Hotline Ring?

If you’ve been on Facebook or YouTube within the past week, you’ve seen the countless parody videos and gifs of rapper Drake either playing tennis, fighting with a light saber, or even trying to kill a spider. Odds are that you then searched to see what original video these came from – Drake’s ridiculous music video for his most recent release, “Hotline Bling”. If you’re like me, you then looked up what the heck hotline bling means… (It’s a booty call by the way.)

Released in mid-October, “Hotline Bling” is Drake’s fourth music video by the eccentric Director X. In their previous videos like “Started from the Bottom” and “HYFR,” Drake let a few of his strange dance moves escape him, but in no way like this most recent phenomenon.

The video opens to an office setting with workers adorned with what the hip hop world would call “big booties.” Once you connect this to the whole booty call concept, you realize this is a sex hotline for those “calling for a good time.”

Cut to Drake. He’s wiggling. He’s shimmying. He’s cha-cha-ing. He’s dancing? The only way to describe the rapper throughout the video is that he is most definitely feeling himself. These unexpected dance moves from Drake are the cause of so many parody videos of the smooth rapper throwing pepperoni on a pizza, putting out fires, and playing fruit ninja. You can only wonder to yourself if this madness was choreographed or if Drake just lost it.

If anyone can see past the idiocy that is considered dance, the vibrant background becomes apparent. The creative set design is probably the only cool thing about the whole video – colorful and lit spaces inspired by artist James Turrell.

While the focus of the video is almost entirely on Drake and his body movements, bits and pieces show women and their large assets in slow motion – after all it is a hip hop video. About halfway through the video Drake is sitting on an isolated staircase that leads to who knows where and all I can think is “thank God, he’s finally done moving.” But don’t worry, the instrumental last 30 seconds of the video is full of some dry humping and possibly a version of the robot.

After watching the music video in its entirety, along with all of the parodies, it’s an astonishment how Drake could possibly still be considered one of the smoothest and coolest rappers in the game. But somehow the video has made him more successful and even potentially cooler.

Kara Brown’s article for Jezebel, “Drake Is the Biggest Dork in Hip-Hop and He Knows It,” said it best stating, “Drake has buoyed his career by making corny things cool almost solely off of his unbridled enthusiasm and inability to accept that whatever it is he enjoys may not actually be particularly dope.”

In the strange world that is modern hip hop, Drake’s uncool dance moves have pushed him to the top of the charts, proving that if you’re a successful, attractive rapper, you can pretty much do whatever you want.

Drake and Director X had two goals in mind for this video: Drake proclaimed that he wanted “Hotline Bling” to be his first number one hit, while Director X wanted to inspire more men to dance. The song is currently at the number two spot on the charts so there is hope for Drake’s aspirations. As for Director X, we can only hope no man will ever exhibit these dance moves again.