Photo Credit: Drake/Instagram
Gen Z’ers know of Drake as the buff, viral rapper we know of today and most likely don’t know of his nerdy history being on Degrassi and the guy Charlamagne body shamed before he hit the gym. He’s also been working overtime over the years to shed that image he once had and now reports are out that he was so concerned about his image he threatened legal action if his character didn’t improve on Degrassi. In other words, he was in a wheelchair and he got so mad being clowned, he threatened to sue if he couldn’t walk again.
Season 4 of Degrassi: The Next Generation, Drake’s character of Jimmy became wheelchair bound after being shot in the back, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. And this is an important story because there are people who don’t know that that’s actually a common occurrence, especially in cities with high gun crime. But Drake was so obsessed with this character affecting his image, the show’s showrunner James Hurst says he wanted him out of the wheelchair. Keep in mind Drake began to take off as a rapper while still on the show. So this was his introduction to the world… Wheelchair Jimmy.
He added, “He’s like, ‘All my friends in the rap game say I’m soft because I’m in a wheelchair.’ And I said, ‘Well, tell your friends in the rap game that you got shot. How much harder can you get? You got shot, and you’re in a wheelchair.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’” Hurst says he received a letter from a law firm about Drake’s character not returning in wheelchair that Drake claimed to know nothing about. “He came in and was like, ‘What letter? I don’t know about that.’ And I said, ‘All right, I understand. But how do you feel about the wheelchair?”
He said Drake was apologetic, adding “I was very passionate about it, and I said, ‘Aubrey, there’s some kid somewhere in a wheelchair, who’s completely ignored, who’s never on television, never gets represented. I need you to represent this person. You’re the coolest kid on the show, and you can say there’s nothing wrong with being in a wheelchair.’”
In the end he still went back to the show as his character but let’s think about this. What better way to object to being called corny by suing over the reason you’re called corny? That sounds kind of… corny. And I’m sure people wheelchair bound in real life wish they could sue to get up out of their wheelchair but clearly they can’t. We still love you Drake. And we’d add that if this actually worked, it wouldn’t be so bad. But now that it’s out there it just looks kinda.. y’know. But hey, he got the last laugh at the end of the day. He said he was broke on the show but he’s since blown up so all the teasing he got over the years is pretty irrelevant at this point.
