The strange contradictions of the present day are front and center in Drake’s new video, “Toosie Side,” which features the rapper doing a meme-generating dance inside his mansion during lockdown. The clip begins with scenes of deserted streets in the rapper’s hometown of Toronto before it moves inside a sprawling mansion — his, judging by the trophies and photos inside — while Drake dances around wearing a stylized mask.
The song’s lyrics don’t seem to address the coronavirus pandemic — “Gotta dance, but it’s really on some street shit/ I’ma show you how to get it/ It go right foot up, left foot slide/ Left foot up, right foot slide/Basically I’m saying either way we ’bout to slide” — but the visuals certainly do, showing a weird contrast between a lighthearted dance and the seriousness of the moment.
A clip of the dance, led by a dancer named Toosie, preceded the song earlier this week — the Toosie and three others were originally intended to appear in the clip, but the pandemic changed that plan.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Toosie said. “Drake hit me up and was like, ‘Yo, I need your help,’ So he sends the record. It was just an idea at the time. It was just the hook and a verse. I came up with this dance. [Drake said,] ‘What you think? You think you can come up with a dance for this song that I made?’ So I sit down, listen to it. Luckily, I’m at Ayo and Teo’s house with Hiii Key and all of us. We all chilling. We came up with it pretty fast. We just all pieced it together. We all contributed.”