Where Did You Come From? Mississippi
TL;DR · Origin "Where'd you come from? / Mississippi" comes from "We Both Reached for the Gun" (subtitled "The Press Conference Rag") in the musical Chicago. In the number, the lawyer Bill…
Origin
"Where'd you come from? / Mississippi" comes from "We Both Reached for the Gun" (subtitled "The Press Conference Rag") in the musical Chicago. In the number, the lawyer Billy Flynn sits his client Roxie Hart on his knee like a ventriloquist's dummy and answers the reporters' questions in her voice. A reporter asks where she came from; Billy, as Roxie, snaps back "Mississippi" — question and answer trading places on a ragtime beat.
The musical opened on Broadway in 1975, but the scene reached a mass audience through the 2002 film, where Richard Gere played Billy Flynn and Renée Zellweger played Roxie, with the reporters staged as wind-up puppets. The exchange appears verbatim in the lyrics.
Chicago opened on Broadway in 1975, with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb and direction and choreography by Bob Fosse. Set in 1920s Chicago, it follows women accused of killing their husbands who turn press attention into stardom; the 2002 film adaptation won Best Picture at the 75th Academy Awards. This number sits at the point where that theme is most explicit: a press conference in which the lawyer opens his client's mouth for her and builds the public story.
How it is used
As a meme the point is the form, not the content: a clipped question, a clipped answer, the pair riding a rhythm. People keep the structure and swap in their own situation.
- Rapid-fire self-introductions or preference lists written to that beat
- Mocking a situation where someone else speaks for you, regardless of what you would have said
- Heading an interview-style or apology-style post to imply the answers were scripted
Because the original number satirises press management, quoting it over a public statement drags that context along with it.
