ve been connecting with hip-hop, and they love my jewelry and wanted me to make some cool pieces to 'follow your ears.'"

During his conversation with The Blast, Jarred brought up Kites' jewelry.

"The jewelry designs that they have by Kristopher Kites, incorporating Toucan Sam inspired gemstones is pretty fire. It's kind of like creating a conversation around some of their songs and hip-hop music and I feel a lot of other cereal brands aren't doing that," he said. "Froot Loops doing that is a really cool move that they're making and it actually is creating a culture around it."

When Jarred started on TikTok, he was sharing comedy, not music. But that quickly changed when he realized music was where it was at. When his comedy videos flopped on TikTok, he didn't really know what he wanted to do and quit TikTok, but he got bored during the pandemic and thought he should try something he's really good at - music.

"I come from a musical background. My family is pretty musical, so it's kind of in my blood to be able to hear a lot of things and be musically inclined. So that, plus my age, listening to a lot of music over the years has helped me become I guess a 'music detective,'" he told The Blast. "So I just wrote down like 20 videos that are music related and that's how it happened. One of them took off, the one I thought was the dumbest idea."

For Jarred, it's quick and easy to figure out a song, but if does get stumped, he said he just does some research to help.

"But for the most part, my age plus my ear, I can tell when something's sampled. I hear the manipulation in the songs," he continued. "If it sounds like something slowed and kind of warped, I know it's a sample. Or if the vocals are sped up or something, but now the lines are getting a little more blurred because of the introduction of AI into music."

Not exactly being a fan of AI in music, Jarred realizes that it's not going anywhere. He said he's not a fan of people being replaced by AI and feels it serves better as a "tool to help people in their pursuit of music."

"So if there's a way that it could live harmoniously with people still being the front and center piece of music, then I feel it's cool," he said. "Otherwise, yeah, people shouldn't be replaced by AI."

With Spotify Wrapped recently dropping and creating an energetic buzz among music lovers, The Blast had to ask Jarred what his Spotify Wrapped was like. He said his was "random because I have so many people sending me songs to listen to."

"It's mostly because people are like hey can you listen to this song," he said. "So I'm like always listening to different tracks from people trying to listen to stuff so I'm everywhere."

When asked why he thinks people get so excited to see their Spotify Wrapped, Jarred explained that "music says a lot about a person."

"I think what causes the excitement is that music says a lot about a person. It kind of shows your personality a little. And music is pretty much one of the most important things in the world because it gives you certain memories, like time travel," he shared. "When you think of a song, it'll take you back to where you were at the moment in time in your life and makes you think about your life."

Jarred also said music brings people together and is "kind of the last monoculture thing we have left, in a sense."

Jarred is well known on TikTok for helping people find specific songs that they can't get out of their heads and to learn more about the origins of a song. If you have a tune stuck in your head and can't figure out who sings it or what the name of it is, Jarred is your guy.

You can find Jarred on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

And don't forget to continue guessing the Froot Loops hip-hop mentions and share your favorite lyrics with Froot Loops on both Instagram and TikTok.