Back in 1998, before social media and smartphones, MTV music videos remained a hugely influential cultural reflector for young folks, promoting imagery and sounds as dynamic as they were diverse. Boy bands were bigger than ever, Will Smith was getting jiggy with it, and Green Day were having the time of their life. Meanwhile, another California band with punk roots, the Offspring, were building their own fervent fanbase by turning catchy, bratty ditties into high-production clips that nobody ever flipped past on the remote.
Their biggest hit and most iconic video is arguably the McG-directed “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy),” which skewered uncool dudes who “fake it anyway” by copping hip-hop style, donning backwards baseball caps, oversized jerseys, and gold chains.
Guy Cohen, the young actor who starred in the colorful clip, personified the character in such an endearing way, he became an ironic, even mythic, figure for the band’s fans. The tune might be a commentary on cultural appropriation, but its campy video and the band’s light-hearted approach to performing it live (often bringing the actor out to dance awkwardly to the number on stage) made for many feel-good moments over the years.
With Nineties nostalgia hotter ever on social media, Cohen has been reliving his Fly Guy days once again. He joined the Offspring at their Kia Forum show last August and at the When We Were Young Festival in Las Vegas last October, followed by a triumphant appearance just this past weekend at the BeachLife festival in Redondo Beach.
Rolling Stone caught up with the pretty fly guy — yes, his name really is Guy — to talk about the video, his enduring, now-multigenerational fame, and what he’s been up to these last 28 years.
You were a bona fide video phenom during MTV’s heyday. And after all these years, people still remember the “Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)” guy.
It’s pretty amazing how lasting it has been. I think the character is one of the endearing images of the Nineties. I guess it reminds people of better times… people having fun and watching MTV with their family, before social media. It just brings joy to people, so I’m happy to embrace it, and I think it’s maybe bigger than ever.
How did you get the opportunity to be in the video?
I started pursuing acting when I turned 18, and this was about six months into my acting career. Back then, in the late Nineties, music videos were a great way to get started and get some experience because they were non-union, kind of like extra work. I had also done Alanis Morissette’s video “Thank U,” in which she stood there naked as people walked by — I was one of the blurry people. Then this video came along, and it just turned out to be one of the biggest music videos of all time. It changed my life.
How did you approach your movement in the video? Was it a joke or did you take it seriously?
I didn’t take any of it seriously. For me, the whole video, and the character, was poking fun at the time and this character of a white person trying to be down with a different culture and all that. There were a few guys like that back then. Nowadays it’s not really a thing, but back then, it was like a “try hard.” So it was all in jest. I’m not a trained dancer. But as far as the moves, I believe I came up with most of them, especially when I take my leg and jump around.
There was something called “the Molly Ringwald” back then that McG, the director of the video, who went on to do movies and television, wanted. He showed me that one. But I think I pretty much came up with all the other stuff. It was just me just being goofy and having some fun and jumping around, thrusting a lot and trying anything out.
It seems a whole new generation is discovering the song and the band, too. Have you observed that?
I’ve never seen anything like this, but we are seeing three generations of families going to concerts together — little ones, the parents, and then even the grandparents. It’s family-friendly. There’s some cursing, but, you know, they have enough hit songs that everybody’s just having a good time. And what I’ve noticed is kids and everyone dressing up like the character! If you go to an Offspring show, there’ll always be 20 to 30 people dressed up as my character.
You look almost the same as you did in the video. What are you doing to stay so youthful?
I was 18 years old. I’m 46 now. I think it’s mostly genetics, but I also don’t drink, I don’t smoke. I wear sunscreen every day with face lotion, and I stay indoors a lot. I’m a full-time livestreamer, so I spend a lot of time indoors and out of the sun.
Tell us about livestreaming under the moniker “I’m Really Important.”
I talk politics. I debate people for a couple hours on TikTok in the morning, and then in the evening, I go over stories in the news, and I try to spin things in a positive way on YouTube or Twitch. I care about all my fellow Americans, and I feel like the more you understand our government, the more optimistic you are about the future because you see opportunity and you see the limits of certain things. So that’s my goal. I try to make politics more entertaining and educate people a bit.
Do your streaming followers know that you’re the “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)” guy?
I couldn’t put a percentage on it, but I don’t hide it. It doesn’t come up that often. But it’s kind of a little Easter egg when it does. I would argue I’m the largest Offspring livestreamer. A lot of fans come hang out in my channel just because I’m associated with the band. I get recognized more from my career now in politics, because I’ve done some high-profile stuff. But if I were to wear that outfit, I’d get stopped everywhere.
