On Saturday, Drake continued his ongoing forays into the world of content creators, hosting a stream on Kick, which is affiliated with Stake, the crypto gambling company Drake is partnered with, which saw the rapper, fresh off the release of three new albums, flirting with a goth streamer, gifting out birkins, and sending not so subtle warnings to the rest of the rap game, noting that his “pen isn’t dry.”
The roughly three-hour broadcast marked the ninth anniversary of Stake, the online crypto casino that has sponsored Drake’s livestreams for years. The company announced the stream with an Instagram post advertising more than $1 million in cash and prize giveaways, including a $50,000 grand prize for one viewer. During the actual stream, things moved quickly beyond gambling, turning into something closer to a chaotic Drake variety show. Drake also used the opening portion of the stream to reflect on his recent releases, patting himself on the back a little for dropping three projects at once. He also has a warning for anyone considering taking more shots in his direction. “These guys are dropping albums, like hello and goodbye, and careful with that reply ’cause the pen isn’t dry,” he said.
Drake has been, of late, repping his Canadian upbringing pretty heavily, so it isn’t much of a surprise that he was joined by NELK co-founder Kyle Forgeard, who presented Drake with an SNL-style take on the popular 20-v-1 dating-show format. The women cycled through conversations with the rapper, who eventually had to choose one to “wife,” another to hook up with and a third to make his best friend. The proceedings included a contestant asking Drake to demonstrate his favorite sexual position and an appearance from adult-content creator Lily Phillips, who went viral in late 2024 after a documentary chronicled her having sex with 101 men in a single day. Phillips announced that she was “rebranding as Drake’s wife.”
Drake barks for a goth girl during his 20v1 dating show. pic.twitter.com/xsSjuiJI4q
— Pop Base (@PopBase) August 9, 2026
The final three were influencer Jordyn Lucas, adult-film star Lena the Plug, and goth streamer Pinkchyu. Drake placed Lucas in the best-friend category and gave her $25,000 and a Birkin. Lena, who briefly removed her wedding ring after hugging Drake, received $25,000 and an all-expenses-paid trip reportedly to New Zealand. In something of a callback to his September 2025 appearance on Bobbi Althoff’s podcast Not This Again, where he said his destiny was to end up with a “goth baddie,” Drake leaned into his self-described type by giving Pinkchyu the “wife” designation. This after she had him bark on command.
The night also fueled more rap beef speculation. Drake floated the idea of holding Stake’s 10th-anniversary broadcast next year on a yacht, then quickly added that he hates boats. Given rumors that he and Lil Yachty, better known as Boat, have fallen out, Akademiks, naturally livestreaming Drake’s livestream, wondered whether the remark was a subliminal shot. Drake denied it.
In another moment already being heavily clipped online, Drake joked that the “Roc Nation subpoenas” were “about to be cleared.” The remark appeared to refer to a recent What’s The Dirt video speculating that Roc Nation had played some role in the federal class action targeting Drake and Stake. Nine days earlier, a Virginia judge had ordered the plaintiffs’ claims against Stake into private arbitration and paused the remainder of the case, including the claims naming Drake.
The stream was the latest example of the new norms of online video, where viral clips can quickly come to flood the feed thanks in no small part to companies like Kick’s well-reported army of clippers, dutifully turning each newsworthy moment into viral fodder.
It ultimately worked like a compressed version of Drake’s current internet strategy—especially the giving away huge sums of money part. Yet another signal that Drake sees real value in this emerging media ecosystem. On “First Person Shooter,” from 2023’s For All the Dogs, he famously rapped, “My youngins richer than you rappers and they all stream,” and has since enmeshed himself even more deeply in the world of streamers and content creators. During this year’s Streamer University, hosted by Kai Cenat, Drake delivered a prerecorded address to attendees and left care packages in their rooms stocked with cologne, Nocta clothing, Pokémon cards and other gifts. “I hope you learn something,” he told the class. “I hope you’re able to teach each other things.”
Ken Casey stuck around after the show in San Diego, California, talking to members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Some of the challenge-coin haul.
