Those residents, now, are all over the “God’s Plan” video. In fact, Drake may be slyly addressing a seven-year-old callout by 2 Live Crew’s Uncle Luke against rappers who exploit Miami’s glam and ignore its average resident. Absent are clichés of yachts and strippers that have made Miami the ultimate music-video setting. Steadicam gives a feeling of vérité, while overhead crowd shots-involving, we see, a cherrypicker that Drake perches in-add grandeur.

Director Karena Evans strikingly juxtaposes colorful and worn-down homes with the sleekness of high-end department stores and post-modern campus architecture. It is good-both in the moral sense and the aesthetic sense. The word “humanitainment” has been used to describe splashy celebrity-generosity efforts ranging from the Live 8 concert to David Beckham’s UNICEF work, and that term certainly seems to fit “God’s Plan.” It’s an act of grace, and it’s a show-one perfectly calibrated to currently popular attitudes around giving, stardom, and society. What is this video: goodhearted charity, pop promotional spectacle, or both? Both, making it part of a long history. The family members cover their eyes, and they hug. Star-struck thrill melts into a more tender emotion. Drake smiles and hands the family a wad of cash. One of the kids notices the rapper sitting next to her, and shrieks. In one moment, Drake sidles up to a family who’s sitting on a ledge. In it, the Toronto superstar distributes his million-dollar production budget to people around Miami-by telling all the shoppers in a Sabor Tropical Supermarket that everything on the shelves are free, by presenting a scholarship check to an unsuspecting student, by giving gift cards to women at a shelter, and more. 1 song in the country, bottles and elevates that Publishers Clearing House feeling. And you start wondering what that jumbo check could do for you.ĭrake’s new video for “God’s Plan,” the No.

You feel gratitude for the Clearing House. As a viewer, you feel happy for the winner. But it’s when the money is actually presented, and the amount of the prize revealed, that the crying begins. When the “Prize Patrol” first knocks on a door, the sweepstakes winner might gasp and hesitantly smile at the cameras and the balloons, recognizing the familiar script they’ve suddenly been inserted into. Dip into the strangely hypnotic film genre that documents the Publishers Clearing House delivering jumbo checks to people, and you begin to notice a pattern.

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