What kind of high-profile things do you do?
I’ve made a few appearances on the YouTube channel called Jubilee, which is really big for debates. I debated Ben Shapiro, and there were some viral moments from that. I’ve also been touring with another livestreamer named Destiny — going to college campuses, like Turning Point USA, but from a left perspective. CNN just did a feature on that.
Your appearance at BeachLife last weekend made a big splash. You joined the band before, too, at their Kia Forum show last year. How often does that happen?
Very rarely. Dexter [Holland] and I have stayed in touch. Once every couple years, we connect and text or something. He’s a busy guy, so I try to leave him alone, but he’s been great the whole time I’ve known him. Maybe once every 10 years, he’ll invite me to a show and I go just to hang out, say hi to the guys and maybe go onstage.
But last year, he reached out and said, “I got this crazy idea, we’re doing a big show at the Forum. We’re doing arenas. We’re bigger than ever and we’d love for you to come out. Do you have the jersey?”
I do still have the jersey, but it’s in a frame. So he said, “I will make you a custom one.” They made it and I went onstage, and it was just a lot of fun. Since then, they’re been asking me to come out to big shows. They did the biggest indoor arena in Paris, and they brought me out for that. Then in Montreal. We also did When We Were Young in Vegas last year. I did their opening stop in Bakersfield for the U.S. leg of the tour. And then, of course, BeachLife… I get to be a cheerleader for the band. They’re not as social media friendly, I guess they’re a little older than me, so we do trending clips and we film some content when I come out. It does very well on their social media platforms.
They also have those blow-up air dancer/inflatable tube man things on stage and they look like you. Are those new?
They’ve been using those for a while. My face is on them, which is funny. Years ago, I went on tour with them. I was 18, 19, and I can’t believe my parents let me go, but I went on the buses with them and the private planes, and it all peaked with Woodstock 99. So I kind of lived this life, and now it’s fun to do it again, 30 years later, at all these big arenas.
The song is making fun of a certain kind of person, but it also feels like a celebration at the same time. Being a white guy yourself, did you have any reservations? Did any white guys take offense over the years of the portrayal?
I’ve never had anybody approach me and say, “Shame on you, you’re a monster.” [Laughs.] But look, I was into hip-hop. My favorite show growing up was In Living Color, which was a predominantly Black cast. And so I understood the culture and had appreciation for it. I just recognized there were some people trying hard to present themselves as that, and we were making fun of it. I think certain communities understood that and saw the joke in it, and didn’t take offense to it as appropriation of culture or anything like that.
You seem like a positive person. Commenting on politics, you must deal with a lot of negativity. How do you handle that?
Oh, yeah. I feel like half the time on my stream, I’m doing mental health care therapy for people because it’s tough to be positive. What’s going on right now, no matter what your political thoughts are, there’s a lot of bad things happening in the world. I try to point out to people where there’s opportunity and things going well, and that good things can come out of bad situations.
A past show produced by The Concert Production for Sidhu Moose Wala.
The Concert Production founders Sohail Mansuri and Zeeshan Siddiqui. Photos: Courtesy of The Concert Production
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Drake onstage in Toronto last year
Everybody Likes Drake Again. That Means We’re Healing
Not to be dramatic or anything, but not too long ago, listening to people talk about Drake, you’d think he would never top the charts again. But here we are: With Iceman, he’s broken his own record, earning a 13th week atop Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart on Sept. 5, surpassing Take Care’s 12-week run more than a decade ago. The achievement comes after the great rap civil war of 2024, which was framed as everything from a referendum on Drake’s character as a human being to a cleansing of what popular radio host Ebro would describe, in February 2025, as “a sickness in the game.”
Again, not trying to be dramatic, but even if you were skeptical of the discourse circa 2024, it is a bit shocking to hear the public’s recent re-embrace of Drake. Consider how far the frenzy around the most salacious allegations on Kendrick Lamar‘s “Not Like Us” extended. There was Christopher Alvarez, a disabled journalist, being dragged into conspiracy theories. There was the woman from the resurfaced concert footage, now 31, having to publicly dispute the creepy significance strangers had assigned to an onstage kiss from when she was 17. Drake said in his lawsuit against UMG that the threats had forced him to pull his seven-year-old son out of school.
What now feels like the absurdity of the moment registered as something deathly serious at the time. By September 2024, Lamar was releasing the ominous “Watch the Party Die,” just days after his Super Bowl halftime performance was announced. Oh, also, a major talking point in American culture a year and a half ago was whether one of the biggest superstars in the world would be publicly branded a pedophile during the Super Bowl.
