“God’s Plan” is not a particularly good Drake song. The Canadian rapper is 31 years old, and has been rapping about his haters in increasingly vague terms for what feels like a decade now. “God’s Plan” is more of that, over a cut-rate spooky beat along with some stilted appeals to the boys (“Without 40, Oli, there would be no me / Imagine if I never met the broskies”). We get it, people have doubted you and you’re ready to prove them wrong. Find a new topic!
Still, there is one good thing to come from this dreary song. Today, “God’s Plan” has a video with a simple premise: Drake’s team had a million dollars on hand from the label, and they gave it all away. The video is mostly just beautifully shot footage of Drake presenting strangers with money, and hugging them as they react. There’s a mother and son who begin crying; there’s a college student who explodes when she gets a nice scholarship; there’s a bunch of people at the grocery store who are delighted to have their food paid for. It goes on and on like this; a million dollars is a lot of money.
The video feels annoyingly self-aggrandizing, yes. The worst part of Drake is his need to refract every action into an image-building exercise. If you find him to be a corny grifter incapable of doing anything without a spotlight on him, this will not dissuade you. He’s doing a good deed, but it’s six minutes of publicity for his brand as a thoughtful guy who isn’t totally concerned with the haters, or whatever. Still, the fact remains: Here is a rich person giving away a rich label’s money to people who need it. You don’t need to like Drake any more to conclude that he, and other musicians (Artists? Businessmen? Rich people in general?) should share more of their money, all of the time. Drake, go on Chapo.
