If Drake's new short film, "Jungle" had you mourning the rapper's Degrassi days, join us in watching this gem of a flashback: a recently resurrected, short film from 2008, "Us & Them." It features Drake as himself (Aubrey Graham), which is arguably his best role yet, but the low-budget short, to be clear, is one hundred percent not good. You're in for 14-minutes of "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" references (oh, 2008), a cameo from Drake's grandmother Evelyn, and a lanky ginger teen OB O'Brien, the guy in all of Drake's corny music video skits, enunciating the word "cock" in Drake's bedroom. Though it all feels worth it when Drake says, How could you do that to me? I could have been the greatest barber in the world around the 8:40 mark. And as far as the plot goes, here's what we can decipher: Aubrey Graham and his former best friend Mazin Elsadig (who went on to direct several of Drake's most popular music videos) audition for the same role, and then they play basketball.
"Us & Them" was filmed about a year before Drake's music success, and, as the Fader points out, it seems to be a proof-of-concept pilot for an intended TV series, but we don't think this humble, perfect treasure needs to prove anything. Watch Drake before he (thankfully) retired from the acting game in "Us & Them," above.