As if he didn’t have enough to deal with in the midst of his feud with Kendrick Lamar (or perhaps to distract himself from it), Drake appeared on a remix of the rapper Snowd4y’s parody version of Plain White T’s “Hey There Delilah,” called “Wah Gwan Delilah”, that has everyone… perplexed? Angry? Laugh?
Let’s go over this together, it’s a mess.
On Monday, a new remix of “Wah Gwan Delilah” appeared on Snowd4y’s SoundCloud. What appeared to be Drake joined the comedian in a series of jokes about women and references to Toronto landmarks like the Yonge-Dundas Square shopping center. (“Wah gwan” is a Jamaican dialect meaning “What’s up?” and is common in the city, which has long had a sizable population of people of Caribbean descent.)
As the track spread, it reached Plain White T themselves, who published a video about x and tiktok with the caption “too stunned to speak.” Frontman Tom Higgenson also says “it’s crazy that everyone thinks it’s real,” seemingly referencing early rumors that Drake’s lyrics were generated using artificial intelligence. Higgenson also makes a series of faces that make it look like he just smelled a fart.
However, those rumors are likely false. Duck published the song to her Instagram story, seemingly confirming its authenticity.
However, it’s easy to see why everyone was confused. AI, as WIRED’s Evy Kwong noted in tiktok thursday, has become so prevalent that it has caused people to question everything. When the song “Heart on My Sleeve” came out, it took a few listens for many people to realize that it wasn’t actually Drake and The Weeknd. Many fans probably would have never known that the Beatles’ “Now and Then” wasn’t just a pristine, long-lost tape if Paul McCartney hadn’t touted the AI needed to save it. Johnny Cash covers Taylor Swift from beyond the grave. The examples of AI’s ability to fool our ears seem truly endless.
With the reality of Drake’s presence on “Wah Gwan Delilah” seemingly confirmed, the floodgates opened. rap twitter, as Billboard notedhad a field day “with the main perception that after losing the battle against Kendrick, Drake is now just losing his mind in general” and “leaning on his Toronto style” to repair his image.
This will probably have the opposite effect. While Drake Reddit “He is shouting that it is satire and if people don’t understand it,”the joke is probably on you”, other swaths of the internet remain unable to keep a straight face, or at least not be embarrassed. Vulture, in their review of the remix, simply said: “Post-meat Drake can’t be serious.”