In what world would any celebrity recover from that?
Except, with time, the online frenzy surrounding the Drake and Lamar feud reads more like a mass-psychosis event than a cultural reckoning. The music, oddly enough, often seemed secondary to the certainty of everyone discussing it. “Not Like Us” was a veritable hit, absolutely. But its cultural dominance became bound up in a widespread vilification of Drake that curdled online, where the most damning interpretation of anything could quickly become the accepted one. For a while, even putting on a Drake song could feel like something you had to explain, as if listening amounted to taking a position on the allegations.
That this all happened in 2024 is meaningful. This was right in the peak of Elon Musk’s reconstruction of Twitter, privileging rage bait and engagement tactics that helped misinformation disseminate like fact. It was also the beginning of AI tools becoming sophisticated enough to produce convincing-sounding tracks. Even before Drake released his first response, “Push Ups,” AI-generated response tracks were circulating across social media. And so, in many ways, the well of public opinion was already poisoned.
Listeners’ recent embrace of Drake feels settled in a broader cultural shift brewing since 2024. The beef, in hindsight, feels like a dying vestige of whatever people want to call “Woke 1.0”: a particular faith that exposing the right person could amount to a cultural transformation. For a moment, defeating Drake seemed to promise something about the future of hip-hop, about who would belong in it and what it would tolerate.
There were obvious holes in the argument, namely who exactly these arbiters of culture were and why they were uniquely qualified to speak for the entirety of Black people, questions that Drake pokes at on “Ran to Atlanta” from Iceman. Still, these were never even supposed to be binding philosophical truths in the first place. To hear levelheaded commentators discuss it, this was all simply entertainment — two of the genre’s greats duking it out. Even one of the beef’s catalysts, Metro Boomin, echoed the sentiment, lamenting how online fans had turned the battle into something sinister. Hell, even Jay-Z said something similar before himself tossing a few jabs at Drizzy in a freestyle at the Roots Picnic this year. But the artists themselves supplied the allegations. The ability to raise those stakes and then retreat into “simply entertainment” was part of the dynamic, too.
Even so, how it all devolved into a pseudocultural reckoning says more about the environment fans exist in today than it does about either Drake or Lamar. In the years around the beef, shocking revelations about Diddy as well as the global elite’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein have become folded into the background, alongside a sense that accountability remains selective. This atmosphere of collective powerlessness offers one explanation for the conspiratorial thinking at the heart of Lamar versus Drake. A frustration with an increasingly degraded world and dwindling resources to change it means outrage can mobilize an enormous number of people very quickly, with little holding them together once the moment passes.
The language of exploitation and cultural extraction gave the battle a purpose that seemed to extend well beyond either rapper. But even if you took the least charitable opinion imaginable of our Canadian hitmaker, what was supposed to happen after Drake was defeated? The industry whose supposed wickedness Drake allegedly embodied carried on selling the spectacle itself.
What everyone was caught up in was an appetite with a longer history than the social media platforms now feeding it. Lance Oppenheim’s new film, Primetime, returns to Chris Hansen and To Catch a Predator, a television format that made public humiliation feel like a public service. The connection is in the experience offered to the audience. The viewer could enjoy the confrontation with the reassuring sense that watching served some larger good. Never mind if anything that was unfolding on screen amounted to justice.
In the historian Anton Jäger’s book-length essay Hyperpolitics, published earlier this year in English, he describes how the past decade’s surge of political feeling has coincided with a continuing withdrawal from communal life. More isolated digital environments can fuel extraordinary mobilization without the actual community organizations that might turn it into something tangible. Negating Drake, then, became a gesture in itself. A means of signaling a broader dissatisfaction with the direction of hip-hop culture. Where the problems extend to technology and the demoralizing margins of streaming music, for a while it felt good for people to just wrap it all up in one word: Drake.
But on Iceman, it’s hard to take the idea of Drake as an evil force within hip-hop very seriously, even as he himself makes an effort to lean into the role of the villain. Drake’s music is most potent when it’s aimed at the masses, even if he swears his nice-guy days are over. This is the Degrassi kid turned global superstar rivaling Taylor Swift, after all.
Now, with Fear of Missing Out, Drake’s cryptically announced project slated for release this week, we’ve entered a second kind of Drake Renaissance. However delusional it seems, there was a moment when it felt somehow wrong to play Drake. His return to the top of the charts suggests a good deal of people were eager to get back to listening.