(JTA) — One of rapper Drake’s latest tunes gives a nod to his Jewish roots — even as he hints that he might be finding Jesus.
In “Wants and Needs,” one of three tracks in his “Scary Hours 2” EP released at midnight on Thursday, Drake meditates on his many sins. In one line, he raps: “Yeah, I probably should go to yeshiva, we went to Ibiza.”
Ibiza is an island just off the coast of mainland Spain known as a center of electronic dance music party tourism. So the insinuation in Drake’s line is that he could have used more of the structure and discipline of Orthodox Jewish schooling in his life, but instead he chose to immerse himself in a party culture.
The next lines reference fellow star rapper Kanye West, who often goes by the nickname Yeezy: “Yeah, I probably should go link with Yeezy, I need me some Jesus/ But soon as I started confessin’ my sins, he wouldn’t believe us.”
Then later in the chorus, Drake adds: “Should repent, I need me some Jesus in my life/ Amen.”
West has become an intensely religious Christian public figure in recent years, hosting religious services and basing his latest album on religious themes.
Born Aubrey Drake Graham in Toronto to a Black father and Jewish mother, Drake attended Jewish day school as a kid and had a bar mitzvah, which he parodied on “Saturday Night Live.” He has since become guarded in talking publicly about his Jewish identity, despite hinting at it in some ways over the years (see his bar mitzvah-themed birthday party or his nightclub named after his Jewish grandparents).
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