Drake release a music video for Toosie Slide, a song he apparently made for TikTok. As ever, the internet is divided with incredibly strong opinions that range from calling him a cornball to an icon. But what everyone seems to agree on is that his house is insane. No surprise there. The guy likes to spend. His private “jet” is a personalized 767.
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The gas alone! Goodness me.
But as I watched his new music video, instead of admiring the playful Kaws statues and home fireworks show that surely must have confused the sheltering citizens of Toronto, I found myself wondering if the rapper was really singing his song. Now, I grew up watching “Making the Video” on MTV. It was no secret that stars like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake would lip-sync during their music videos. The focus was more on the pageantry and pyrotechnics; the choreographed dancing and whatever zoo animals they could rent for the day. Lip-syncing was a sin akin to treason in those days—we saw Ashlee Simpson’s career nose-dive after her infamous SNL performance—but it was accepted in music videos.
But I don’t even know if Drake is lip-syncing. I worry that he’s not moving his mouth at all. In other words, is it possible that Drake is only singing… with his eyes?
Exhibit A:
In this moment, Drake’s eyes involuntarily close as if to emphasize the weight of his lyrics:
“Got so many people that I love out of troubled spots.”
One can imagine that the memory of helping all these people is so gratifying that he has to close his eyes, as one does in moments of extreme gratification. Either that or he realized, in this moment, that the lyric contains a clanky misplaced modifier, and that he knows it’s too late to exorcise the rotting words from the record.
Exhibit B
This is Drake’s second display of the viral dance immortalized by Toosie, an Atlanta native. And by that I just mean he lives there. In this part of the video, Drake breaks his eye contact with the camera as if to focus entirely on getting the steps right for the dance. I can’t blame him: whenever Cotton-Eye Joe came on at prom, I would have to break from the crowd, find a quiet corner of the gym under the basket, and maintain perfect eye contact with my feet. There were far too many steps to actually enjoy the dance with friends and/or girls. Sometimes, the girl I was hoping to finger would express disappointment that I had exiled myself. But it was a small price to pay for dancing in time to the song.
Point is, if Drake has to watch his feet to get the dance right, you can bet there’s no chance he’s singing the lyrics too. If you thought rubbing your head and tapping your belly at the same time was hard, try singing and dancing. Welcome to a world of discombobulated movement.
Exhibit C
What do you see here? The correct answer is absolutely nothing. A couple pillars, sure. But our friend Drake is completely concealed in darkness. Why on earth would one of the world’s most successful rappers—a guy who adores the spotlight, who performs for sold-out arenas around the world—seek the obscuring comfort of shadow in the music video for his new hit song? To hide the fact that he doesn’t know the words.
Long ago, in 2015, Drake and rapper Meek Mill squared off in a beef for the ages. Mr. Mill fired the opening salvo when he claimed that Drake didn’t write his own lyrics. Drake famously responded with the diss track Back to Back, which was nominated for a Grammy and has accompanied the majority of my hardest efforts on stationary bicycles.
All of this is to say that perhaps Mr. Mill’s accusation was true. Perhaps Mr. Drake does not write his own songs, and perhaps he doesn’t even have the discipline to memorize the lyrics he pays for?
If true, it would mean that the balaclava covering his face is not so much a nod to the current Coronavirus crisis as it is a smokescreen to hide Drake’s lyrical fraudulence.
Milli Vanilli would like to have a word…