What is "Home" ?

Aubrey Drake Graham, more commonly called Drake, is one of the most popular rappers of the 21st century. Holding multiple spots on the Billboard top 100 list, Drake has been pleasing the ears of his listeners since his first mixtape came out in 2006. Since his first tape, titled Room for Improvement, Drake has released 7 other mixtapes and albums, including his most recent album, Nothing Was the Same. The track "Hold on, We’re Going Home" was the first song released from his new album, and was written by Drake himself. Running at 3 minutes and 47 seconds, the song describes how culture has shaped and portrayed a man's behavior, especially towards women. The lyrics to the song reflect one gender role for men, while the video spins another.

When I first heard Drake’s song, I thought of the lyrics as purely sexual. He sings “Cause you’re a good girl and you know it...you act so different around me.” To me, Drake is referencing his private relationship with this girl, and though she comes off as a good, innocent girl, he see’s a different side of her. I interpreted this as sexual because he later sings “it’s hard to do these things alone,” meaning he can’t be sexual without her. Not only can he physically not have sex without this woman as his partner, he doesn’t want to. He wants all of her “hot love and emotion, endlessly.” In society, men are often portrayed as more sexual human beings than women are. The fact that Drake is singing about taking a girl home backs up this cultural phenomenon. If a man is able to get a girl to come home with him, it typically means that something sexual is going to happen. Some of his lyrics such as “doing these things alone,” and being a good girl “acting so different,” with her “hot love,” add to the sexuality of the song, and prove that societal views people have for men and women are accurate.

Once I viewed the music video of this song, my previous view of the song shifted entirely. In the video, Drake and some friends are at a dinner celebration. A few minutes into the song, the waiter brings Drake a phone, and on the other line he hears his girlfriend pleading for help because she had just been kidnapped. Instantly after the plea, Drake slams his fist on the table and walks towards the exit, followed by 4 of the men sitting with him at the table. They get back to Drake’s mansion, strap their bodies with various types of assault rifles, and head off to the woman’s rescue. They even kill one of the men that came with them because he was feeding information to the bad guy. In the meantime, the kidnapper tells Drake’s woman that because Drake took what was his, he’s taking something back. With one shot to the dead, Drake kills a man without the slightest bit of hesitation. This music video still portrays a man’s gender role, but takes the sexual connotation away from it. In this sense, Drake is being a strong male figure to his woman which goes along with another common gender phenomenon; a man is stronger than his woman and is there to protect her safety. The violent shooting and fighting between the men of the video shows the male strength society seems to see. During all the violence, the woman is in her lingerie, nervously hiding and awaiting her rescue. When I saw this part of the video, I thought of the typical prince charming rescue from a fairy tale. A woman needs rescuing and the man does whatever it takes to save her. This video not only shows how powerful society depicts men, but also shows how heavily women rely on men to fulfill their roles of protecting them. The woman could have called anybody, but she chose to call him because she felt confident enough in him that he could bring her to safety. In the end of the video, Drake kills the kidnapper and claims his prize for being so brave: his beautiful woman. Then he tells her, “come on, we’re going home.” This completely changed the original interpretation of his lyric. After the video, I saw going home as no longer a place for a man to get laid, but a safe zone. Home for the woman in the video meant that her man fulfilled her needing to be rescued, and she’s now safe. This lyric wasn’t the only lyric that shifted meaning to me. The wanting of his “hot love and emotion, endlessly,” reflects Drakes longing to be the heroic figure in his woman’s life and save her.

The task of saving the woman seemed so effortless to Drake in the video, as if he wanted to be portrayed with the typical male gender role of being strong and undefeatable. He got away with taking something from a dangerous man, and still defeated him in the end and saved his woman before she was harmed. He walked away from a shooting completely unharmed, and with a beautiful, half naked woman. Not only does he come off as a the typical hunky man, the fact that the woman is merely in her bra and underwear also associates Drake with another typical societal view of men: always wanting to get laid. Drake managed to take the two most common societal views of men and put them into one song, one with lyrics and one in the video. He managed to make himself look tough, and still looks as though he’s going to score something more in the end.

Lyrics to Drake's Hit: http://rapgenius.com/Drake-hold-on-were-going-home-lyrics