Drake's song "Hotline Bling" — and its related memes — reached an artistic culmination over the weekend, in a video mashup that pairs the catchy song with scenes of a gung-ho drama teacher performing a suite of interpretive dances for his class.
We'll discuss the video more below, but you should just go ahead and watch it for yourself.
"Hotline Bling" quickly became a cultural force last week, inspiring memes, jokes, and conversations with its off-kilter video.
As NPR Music's Erika Ramirez reported Friday, "Drake's awkward dancing has been mashed up with the Latin classic 'Suavemente,' the Peanuts theme song, even a ukulele in the spirit of this week's Canadian elections."
In the official video, Erika said, Drake dances "very much as if no one's watching."
In the new take on the song, a drama teacher called Mr. G goes all-out to perform dances of his own creation for an attentive and, we must say, shockingly polite class of high school students.
As viewers of Australian TV will know, both Mr. G and his evocative dance moves — some of them performed while wearing a mask — come from Summer Heights High, a show on Australia's ABC network.
Summer Heights is a mockumentary show along the lines of The Office. It was created by Chris Lilley, who also stars as Mr. G.
Over the weekend, Lilley posted the mashup of Mr. G and Drake's "Hotline Bling" to Facebook; since then, it's been viewed more than 3.6 million times. The video is the work of Jennifer Carolina, a Canadian who originally posted it to Tumblr.
Explaining that her roommates helped make the video, Carolina says on Tumblr, "I'm just happy that it got people laughing and smiling and that it's getting out there."
The dance moves come from the first episode of Summer Heights, in which Mr. G tells the show's documentarian, "My drama classroom is my haven. It's where I come alive."
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