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Drake is the Ultimate Jewish Teenage Boy

He even wrote a song about his best friend and The Hunger Games

by
Rachel Shukert
April 02, 2014

I spent all weekend with 190 Jewish teenagers at the BBYO Lone Star Region convention, which was very fun and brought back, a la Rochelle Rochelle, many strange and erotic memories. (With undying love, et cetera, et cetera.)

They were a great group of kids, but being around them also forced me once again (that is, when I wasn’t trying to figure out how to sneak into the Miss Texas Wheelchair Pageant, which was taking place in the same hotel) to confront the enduring mystery over which I once spent countless, occasionally tearful, hours puzzling: just what darkness, or lack thereof, lurks in the heart and mind of a moderately teenage boy?

Luckily, we don’t have to wonder anymore, because “Draft Day,” the new single from Toronto-born rapper Drake, who is exactly the kind of guy you know every girl was following around like a puppy at one of those conventions (at least, the way they used to be; now they seem to be a lot more intellectual, not to mention supervised, which is probably for the best), somehow manages to organize everything rattling around in there, makes it rhyme, and sets it to a sample of Lauryn Hill’s 1998 hit “Doo Wop (That Thing)” which the last time I heard, was probably actually at my own BBYO convention.

The whole thing is about next month’s NFL draft, which apparently is the means by which one selects players for one’s football club? (I get very Countess of Grantham when it comes to sports.) It contains references to his good friend Johnny Manziel, the 21-year-old college football phenomenon from Texas A&M, throws shade at Chance the Rapper (and, perhaps more obliquely, at Jay-Z and Kanye West) and even contains a reference at how deeply he would like to get to know Jennifer Lawrence better (ha, I said deeply) after seeing her in The Hunger Games.

Ladies and Gentleman—it’s official: Drake is the ultimate Jewish American teenage boy—and yes, I know he’s from Canada. They always do us better than we do ourselves. Now let’s all figure out how we’re going to ask him to the Beau Dance.

Rachel Shukert is the author of the memoirs Have You No Shame? and Everything Is Going To Be Great,and the novel Starstruck. She is the creator of the Netflix show The Baby-Sitters Club, and a writer on such series as GLOW and Supergirl. Her Twitter feed is @rachelshukert.