Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Culture
  3. News

ESPN Taps Drake To Bring the Flow To Select Monday Night Football Games

Drake performing on "The Come Up Show" during the Summer Sixteen Tour in 2016.
Drake performing on “The Come Up Show” during the Summer Sixteen Tour in 2016. Image used with permission by copyright holder

It’s been quite the beginning of September for superstar musician Drake. After the Sept. 3 release of his sixth album, Certified Lover Boy, ESPN announced that it will work alongside Billboard’s Artist of the Decade throughout the entire NFL season to curate music for select Monday Night Football games. 

Recommended Videos

Before it was even released, NBA stars like LeBron James and Kevin Durant were dropping tweets and Instagram Stories in anticipation of the album. While Drake has been known more for his NBA fandom (as a Toronto Raptors ambassador), he’s now spreading the sports love to a new league. Now that Certified Lover Boy is already a massive hit, it’s no surprise the NFL is seeking to capitalize on that popularity. 

“Now we are here … the kickoff of the football season. And who better to curate music for Monday Night Football than Drake who sits firmly at the intersection of music and sports,” ESPN vice president of sport marketing Emeka Ofodile said in a press release. 

Related Guides

For 37 years, no artist had ever bested Michael Jackson’s Billboard Hot 100 record of seven top 10 hits stacked up from 1982’s “Thriller.” And for 57 years, no music artist ever touched The Beatles’ 1964 Hot 100 apex as the one and only act to occupy all top five charting songs in one week — until now.  

As of Sept. 18’s charts, Drake knocked out the King of Pop, inscribing his mark on the music history books when Certified Lover Boy launched with nine of Billboard’s top 10 tracks, breaking Jackson’s record and tying the Fab Four’s with hits on each of the Billboard Hot 100’s top five positions. (Coincidentally, Drake samples The Beatles’ Michelle on the album’s opening track, Champagne Poetry.) According to MRC Data music sales figures, the album moved 613,000 albums this week, easily 2021’s best first week.

In an announcement two weeks ago, ESPN said that the sports station plans to collaborate with Drake to choose music that encapsulates “both the energy and mood of select Monday Night Games.” The soundtrack will be a combination of Drake classics, recent releases, and music from other artists. Songs will run during Monday Night Football promotional spots, live telecasts, and pregame shows for ten games this season, beginning this week.

“The music curator role has been a big hit with our fans with Diplo and DJ Khaled in previous years and this season, we will be living inside the moment with Drake,” Ofodile said. 

Read More: How to Get 360 Waves Hairstyle at Home

Matthew Denis
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Who does James Bond work for? And is MI6 real?
James Bond Specter double breasted

We have some news on the movement of the next James Bond. According to reports, we are looking at the final four (we know of three). Jack Lowden (Slow Horses, Dunkirk), Callum Turner (Eternity, One Night Only), and Josh O’Connor (The Crown, Challengers) are all in the final running to portray the next 007. We also, allegedly, have a fourth, unannounced actor in the running. But of course we do. And since we have news and movement on the James Bond front, I started thinking about what the next movie will be about. That took me down a rabbit hole, and I landed on a question. What is MI6? James Bond’s employer is a shadowy government agency, like Jason Bourne’s Treadstone or Ethan Hunt’s Impossible Mission Force (IMF). But there is one major difference between them and the organization that signs 007’s paychecks.

His is real.

Read more
A toast to excellence: Don’t overthink lighting a cigar…but don’t underthink it either 
Face, Head, Person

When I first decided I was ready to try cigars for the first time, I was ready to jump right in and sit back to enjoy the experience. Then, something crazy happened. I couldn’t light it. It seemed so simple. Flame, meet cigar. It really couldn’t be that complicated. But I ran into a slew of problems. The wrong kind of flame, canoeing, an uneven burn, and the damn thing kept going out, causing me to restart the embarrassing process. So I reached out to my friends over at La Aurora to find out what I was doing wrong.

That is when I found out from their own John Gaglio that these issues are very common and there is no reason to be embarrassed. Instead, don’t overthink lighting your cigar. And don’t underthink it. Instead, try to use the following tips and enjoy the experience without shame.

Read more
Topgolf brings back John Daly to continue to “disrupt” the game
john daly

To the uninitiated, golf can feel like a stuffy game. There is a dress code, there is an etiquette, and you even have to be quiet. At a sporting event. For those of us who love golf (don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan but believe it is called golf because the other four-letter words are taken), we recognize golf isn’t stuffy as much as it is steeped in tradition. But there has always been one man who shirked the shackles of the tradition and disrupted the game of golf with one of the most immaculate vibes in the sport, John Daly. With his drinking, smoking, wild pants, wilder mouth, and general who-gives-a-sh*t nature, he was everything golf wanted to keep out. Now, the game embraces him and his vibe, and Topgolf brought him in to continue the disruption.

I love the vibe at Topgolf. It’s a place where you can smash a golf ball, listen to music, have a drink, and enjoy yourself with friends and family. That’s my kind of golf. – John Daly

Read more