A Canadian High School Student Was Suspended After Smoking Weed in a Rap Video

The Newfoundland town of Grand Falls-Windsor isn’t known for producing many public figures outside of NHL players, but last week the town on the Eastern edge of Canada found itself in the news after a high school student was suspended for filming a rap video in which he smokes what appears to be marijuana on school property. On Christmas Day, Brad Manuel released the video for “Sleep Again” under his moniker Manzy. In it, Manuel raps over top of Meek Mill’s “Monster” instrumental in front of such popular Newfoundland backdrops as bridges, cabins, and an abandoned industrial space.

The video shows Manuel smoking from a bong, and though he included a disclaimer in the video description that noted that any items that looks potentially illegal or illicit “are 100 percent props and should not be taken seriously,” he was suspended on January 3. The principle of Exploits Valley High had called Manuel to inform him that he was kicked off the school’s hockey team. In response, Manuel wrote a Facebook post stating that because of this, his goal was to solely make music and that he’d “never pick up a hockey stick ever again.” The director of the video, Lucas Hillier, was also suspended and removed from the school’s hockey and basketball team.

Regardless, this suspension helped catapult the views of the video, which rose to 10,000 after news of the suspension became public. On January 5, Manuel wrote another Facebook post expressing gratitude towards his new fans: “thanks to all the various amounts of different people from everyone around canada not just newfoundland , reaching out and showing there support on my situation and liking my music at the same time.”

In a statement to the CBC, Bronson Collins, the assistant director of education with the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District said that “the school was put in the video and images that condone drug use were conveyed, and certainly that's not something that we would want as representing EVH or any of our schools.”

But Brad Manuel doesn’t seem to be upset, and if anything he seems to be relishing the attention. In a Facebook post from January 7, Manuel announced his victory over the education system: “growing up , especially the past few years , i was THE angriest person you'd ever meet , so short fused with my temper , but i find music has helped me get somewhat passed that realizing that all these haters putting me down , are wasting there time of day , ON ME , i fucking win. no one can ever put me down , its all up from here!“

The video sits at just over 200,000 views at the time of publish.

Slava Pastuk smoked weed once. Follow him on Twitter.