Does Drake Even Know Who Smash Mouth Are? An Investigation

It is with a heavy, heavy heart I must inform you that Smash Mouth is attempting to beef with Drake.

Now, I know this isn’t a sentence you expected to read on the Monday following the Toronto Raptors’ historic Eastern Conference win, and it’s certainly not what I expected to write about, but here we are. As the Raptors ascend to the NBA finals for the first time in history we’re getting a lot of hot takes. One of the most prolific and annoying of these surrounds Drake and old sports dudes fainting like southern belles, talking about how DISRESPECTFUL they find his fandom and courtside actions.

Now, joining this chorus of old fogies is San-Jose based band Smash Mouth who tweeted, “Yo @drake When the ball is in-play sit the FCK down! That aint gonna fly in Oakland! #GlorifiedMascot.”

The tweet was followed up by an image of Drake standing on the sideline and the comment “lol.” Now, this comment earned the ska(?) band a bunch of backlash. A couple favourites include, “tough tweet from a band that was literally made famous by Shrek" and “take the L on the forehead." They backtracked immediately but we see what’s up—Smash Mouth is thirsty for that sweet, sweet, Drake beef.

But as we all know, it takes two to tango, so this brings us to a little game I like to play called: Does Drake Know Who Smash Mouth Are?

To start we must review the evidence.

Drake was born in 1986 meaning he would have been 11 to 15 during the peak Smash Mouth years. The majority of Smash Mouth historians would likely agree this period extends from 1997 to 2001, ranging from the release of “Walkin’ on the Sun” in their debut album Fush Yu Mang to them jumping on the Shrek train with “I’m A Believer.” This is a time in which a young person will listen to a lot of music but not retain the names of a lot of the bands. I sure as hell listened to a lot of bad bands at those ages—most of which I think were named Trapt or something—and I remember maybe five percent of them. We, sadly, cannot rely on this metric to guarantee that Drake knows who Smash Mouth are.

There is also the fact that Smash Mouth and their 1999 single “All Star” have become a meme of sorts. The Smash Mouth renaissance period, according to Google Trends, occurred in the mid-2010s, truly blossoming in 2016. During this time, Drake was already incredibly famous and probably enjoying memes and entertainment of sorts that we non-famous people can only dream of. Due to the fact that Drake probably has some sort of meme curation team within his group of broskis, we also cannot rely on this to prove if Drake knows Smash Mouth.

This brings us to where we were always headed, Mike Myers’ filmography.

Yes, one of the biggest potential beefs of the NBA finals comes down to our favourite Canadian voiced ogre, Shrek. For many of us, the Smash Mouth cover of "I’m A Believer" is the true version of the song, (sorry Monkees). It’s just jammed right up there in our craniums because of the immense popularity of Shrek. According to Box Office Mojo, Shrek sold a total of 47,290,600 tickets in North America. Now, fair reader, I want you to ask yourself, ‘was Drake one of those 47 million people?’

The answer is yes, almost assuredly yes. Let me lay out my evidence.

Look at this face.

Just look at this and tell me Drake, who would have been 14 when Shrek was released, didn’t go see Shrek multiple times in theatres. Tell me that isn’t a boy who watched Shrek on repeat until he wore out his VHS copy. Tell me this guy didn’t painstakingly craft a pretty damn good Scottish ogre impression.

Look, it’s not just me. Because I am a scientist I canvassed several people at the VICE office about whether or not Drake would know who Smash Mouth is and I found Shrek is actually the crux of most people’s answer to the question. One of them summed everything up far more articulately than I ever could.

“The true answer is ‘no’ but he knows ‘All Star’. Like he’d be like ‘who?’ And someone would be like ‘Hey now,’ and he’d be like ‘ah.’ He’d probably call them Shrek or The Shrek Band.”

This is a good theory. So, there we have it friends: while Smash Mouth is desperate for this beef, it’s gotta be good for business, it’s just a one-sided affair. Drake almost certainly doesn’t know who Smash Mouth are and if he does he calls them The Shrek Band.

That said, Drake should still drop a Smash Mouth diss track.

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