Life has moved pretty fast for Mr Dizzy Drake. In May, he dropped three albums in a day; now he’s barking on command during a sponsored speed-dating live stream on Kick. The rapper went viral over the weekend for his appearance on a “20-vs-1” show, in which a parade of internet-famous (and internet-notorious) women queued up to sit across from him on a table scattered with rose petals. This format usually has some streamer or influencer as the “lucky” man. Seeing the biggest rapper in the world in the hot seat was a proper jump scare.
Adult star “Lena The Plug” (Google at your own risk) ostentatiously threw her wedding ring off set while talking to him, and handed over a “hall pass”, signed by her influencer husband Adam22, entitling her “to enjoy a guilt-free encounter with Drake”. Britain’s second-most famous OnlyFans star, Lily Phillips, was in the lineup too. She introduced herself as a “super slut” who was “rebranding as Drake’s wife”; when Drake complimented her tan, she said she was “trying to get to your colour”, visibly throwing him (Phillips is white).
But the girl who stole his heart was the spandexed-up goth streamer Pinkchyu, who asked if he was into “silly” role-play, and then: “Would you bark for me?” “Arr, arr arr,” responded one of the most-streamed musicians of all time, like a hassled chihuahua. He later picked Pinkchyu as his favourite date, and said he’d buy her mum a house, as if the whole setup didn’t feel enough like a meat market already. The old Drake, who sometimes wrote songs with a supposed slant towards female empowerment, like “Nice for What”, feels very far away.
All this isn’t so surprising given how whiny, almost incel-coded, Drake can be. In 2022, he made himself a necklace comprised of 42 diamonds, each apparently representing an occasion he nearly proposed. In June, he posted a list of nine “reasons why I’m single” on Instagram, including the incredibly fuckboy-coded “I care too deeply” and “I love old-school romance and that’s just not a thing for our generation”. Catch him sharing Smiths lyrics on his story sometime soon.
The stream was also a culmination of Drake’s steadily growing bromance with the ragebait-filled, manosphere-adjacent side of the internet. It was hosted by Kyle Forgeard, co-founder of the Trump-supporting Nelk Boys podcast and YouTube channel, and was sponsored by Stake, the online gambling platform on which Drake has spent many hours streaming with similar characters like Adin Ross. The rapper reportedly signed a $100m sponsorship deal with Stake; Ross and Forgeard were among those flown out to stream from the front of the stage at Drake’s comeback shows at Wireless Festival last year.
Manosphere bros, online gambling and click-attracting adult stars – it’s quite the swamp for the most commercial of rap stars to wade into. A decade ago, he was doing cutesy ads singing along to Taylor Swift for Apple Music. And it’s not as if he’s lost his mainstream appeal: his triple-album drop debuted in the top three slots of the US albums chart. But even if it didn’t affect his streams, the 2024 Kendrick Lamar beef did turn him into a figure of online mockery.