After the “what the fuck just happened” feeling most viewers got from Atlanta‘s “Teddy Perkins” episode, things returned to normal. Better yet, things went back to being as normal as they can for an episode of Atlanta. Last night’s episode features Van and her girlfriends attending a house party that Drake is supposedly hosting. While we later find out that the party is a scam and that Drake is not actually at the party at all, the episode is full of Drake music, references and jokes about his racial identity. As Van iconically says, “Drake is Mexican.” With all of that being said, the episode is not really about Champagne Papi at all. It’s about Aubrey Drake Graham. It’s about you. It’s about us. It’s about how lonely it must feel to be the biggest rapper in the world and have no one truly know anything about you as a person, but everyone want to stand next to you because of the social media attention you can garner for them. Most importantly, it’s about how we all think we can solve our real-world problems with virtual world #BowWowChallenges.
Y’all Van is real life slow or something
“Drake’s Mexican” #AtlantaFX pic.twitter.com/g23bmmNBRM— TylerBre'Ana? (@Tylerbreana8) April 13, 2018
The seventh episode of the second season, “Champagne Papi”, begins with Van watching Earn on Instagram Live with another woman. Despite all the chaos Earn has put her through, she feels a little bit of sadness about being away from the father of her child and her best friend. In the background, her friends are trying to get lit before heading out to the party. In short, the scene is essentially a shot of women that Drake would write a song about or a scene from HBO’s Insecure. Not much later, Van’s squad heads out to the meeting spot where they are supposed to take a limo to the party.
When the group arrives to the party, they are given a list of rules of what they can and can’t do even though Drake isn’t there and probably doesn’t live there. In short, this also sounds like something Drake would have his security tell a group of women before entering the house. When Van’s squad rolls up in the mansion, one of her friends heads off with her boyfriend who is DJ’ing the party. Meanwhile, Van heads off with her friend, who is somewhat reminiscent of Insecure’s Molly. Atlanta’s Molly ends up getting high off an edible and spends the night running through the mansion doing God knows what. Van, playing the role of Issa, a huge Drake fan, ends up with the cousin of “Drake’s nutritionist”. Van ends up shaking off the half-brother of the aunt of the cousin of Drake’s imaginary nutritionist and spending the night searching for Drake. She ends up cracking the mystery of the party by finding out that Drake isn’t actually there.
"It's a simulation. It's all fake." — Nadine revealing the point of the entire episode. #AtlantaFX
— The Undefeated (@TheUndefeated) April 13, 2018
In reality, she didn’t care about Drake. She wanted to make Earn jealous. She wanted her time to shine and be independent of all the bullsh*t Earn has put her through. We all want that. Most people want to either be Drake to make their ex-significant other jealous or people want to be with Drake to make their ex-significant other jealous. However, Drake couldn’t do that. No celebrity could do that. No matter how many Instagram shots we take with our idols, it will never incrementally improve our lives. That change comes from within and that plays on the misconceptions of fame that Paper Boy, Teddy Perkins and probably Donald Glover have had or continue to have. More importantly, we are reminded that not too many people care about their favorite celebrities on a personal level and that can get very lonely.
