(CNN)Fame struck Adam Nyerere Bahner like a random bolt of lightning.
At the time, Bahner was a graduate student living in Minneapolis, pursuing a Ph.D. in American studies. "I was a bad graduate student. I didn't really like teaching, and I didn't really like research," he said. "I was focusing on studying the history of performance and social change."
About 2006, Bahner began to go to small open mics at "mom and pop shops" where he would "sing for perhaps five people, two of whom were reading the newspaper and three of whom, being Minnesotans, were very nonconfrontational and would say, 'Oh, yeah, that's great; keep doing what you're doing,' " he said.
Tired of dragging his keyboard and amplifier around in the middle of winter, Bahner decided to post a music video on YouTube.
"I invented the name 'Tay Zonday,' " he said. "I put it in quotes in Google, and it got zero results, so I immediately tried to claim it everywhere." This "deliberate branding choice" was necessary because Bahner assumed that his academic career would involve publishing papers, and he wanted a separate persona for his YouTube endeavors.
"And I wanted to make sure if someone said it in conversation, people would know how to spell it," he added.
In January 2007, Zonday started uploading music videos that "got no momentum whatsoever." Still, he received honest feedback. "You sound like a didgeridoo" was one comment he recalled. This criticism encouraged him to sing in a baritone range and aim "for more mass appeal."
" 'Chocolate Rain' was a song I completed as an afterthought," he said. "I did another song that YouTube told me they would feature on the front page." At the time, editors still curated YouTube's front and section pages.
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