Wow. Thank you, Drake. Thank you for this incredible artifact. You truly are a benevolent king of pop/rap/r&b/whatever it is exactly that we call this.
As if you needed a reason to watch, Drizzy’s latest video for “Hold On We’re Going Home” let’s the Champagne Papi live out a ‘Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’ fantasy in a rotary phone-heavy 1985 Miami. Drake and his boys, including Best Supporting Actor lock A$AP Rocky, gather at the nightclub dressed in their finest 80’s duds to celebrate their business acumen, only to have their evening ruined with the news that Drake’s main thing has been kidnapped by some vaguely menacing, vaguely wronged party.
The crew jumps into action, loading up on a ridiculous yet necessary number of guns. Meanwhile, Drake does what Drake does and mopes around the house, attempting his best Rainman impression. They all pull on ski masks in the house, they take them off in the car and then put them back on as they arrive at the most disorganized loading dock of all time. (We never see A$AP’s face again, but we know he’s there acting with his ski mask on — because why wouldn’t he be?)
And just in case you thought he was soft, Drake proves once and for all that he is tough when he means mugs at the loading dock and and shoots out the lights. Plus, when the guy who played Young Neil in Scott Pilgrim turns out to be a rat, Drake smartly takes him out before anything dramatic can happen.
The rest of the video basically plays out like a round of Counter Strike that wraps up nicely when someone shoots an exploding barrel.
Again, thank you Drake. You’ve outdone yourself.
This is the best movie you’ll see all year. An article like this can’t even begin to scratch the surface of the intricate layers of meaning buried in this feast for the senses. It’s almost as if Drake said to his people, “Let’s make a cool gangster movie with guns and explosions and shit,” and that’s what they did.
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Michael Kolberg is The Sprawl Editor at Toronto Standard. Follow him on Twitter for jokes @mikeykolberg.
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