About

"Hotline Bling" is a 2015 R&B single by the Canadian hip hop artist Drake. Following the release of the song's music video, which features the artist dancing in a color-shifting cube-like structure, it became popular among fans, spawning parodies, remixes, and reaction images often referred to as Drakeposting.

Origin

"Hotline Bling" was released as a single on July 31st, 2015.^[1] On October 4th, Drake announced via Instagram that a music video for the song would be released.^[2] The video was released onto Apple's, Apple Music on October 19th.^[3] However, many other users released the music video onto YouTube.

Spread

The music video's original posting to Apple Music received 27,043 loves, 9,276 comments, and 16,310 shares as of October 23rd, 2015.^[3] As of the same date, the song has peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was instantly subject to both critical acclaim and criticism. Jezebel called the video "dorky" as a compliment, saying "Drake’s dorkiness works because he is always in on the joke."^[4] Others saw appropriation, especially in regards to Drake's references to the work of Light and Space artist James Turrell, who was not officially involved in the video.^[5]

Still from Drake’s video compared with Amrta 2011 Ganzfeld © James Turrell, photo © Florian Holzherr, via Hyperallergic

Turrell released the following statement two days after the video's release:^[6]

“While I am truly flattered to learn that Drake f*cks with me, I nevertheless wish to make clear that neither I nor any of my woes was involved in any way in the making of the Hotline Bling video.”

On the day of its release, the video was tweeted about over 324,000 times and the hashtag #hotlinebling was used more than 146,000 times on Instagram.^[7][8] The video trended steadily on Facebook, where there were over 86,000 posts,^[9] and Tumblr.^[10] In addition, many specific hashtags spawned and achieved their own notoriety.^[11]

Nintendo 64 Mashup

On September 30th, Tumblr user setheverman uploaded a video of himself listening to the song and noticing similarities between the tune of Hotline Bling and themes from various Nintendo 64 titles,^[13] including The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario and Mario Kart. The post managed to become a staff pick and gathered over 280,000 notes in the following 3 weeks. The video was also picked up by various music and pop cultere related sites in the days following its posting, including Uproxx,^[14] The Daily Dot,^[15], VH1 Music,^[16] MTV^[17] and World Star Hiphop.^[18]

SNL Parody

On November 7th, 2015, the American comedy TV show Saturday Night Live recreated a parody of the video during the Season 41 Episode 4 show. The skit featured the SNL cast as well as the night's host (presidential candidate Donald Trump) portraying Drake's dancing as equal to dads, school dance chaperons, and Ed Grimley dancing.

#DanceLikeDrake

#DanceLikeDrake is a Vine meme which features people attempting to dance like Drake does in the music video.^[12] As of October 22, 2015 there are over 500 Vines tagged with the hashtag. The most popular of these was uploaded by Vine user Cameron Dallas with over 3 million loops.

#DrakeAlwaysOnBeat

#DrakeAlwaysOnBeat is a Vine / Twitter video meme which features music placed over the music video, syncing Drake's dancing to the beat.

Example Images

Search Interest

External Sources