Inside D.C. entertainment

Drake hit remade into song about taking a dump

April 6, 2011 - 12:45 PM
Text size Decrease Increase

Listening to Drake’s “Light Up,” Renard Walker immediately thought of crap.

“I was walking through my house, and I had [the track] on my phone playing," says Walker, founder of the DMV-based artist management firm OTB. "The first line is, 'I been up for four days/Getting money both ways/Dirty and clean/I could use a glass of cold Spades,' but I started cracking up, thinking, 'I been up for four days/Taking shits both ways/Soft and hard/I could use a Tums or Rolaids.' I thought, let me sit down and see where I go with this."

Walker was so inspired by the idea of taking the Jay-Z assisted track from Drake's debut album, Thank Me Later, and flipping it into a song about "lighting up" a bathroom that he sat down and penned an entire poop-themed verse. Then he decided he was really onto something, and recruited his friends Phil Gibson (who plays Jay-Z) and Ryan Glover (who plays Drake) to see if they were interested in recording a spoof.

"We were doing it for fun at first, but once we finished the record we thought it sounded good, and we should do a video," Walker says "Just hearing it is different than seeing it."

So, Walker gathered even more pals for a day-long video shoot at his parents' house on a recent Saturday. “We chose that location because they have two bathrooms,” he says. “I didn’t want Jay-Z and Drake taking dumps on the same toilet.”

“We took a whole half of a Saturday, we got there at 9 [a.m.] and finished up around 2 [p.m.]," Walker says. "Then, the editing took about two weeks, and that’s pretty much it."

In addition to the on-the-toilet rapping, there is also a gratuitous poop shot in the video—a log circling the drain—but Walker says a they used a TV trick rather than shooting  actual excrement.

“It was a melted candy bar,” Walker says. "We discussed that they'd been on the toilet all of this time, and you know what they’re doing, but you don't get to see it. So we decided to do a Chapelle's Show moment, and melt down a candy bar for the same effect."

More spoofs are in the works; Walker says it’s a fun way just to “let some creativity out.”

“We just wanted to have fun,” he says. And although he was worried it was too risqué, one thing convinced him that people would be delighted by this elaborate poop joke.

“Once I got my mom’s stamp, it was OK,” he says. “I hoping it was all right, but she couldn’t stop laughing the whole time [she watched it], even thought it’s nasty.”

Read More:

No comments