3. Drake Does the Log On with Tanisha Scott in his “Hotline Bling” video
Illustration: Robin Clare
Drake took a progressive approach to source material on “Hotline Bling,” includes a sample of Timmy Thomas’ “Why Can’t We Live Together” and echoes aspects of D.R.A.M.’s “Cha Cha,” while the music video borrows visual tropes from Director X’s early takes with Sean Paul. Speaking with The Fader, he compared such “borrowing” to the culture of dancehall, where artists will record their version of a song to a popular riddim: “You know, like in Jamaica, you’ll have a riddim and it’s like, everyone has to do a song on that.”
In the video, Drake’s fourth with Director X (the half-Trinidadian Toronto native directed videos for “HYFR,” “Started from the Bottom,” and “Worst Behavior”), the pair revisit timeless Jamaican dance moves like the Log On with Jamaican-Canadian Tanisha Scott in the video’s choreographed sequences. When Drake steps into frame to dance with Scott at the three-minute mark, he is specifically tracing X’s own moves from Sean Paul’s “Gimme The Light” video, in which the director famously stepped from behind the camera to do the Log On (a move created by dancehall icon Gerald “Bogle” Levy and popularized internationally by Elephant Man in a 2001 song of the same name) with Tanisha. — Richard “Treats” Dryden
(Editor’s Note: In another nod to yard, a prying Drake finger-wags, “Why you always touchin’ road?”)