If the Steelers have Styx, and the Bills have the Killers, then the Panthers have Carolina MiC, the homegrown musician and lifelong football fan whose now-viral song "If I Had $150,000" has taken the Carolina fanbase (and the NFL as a whole) by storm.
Since the tune went mega-viral a few months ago, Carolina MiC (whose real name is Michael Malloy) has performed his ditty at a Panthers game, been featured on an episode of The Manningcast, and was tapped to grab the mic at halftime of the Wake Forest game on Jan. 20th, something he assured me at the time of our conversation was "breaking news." A few days after we talked, he even appeared on a Nov. 30 episode of Myron Metcalf and Matt Jones's Sunday morning show on ESPN Radio.
"I'm kind of speechless," Malloy, who appears as kind and generous as you'd expect, tells me of all the attention. "And that's a hard thing for me because I kind of talk all the time."
If you haven't yet heard it, "If I Had $150,000" is as catchy a song as it is silly, a track that calls to mind the prolific parodies of comedic mastermind "Weird Al" Yankovic (also one of Malloy's musical inspirations). And although the tune was not originally intended to become a Panthers rallying cry, it's not as though the singer/rapper was trying to hide his Carolina fandom, either.
"Even before I added the second verse [which references the Panthers], there was all this [Carolina] stuff in the background when I was recording videos, and I'm like, 'Well, I might as well just work in my favorite team,'" he tells me.
Indeed, the Carolina references came a long time after the song's initial release, which happened sometime in 2023, and to little fanfare. Around July 4th of this year, however, Malloy posted a video of himself lip-syncing to the track in front of his garage, and miming a money toss when the chorus came around.
Maybe that now-iconic choreography was what did it. Or maybe the world was just ready for his creation. Either way, that post began picking up traction. So he tweaked a few things, kept up the momentum, and, in August, acquiesced to writing a second verse.
Standing in front of a Panthers-themed wall in his house while wearing a Panthers hat, shirt and socks, Malloy debuted the new Carolina-forward lyrics in a social media post later that month:
Since then, Malloy has performed at a Panthers tailgate, in addition to the in-game performance vs. the Saints; received shoutouts from Carolina greats like Cam Newton and Jonathan Stewart, including an appearance on Stewart's podcast; and rapped with Nate Burleson on CBS's NFL Today.
Fans have asked him for autographs. He met Jake Delhomme, his favorite player. The Panthers even gifted him a custom jersey, in his favorite shade of blue, and with "Carolina Mic" on the back.
"This is a dream," he tells me, "so I'm just gonna dream my way right on through it."
Music has always been a part of Malloy's DNA. Although he now lives in Minnesota, the self-proclaimed tech nerd is originally from South Carolina, where he joined the school band in seventh grade. Later, after a brief stint at a semi-local college, he joined the Marine Corps band and did four years there.
"There's a Polaroid picture of me standing in my grandma's house, pretending to hold a microphone, just going to town, singing," he says of his background. "And so when people would come over, whatever I had learned from the radio, I would just sing for them and dance and whatever."
After finishing up in the Marines, the Minnesota-bound Malloy planned to join another music group. But life got in the way, and those plans fell by the wayside.
Eventually, though, in 2018, "I was hearing stuff on the radio and I'm like, 'You know, I feel like I could do that." So he started making his own songs, "and now here we are."
As for the inspiration behind his big hit, that had less to do with wanting $150,000 for himself and more to do with what Malloy believes to be a somewhat comedic windfall of cash.
"Me having $150,000 or gaining $150,000 was never a thought," he explains of the track's origins. "It was just a fun song about having this weird amount of money that's not crazy big, but not crazy small, and seeing what I could do with it."
"It was almost kind of like a thumbing my nose to popular music, you know. Rhyming yacht with yacht."
In addition to Yankovic, he counts Sky and the Family Stone, George Clinton, and Earth, Wind & Fire among his favorites. "I like funk, R&B," he explains. "I like a lot of genres, but that's mostly where a lot of my influence comes from."
You can hear it in the music. The comedic winks; the fast, rhyming lyrics; the driving synth—this is a man who knows how to honor his roots. And clearly, something about the blend he's putting together is resonating. As of this writing, he boasts 23.8K followers on TikTok, 48.2K on Instagram, and 10K monthly listeners on Spotify, which isn't half bad for an artist of his size and origin.
Next up, the 51-year-old father is "99% sure" he'll be putting an album together, but until then, he's just "having a good time."
"I mainly just wanna put some positive music out in the universe," he says of this internet fame rollercoaster. "And have people vibe with it and make people smile and dance and laugh with me."
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as How Carolina MiC Won Over the Panthers Fandom With Viral Song 'If I Had $150,000'.
