“Bitch, I know what my name is/ And shit I know what fame is/ Judging someone for their dad is just as bad as being racist.”
His name is Gabe Day. And, as this young rapper defiantly tells us, it’s not Gabe Day-Lewis, because if you call him that, he’ll “Gabe Day Lose It.” If you haven’t figured it out yet, Gabe is actually the son of Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis.
“The mornings when I’m sad are the ones when I smoke first,/Self-medicating cause my heart and my throat hurt./Trying to understand what it means to be a man.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Because nothing says, “I’m struggling to own and inhabit my own sense of masculinity” like matching your backpack with a backwards baseball cap. We’re pretty sure that producing a vanity rap ode to getting high between skipping seminars isn’t anyone’s textbook definition of masculinity. As for Gabe’s pseudo, self-medicated depression—you know who’s really sad? All those huddled in the background, cradling their own unheard hip-hop demos.
“I’ve been kicking it on campus, SLC!”
One of the funniest aspects of the Gabe Day persona is the fact that this profanity spewing, aspiring Nas protégé is an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College. Sarah Lawrence is a small liberal arts college in New York; it was also originally founded as an all-female institution. We hope that Sarah Lawrence’s dope girl/ boy ratio is worth the $60,000 dollars a year that’s being forked over so Gabe can embrace his musical talent and pursue his major in waking and baking.
“Every single day, I’d be chilling with a different dame./Trying to feel good about myself but all I felt was lame./And all I got is the music, getting me through this.”
Speaking of ladies, Gabe is all over that. Day has a talent for speaking obvious truths in oversimplified terms. Gabe tried to kick his postmodern, adolescent sense of ennui (a “lame” feeling) through members of the opposite sex (“dames”). However, ultimately, his attempts at self-distraction proved futile. In the end, he is left with the eternal consolation of his record collection (iTunes library). Gabe drowns his sorrows in these great sonic works (the albums of J. Cole and Nas).
“From Europe to the East Coast/It wasn’t easy to adapt.”
At its heart, Gabe Day’s story is one of immigration, dislocation, and loss. Forced to abandon Europe for the East Coast, Day is essentially a modern day refuge. We imagine Gabe fleeing from country to country via private plane, clutching his favorite Nas record and two hand-rolled spliffs for the flight. Such is his humble, itinerant lifestyle.
“I was on a bad path/I did too many drugs/ felt like coping on my own when all I needed was a hug.”
After one too many undergrads offered to drink his milkshake, Gabe Day apparently went on a drug-fueled bender. And as we all know, serious drug addiction only has one proven cure: a tender hug. Looks like he's a bit of a softie. Think of him as a less talented Drake, who’s not technically old enough to do any of the things he’s rapping about.
