No, Drake and 21 Savage weren’t on the cover of Vogue. No, they’re not doing a Tiny Desk concert (yet). And no, Drake didn’t go on Howard Stern to talk about porn. The rappers have spent the past few days engaging in a bizarre, labor-intensive press cycle of fake opportunities around their new album Her Loss, out tomorrow. And all it makes us want to do is actually see them do these things. It started with Drake and 21 promoting a fake Vogue cover, which seemed pretty normal, not far from a promotional zine. Then, they introduced a faux Tiny Desk at what appears to be a near-exact replica of the NPR set — a preposterous amount of work to make a 15-second clip. The duo seemed to wrap the tour with the edited Stern segment, where Drake spoke about watching the “highest tier of top givers” in porn and whether he could get married. It led up to the cover reveal, a portrait of model Qui Yasuka, known as Suki Baby.
All we’ve been able to think about is how we actually could’ve had this press tour! To be clear, we don’t need to hear Drake talking about adult content with Howard Stern, but how fun would a Tiny Desk concert from two of the game’s biggest rappers be? (Even NPR would like to see it.) And when was the last time Drake sat for a magazine interview? Not to mention that booking a (free!) Tiny Desk would’ve surely been easier than faking these materials. But hey, that’s their loss.
Update November 6: The album is out (and full of mean things to say) yet this publicity campaign keeps going. Now Drake and 21 have usurped Steve Lacy as the musical guest for last night’s SNL. Michael B. Jordan hosted the fictional ep, and Drake and 21 Savage got their own SNL-style portraits to boot.