The band started as a bet. “My band has a show in three weeks,” Casey’s coworker told him in 1996. “I dare you to open for us.”John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Dropkick Murphys (from left): Casey, DaRosa, Webster, Kelly, Rheault, Brennan, and Lynch John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Casey is largely the voice of the band, but the other members back him up. “We’re so lucky he’s the mouthpiece,” says Brennan, left. John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
“Only the Irish can take a song about death and destruction, famine, alcoholism, and raise a glass like it’s an anthem,” says Casey. John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
“Anytime it feels like things are about to plateau for us, something gives us a little bump,” says guitarist Lynch. “It feels exciting. It feels dangerous. It feels like doing something.” John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Jay-Z performing at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in Paris.
Jay-Z Deserves the Super Bowl Halftime Gig
Where’s the love? Jay-Z asked that question 25 years ago, in the chorus of one of many songs in his catalog that still move audiences today. If he performs “Heart of the City” as part of his Super Bowl halftime show next February, those indignant bars are sure to be a highlight: “First the Fat Boys break up, now every day I wake up, somebody got a problem with Hov…” It would be an appropriate choice, too — because then as now, any time Jay-Z notches a new achievement, people find a way to complain.
The jokes and nonsense started almost as soon as the first rumors trickled out that Jay, whose company Roc Nation has executive-produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019, might be choosing himself to headline next year’s show. “Jay-Z just Dick Cheney’d himself for the Super Bowl,” Puck‘s Matthew Belloni quipped on X last week, alluding to the time that the late prince of darkness, who’d been asked to run the vice-presidential search committee for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, put himself on the ticket. (Super hip and current reference, and not at all apples-and-oranges.) Others pointed to TMZ reports that pop stars like Harry Styles and Justin Bieber had been asked first. “How are they the frontrunners, and he end up in the front?” Cam’Ron, who’s delighted in trolling Jay for many years, wondered aloud on his podcast. “Out of all the people on the roster, they couldn’t pick nobody else?” asked Cam’Ron‘s co-host, Ma$e.
These critiques miss the point, which is that Jay-Z is one of the best choices for a high-profile gig like this. He’s a superstar with a comparable level of name recognition to any other A-lister in music. He has a deep stack of classic songs going back decades. And he’s a highly skillful live performer who knows his way around a stadium stage, as he’s spent this year reminding people on his Jay-Z 30 tour. He tore down Yankee Stadium three nights in a row this summer; just last week, he rocked SoFi Stadium, which happens to be the same place where the 2027 Super Bowl is being held. He held the crowd’s attention with ease at all of those shows, and though there were plenty of glittery guests — that’s a given at a Jay show, and it will surely be true at the Super Bowl, too — he did it mostly through the force of his own magnetic energy. Let’s state the obvious here: Jay-Z is really, really good at rapping. We’re talking about one of the slickest, sharpest talkers in the history of words, someone who made it to the top through a sustained act of myth-making, then kept going. Are we seriously asking whether he can handle a 15-minute televised performance?
And yeah, there’s a touch of self-congratulation in the way he appointed himself. So what? Praising his own gifts is arguably Jay-Z’s greatest talent of all. He made a fine art out of self-applause. He told his story again and again, retracing the steps from Marcy Projects to the corner suite, and he made us believe. It would almost be insulting to the audience if he didn’t give himself the gig at some point.
Pop culture observers in recent years surely remember the backlash to Super Bowl headliners like Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny — all of it at least culturally conservative, and much of it frankly just racist. The blowback to Jay’s announcement is mostly coming from other quarters, at least for now (let’s just wait to see what the right-wing swamps make of this one). But it’s disappointing in a different way. Jay-Z has spent his career expounding hip-hop as a mainstream commercial force. He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man. But he’s also an artist. He’s made huge amounts of money, and gotten himself into the rarefied rooms where he even has the ability to give himself a gig like this, by spinning his experiences into compelling narrative art, one verse at a time. Let’s not lose sight of how impressive his life’s work really is. Jay-Z is not some random C-suite bro, and he’s definitely not Dick Cheney. He’s one of the greatest rappers of all time, by any measure. He’s earned that Super Bowl spot.