Drake Hosted the Most Hip-hop Saturday Night Live Ever

Last December, Saturday Night Live revealed that its first host and musical guest of 2014 would be a former Canadian teen star of the early 00s, now working as a little known hip hop artist - never before featured on the pages of Noisey - called Drake. Naturally, everyone went bonkers. The general feel was that Drake, who already proved his comedy chops last year with a cameo in Anchorman 2, was bound to shine.

Turns out the general feel was right. If you started yesterday evening's broadcast as a Drake fan, you ended it drooling for Drizzy.

The show opened with Drake as Alex Rodriguez, the beleaguered baseball star who has furiously denied taking performance enhancing drugs despite increasingly compelling evidence that he, in all likelihood, took performance enhancing drugs. Drake nailed Rodriguez, his nervous "what can I get away with here" demeanour. Plus it allowed for these two very enjoyable screengrabs, from when A-Rod explains that his texts about steroids were actually auto-correct fails.

To be honest though, SNL regular Kate McKinnon basically stole the entire show in the opening five minutes as Justin Bieber. Asked why he threw eggs at his neighbours, Bieber says, "I thought my neighbour was a chicken, so I was just returning his kids."

Next up was Drake's monologue, where he apologised for creating the phrase YOLO, and poked fun at Toronto, “where the rappers are polite and the mayor smokes crack.” Drake is half-Jewish, as you probably know, so the segue into a Bar Mitzvah flashback for “Dracob” was familiar territory. New cast member Sasheer Zamata made her entrance in this sketch, on the arm of he who will always be known as "Keenan from Keenan and Kel". Her first line on SNL was “Mazeltov”. You said it lady, cause the next thing that happened was Drizzy spitting over a "Hava Nagila" beat and rhyming "Hanukah" with "Rihannukah", “Cream cheesy" with "Weezy” and announcing he's “chilliing in Boca Raton with my mensch Lenny Kravitz, the only purple drank we sip is purple Manischewitz.” Can't be bothered explaining this to the goys out there but oy vey is this good.

The next sketch was the most hip-hop SNL has ever been, with the big name rappers of today taking up roles in 90s sitcoms (a nod to Drake's time on Canadian Byker Grove, Degrassi: The Next Generation). We also saw Lil Wayne as Steve Urkel on Family Matters, Eminem on Felicity, Rihanna on Blossom and 2 Chainz as a tween Disney star. Basically this is a Noisey idea we've had in development for two years which we're now going to have to bin so thanks a fucking lot guys. Guess the world will never get to see Domo from Odd Future playing John Goodman's Republican senator in The Westside Wing.

The next highlight was a song called "Resolution Revolution", about having fucked all your promised self-improvement by January 18th. This provided the highlight of the evening with a cutaway to Drake showing his Cosplay chops, wandering around in a purple cloak screaming "elfin death potion". By this point, my heart was so saturated with love I had to let go of some of my existing feelings for my family and friends. I was also a little drunk.

Here are some of my notes from that point in time:

11m 15s Enjoyed the Corrola advert

16m 08s Drake likes moving his head

28m 15s My friend has the same jacket as the guy in the resolution song

No jokes, it's from Urban Outfitters.

Forty minutes in, and Drake took the stage, solo and bathed in a weird red light that never stopped making me feel like I had to fix the TV. He performed a medley of "Started From the Bottom" and "Trophies". All the goofing around previously should have made his performance less convincing, but weirdly it didn't. Drake's clearly just an enthusiastic guy who has still managed to tap into something serious and honest in his music. Saying that, don't expect Chainz and Sean to let the Cosplay thing go anytime soon.

The next sketch Drake was in was really bad, but it was totally not his fault. There was little premise, except that it had something to do with Indiana Jones and someone who couldn't speak English. Drake tried his best and, in his defence, looked astonishing in shorts. Seriously that guy has got calf definition like I've never seen. At this point my friend's TV was actually glitching a little, and I went to the bathroom. When I got back, Drake was playing a teenager in detention who likes older women, and starts seducing Vanessa Bayer's poetry teacher in front of the class. He gets to do spoken word poetry, and was dressed like someone from Dangerous Minds meets Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club. Like.

The most emotional moment of the evening came next, with a verse and chorus of "Hold on We're Going Home" segueing into "From Time", where Drake was joined by his friend Jhene Aiko. They both looked delighted to be there, like they were savouring every second, and I realised that when Drake performed "Started From the Bottom" he was saying something really serious, because tonight he was 'here', being given the highest honour by one of America's most beloved institutions.

The last Drake appearance of the night was a reccurence of Miley Cyrus' Mornin' Miami sketch, which is such a simple concept but actually the funniest bit of the night, parodying the endless daybreak optimism of intelligent people spouting endless banal nonsense having been tired for the last four years.

I was still making notes, in case you're interested, here they are:

58m10s hey drake has really big hands

1hr14m drake uses his hands a lot

I think what I was trying to say was, Drake took the challenge presented to him by SNL last night and crushed it in his big flappy hands.

Emma-Lee Moss has a crush on Drake and is going to spend 2014 tweeting him about Cosplay. You can watch the action here. Myles Pettengill lent her the TV.