Drake’s ‘FOMO’ Puts Jamaica and Dancehall in Focus

Drake has spent much of his career treating Toronto not as a single cultural identity but as a crossroads. Jamaican patois, dancehall rhythms, Caribbean restaurants, global rap, R&B and the city's immigrant communities have repeatedly found their way into his music. His new film FOMO: Fear of Missing Out brings that formula back into view, but this time the Caribbean presence is woven into the scenery, soundtrack and cultural memory of the project.

Released September 15, FOMO is an hour-plus visual project that Drake had cryptically teased for weeks before describing it as a “not so short film” and an exercise in “self funded surrealism.” Rather than functioning as a conventional short film with a tightly plotted narrative, FOMO operates more like a sprawling visual diary of Drake's summer — part music video, part celebrity home movie, part album epilogue and part preview of whatever comes next.

There is plenty of spectacle. Drake races across the water in a neon-green speedboat, moves through his mansion, revisits Toronto locations and surrounds himself with famous friends. Sexyy Red, Kevin Durant, Winnie Harlow, Stunna Sandy and Drake's mother, Sandi Graham, are among the faces appearing throughout the film. But beneath the celebrity cameos and luxury imagery, FOMO also functions as a musical drop: nine unreleased tracks are scattered across the project, including collaborations with Don Toliver, PartyNextDoor and Yeat.

For Caribbean audiences, however, one of the film's most interesting moments arrives when Drake turns toward Jamaica.

Over one of the unreleased songs, he invokes Vybz Kartel and Gaza, referring to himself as “Baby Gaza.” It is a short lyrical passage, but hardly an accidental one. Kartel's influence has stretched far beyond Jamaica for years, and Drake has repeatedly positioned himself close to Jamaican music and its major figures.

The moment therefore feels less like a random name-check than another entry in a long-running relationship between Drake's music and dancehall.

And the visual accompanying that section adds another Caribbean layer: Jamaican-Canadian supermodel Winnie Harlow appears in the film. Her presence places another internationally recognizable figure of Jamaican heritage inside a sequence already drawing its vocabulary from dancehall.

That combination — Drake, Gaza and Harlow — captures something FOMO repeatedly demonstrates: Caribbean influence in Toronto is not presented as something foreign to the city. It is part of the city's cultural architecture.

Few locations illustrate that better than The Real Jerk.

The celebrated Toronto Caribbean restaurant appears in FOMO, instantly carrying viewers back a decade. Drake and Rihanna filmed portions of the video for their 2016 smash “Work” at the same restaurant, transforming the space into one of the most recognizable Caribbean settings in a mainstream pop video of that era.

Returning there in FOMO is therefore more than convenient location scouting. It functions as a visual callback to a crucial period in Drake's career and to one of the biggest Caribbean-influenced records of the 2010s.

The choice is especially fitting because FOMO is obsessed with memory.

Its central idea is contained in its title: the fear that life is happening somewhere else while you hesitate. In promotional material ahead of the release, Drake described the project as a story about making the most of a summer and urged people to take chances — make the call, take the trip, release the song, open the business or spend time with their parents.

That nostalgia runs throughout the film. Instead of pretending that every chapter of Drake's career exists independently, FOMO frequently circles back to people, places and sounds that helped build his world.

Caribbean culture is part of that history.

The film also extends the musical universe Drake established earlier this year. In May, he released Iceman, Maid of Honour and Habibti, three projects that were originally presented under the broader Iceman rollout. The releases produced an extraordinary chart result, with Drake becoming the first artist to simultaneously occupy the top three positions on the Billboard 200.

Dancehall was already present in that run.

On Maid of Honour, Drake reunited with Jamaican star Popcaan for “Amazing Shape,” a track built firmly around dancehall. The collaboration continued a musical relationship stretching back years and again demonstrated Popcaan's unusual position within Drake's orbit: not simply as an occasional guest, but as one of the Jamaican artists most consistently connected to the OVO universe.

Pitchfork's review of Maid of Honour specifically noted the return of Jamaican patois on “Amazing Shape,” further illustrating how deliberately the record draws from dancehall vocabulary and rhythm.

That context makes the Vybz Kartel reference in FOMO more significant. Popcaan and Kartel represent different but interconnected chapters of modern Jamaican dancehall, and both continue to surface within Drake's musical world.

PartyNextDoor adds yet another Caribbean thread. The longtime OVO collaborator, who is of Jamaican heritage, appears among the artists attached to the unreleased material previewed during FOMO.

This is where the Caribbean conversation surrounding Drake becomes more complicated — and more interesting — than simply counting dancehall references.

Drake has long existed in a cultural space shaped by Toronto's Caribbean diaspora. Jamaican language, sound-system culture, dancehall and Caribbean nightlife are deeply embedded in parts of Toronto culture. His use of those influences has generated both admiration and criticism over the years: some listeners view his global borrowing as a reflection of the multicultural city that raised him, while others have questioned the boundaries between cultural exchange and commercial appropriation.

FOMO does not settle that debate, nor does it attempt to.

What it does demonstrate is that Jamaica remains difficult to separate from Drake's creative vocabulary.

The references are no longer limited to putting a dancehall artist on a record. They exist in locations, slang, collaborators, memories and visual cues. A restaurant becomes a portal back to Rihanna's “Work.” Winnie Harlow becomes part of a sequence invoking Gaza. Popcaan's dancehall collaboration sits inside the musical catalogue the film revisits. PartyNextDoor connects OVO to another branch of the Jamaican diaspora.

Then Drake uses FOMO to look forward.

During the film's Toronto premiere, he confirmed plans to return to the road in 2027, telling the audience that a tour is coming and that he expects to see fans “across the world.” The forthcoming trek is expected to include his first North American tour run since 2023, although detailed dates and destinations had not been announced as of September 16.

That announcement may ultimately become the biggest commercial headline to emerge from FOMO. The unreleased music is another obvious talking point. Drake previews collaborations with Don Toliver, PartyNextDoor and Yeat and even incorporates his take on Ella Langley's “Choosin' Texas.”

Yet FOMO is most revealing when viewed not as a collection of announcements but as Drake curating his own mythology.

He revisits old locations. He surrounds himself with familiar collaborators. He connects new music with older chapters of his catalogue. He moves between wealth, family, celebrity, Toronto and nostalgia while presenting the entire exercise as a reminder to live before opportunities disappear.

And once again, Jamaica is somewhere inside that mythology.

For an artist who has spent nearly two decades turning Toronto's multicultural identity into a global musical language, that should surprise no one. But seeing Vybz Kartel, Gaza, Winnie Harlow, Popcaan and The Real Jerk all orbiting the same project underscores something bigger than a collection of Caribbean Easter eggs.

Dancehall has not simply visited Drake's career.

It has become part of the cultural vocabulary through which he tells his story.