Meet Young Dylan, a seven-year-old boy from Annapolis, Maryland who will make you reevaluate what you are doing with your life about a thousand times more than when you watch the Olympics and see athletes that are the same age as you. As much as it pains me to say, Young Dylan may be Drake’s number one fan. Not only is he a die-hard Drake fan, but he also has rapping talents of his own. Most recently Dylan performed at ‘Drake Night,’ an annual night hosted by Toronto Raptors that is dedicated to their Global Ambassador, on November 16th during the Raptors’ home game against the Golden State Warriors. Young Dylan does not have any original songs of his own so when he performs, especially on a night that is dedicated to Drake, he does covers of Drake’s songs. As if his performance could not have gotten any cuter, it of course did. Videos taken of the performance show Drake dancing to his own songs being performed by the seven-year-old from his courtside seats at center court and being Drake, he put the cherry on top of all of the adorableness buy running to center court and picking up his mini-me, spinning him around and giving him a smile that millions of people dream of their future significant other giving to their child, especially if it is the 6 God.
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So how did this little kid from Annapolis make it to performing at the Air Canada Center in Toronto, Canada in front of his idol? It all started with social media of course. He first posted clips of himself rapping on Vine, but since the app is now shut down, Young Dylan updates his clips to his Instagram account, @officialyoungdylan, which has over 146 thousand followers. The number of followers has grown tremendously since his two performances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and his two meetings with Drake, but the young star was actually first noticed by Diddy of all people. Back when Young Dylan was solely posting his rapping clips to Vine, someone put a clip on Instagram that was noticed and reposted by Diddy on March 27, 2016, four days after Dylan had started his Instagram account. In addition, the site World Star Hip Hop included one of his Vines, the same one that Diddy had shared, in their Vine Competition of the Week on April 1.
Initially Dylan’s Instagram consisted of covers of Bryson Tiller and Trey Songz songs, but that all changed when Drake’s legendary album Views dropped at the end of April. Young Dylan learned the entire album word for word, which he posted videos of. Those clips did not go unnoticed by Jas Prince, the CEO of Young Empire Music Group, who is not only a friend of Drake, but also the person who first noticed Drake as a rapper. Prince gave Dylan a night to remember by bringing the mini-me backstage to meet his inspiration for the first time at Drake and Future’s Summer Sixteen concert at the Verizon Center in Washington D.C. on August 20. Videos of Dylan adorably screaming along to all of the lyrics from on top of his dad’s shoulders and him meeting Drake were posted to his Instagram.
At that point, one would assume that meeting Drake would be the peak for Dylan and he would go back to school and continue posting videos on Instagram; he was famous on social media and noticed by his idol, what more could he do with this? The answer is more. What comes with being noticed by Drake, is being noticed by one of his big fans, Ellen DeGeneres, who loves having young kids with talent perform on her show. Young Dylan’s first performance on Ellen aired on September 19. He performed “For Free” by DJ Khaled and Drake. Dylan was asked back to perform for a second time on an episode that aired on November 4, where he performed Drake’s song “Child’s Play.” Not only does Dylan know all of Drake’s words, but he has also nailed the rapper’s style and dance moves.
Following all of the excitement of the performances on Ellen and, not only meeting Drake, but having the opportunity to perform in front of him and thousands of people, Dylan is now back in Annapolis, posting clips of himself rapping to Drake’s new music from More Life and giving back to his city by performing Drake’s “Fake Love” at an Ignite Annapolis event held at Maryland Hall. At this rate Young Dylan has more success than most college students and I am predicting that he will release an album within the next five years. If this successful seven-year-old is not enough motivation for you to get through finals, I don’t know what is.
