Rap superstar Drake in ‘re-bar mitzvah’
Clip for the Jewish musician’s latest single features bagels, the Torah and the hora (really!)
One of the world’s biggest rappers is celebrating his “re-bar mitzvah” in a new music video featuring bagels, Manischewitz and an Israeli flag.
In a clip released at the start of Passover, perennial chart topper Drake depicts his “re-commitment to the Jewish religion,” telling viewers at the start of the video, “I gotta do what I gotta do.”
The clip, for the new single “HYFR,” unfolds mostly in a synagogue, and features the rapper — full name: Aubrey “Drake” Graham — wearing a tallit and yarmulke and reading from the Torah. The clip — which we keep rewatching to be sure it’s real — also displays a Torah-shaped cake that says, “Happy re-bar mitzvah,” and shows the rapper being lifted in a chair while partygoers dance the hora around him.
The video opens by briefly showing the rapper — the son of an African-American father and a Canadian-Jewish mother — around the time he first became a Jewish man, busting some pretty awesome dance moves at what appears to be a bar mitzva party.
Despite those images, “HYFR” is unlikely to get played at future bar mitva parties without some heavy-duty editing. The song title is short for an unprintable catch phrase, and the rest of the lyrics include references to drugs and drinking, as well as a racial epithet and other unkosher content.
Nevertheless, the single — the fifth off chart-topping album “Take Care” — is likely to be a hit, like several of the songs that preceded it. (We defy you not to be able to sing along with the chorus after listening to the song just one time.) The album debuted in November, shortly after the 25-year-old rapper celebrated his re-bar mitzva.
A former Jewish day school student, Drake is joined in the “HYFR” video by rapper Lil Wayne, whose preferred headwear turns out to be a panda mask rather than a yarmulke. Others making cameos in the synagogue scene include DJ Khaled, a Palestinian-American musician who featured Drake in one of his own previous videos.
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