Much like the crime-ridden broken homes that gave birth to some of music’s most famous rappers, the next generation of hip-hop is slowly being born from another depressed segment of society: the children of famous people, whose fathers are too busy out slinging that awards-bait to look after them, leaving these kids to grow up hard, then put it all into the lyrics they spit. It’s like Biggie said, “If I wasn’t in the rap game, I’d probably have a key knee deep in the Oscar game”—and that’s exactly what Gabe Day is feeling, as he tries to break free from his father, Daniel Day-Lewis, with his burgeoning hip-hop career. “Call me Gabe Day and not Gabe Day-Lewis / Because if you’re trying to call me out I’m ‘bout to Gabe Day-Lose It,” Gabe Day-Lewis raps in his new video, “Green Auras,” which attempts to differentiate himself from his father by repeatedly mentioning him. “Judgin' someone for their dad is just as bad as being racist,” he argues, while wearing a wooden Africa pendant that confirms he knows what he’s talking about.
Unlike Chet Haze—or even Tommy Hilfiger’s son Rich Hil—Gabe Day isn’t out to impress anyone with his cash or celebrity, or even the critical reasoning skills that landed him here on the rough-and-tumble-in-the-autumn-leaves lawn of Sarah Lawrence College, where he filmed this tribute to his “heroes, J. Cole and Nas.” Instead, Day insists he’s just an ordinary “bipolar stoop kid”—even if that stoop happens to be outside the brownstone of a $60,000-a-year private college, presumably paid for by his father, famous actor Daniel Day-Lewis, and mother, famous actress Isabelle Adjani—doing “stoop shit,” which amounts to chain-smoking weed with his fellow liberal arts majors while complaining about how hard his life is, likely because everyone’s always making jokes about drinking his milkshake.
As Day announces up front, “It’s been a hot minute since I been in the game”—a minute you’ve no doubt spent wondering where Daniel Day-Lewis’ rapping son was, while the game was just languishing here. It turns out he was just sorting through some stuff (“I did too many drugs / felt like copin' on my own when all I needed was a hug”), and definitely not thinking about his dad. He’s also definitely not Daniel Day-Lewis going extremely method for his next brilliant role, about the emancipation of society’s rapping celebrity offspring. That's as bad as being racist.
[via Vice]