Drake's New Single “Toosie Slide” Started With a DM

There are approximately two high honors remaining in the music industry: A Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys, and getting name dropped in the title of a Drake song. As of late last night, the dancer Toosie—he of the new Drake single, “Toosie Slide”—joins a handful of others who can make the latter claim. The rest of the list, in case you were wondering: Beyoncé (“Girls Love Beyoncé”); Sandra (Drake’s mother, from “Sandra’s Rose”); Madonna, (“Madonna,” natch); and Marvin Gaye (Marvin’s Room”).

“Toosie Slide,” however, has something the rest of that exclusive list does not: A dedicated, accompanying dance intended to mobilize the masses, invented and inspired by Toosie himself.

Toosie is a 23-year-old from Atlanta whose real name is Daquan. If you listen to hip-hop, like to dance, or like to watch people dance to hip-hop, you’ve probably come across one of his videos. He got his start in high school, posting Nae Nae routines on Instagram that immediately blew up. Six years later, he’s linked with Future, Rae Sremmurd, 2 Chainz, Tory Lanez, Migos, Lil Wayne, Diddy, Playboy Carti, Usher, and yes, Drake. There’s more, too. Those are just the names he could remember off the top of his head.

The “Toosie Slide,” he says, was created in 45 minutes about a month ago. On that fateful day, Toosie was chilling at home with his friends/fellow dancers Hiii Key, Ayo, and Teo, when, naturally, Drake sent him a DM. “He had a record idea and needed me to come up with a dance to it,” Toosie says. The attached song wasn’t finished yet—only the hook, which conveniently includes a series of straightforward dance moves: “Right foot up, left foot, slide / Left foot up, right foot, slide.”

Toosie and his crew got to work. “Everybody was contributing little moves, and slowly but surely, we started piecing it together,” he says. They recorded themselves performing what they came up with, a clip that went viral in late March when it was posted publicly—with Drake’s sign-off—on TikTok and Instagram. When Drake first saw the dance snippet roughly a month ago, “he fell in love with it,” Toosie says. “He was like, ‘Y’all are the greatest, man. This is it!”’ He too gives the “Toosie Slide” his best shot in the official music video for the track.

In a conversation on Thursday, Toosie detailed his meteoric rise to Drake Name Fame, filled in the blanks on how “Toosie Slide” became a social media hit before it was even released in full (unsurprisingly, Drake had a plan in place), and boldly predicted that his new dance will eclipse the Tootsie Roll in popularity.

GQ: How’d you get the nickname Toosie?

Toosie: That’s a childhood nickname. I got it from my best friend’s dad. He thought I was African, and there’s a tribe in Africa called the Watusi tribe, so every time he saw me, he’d call me “Watusi.” He was trying to be funny, and then my best friend started calling me that in school. The “Wa” dropped off, and Toosie stuck.

Did you grow up dancing?

I’ve been dancing all my life. I’ve always been in love with it. My first style of dance was breakdancing. I loved the b-boy style during the era when movies like You Got Served came out. I was copying what they were doing. But I had hoop dreams; I wanted to go to the NBA. You know how that goes. This kind of just fell into my lap. I took advantage of the opportunity.

Let’s talk about that first opportunity. When was your first viral video?

What’s crazy is you can go to my Instagram and see the receipts from 2014. When the Nae Nae dance came out, we made Nae Nae dance videos outside of our school. This is like when Instagram just started doing 15-second videos. I didn’t even have an Instagram, my friend made me get one and post a video of me dancing. I uploaded one and the first day I was on there, I got 2,000 followers. Back then, that was a lot. We were just having fun at school with my friends, doing the dance that was out, and it started blowing up. I kept uploading, and I kept blowing up to the point where people wanted to book us for shows to dance, and they wanted to book us for parties.

Then Dwight Howard really opened my eyes to what was possible. He literally redid my whole video in the warm up introductions before a game. I was like, Whoa, Dwight Howard knows who I am. He’s doing my moves. That gave me motivation. And then we linked up with Odell Beckham, who shows so much love. He’s in love with dancing just as much as us. He’s a big part of my success too. He opened up a lot of doors, introducing me to people and letting people know who I am.

When did you hang out with Odell for the first time?

He flew us out to New York during his rookie season. It was right after The Catch. We stayed at his crib for like two weeks. We was having so much fun, he didn’t even want us to leave. We made so many videos. We really clicked. He’s like a brother to me to this day.

Was your big break going on tour with Future?

Yeah, I was on the Summer Sixteen Tour with Drake and Future, and that’s when I met Drake. I was seeing him every day. Right before we’d go on stage, he’d dap us up and say what’s up.

That experience was life-changing. I was so young, like 18 or 19, traveling the world. I had to grow up really fast and adjust to the whole industry, moving city to city, being around all these celebrities, performing in front of so many people. That really prepared me for all of the stuff that’s come now. It put me in a professional mindset and made this into a career.

And you helped teach Future how to really dance, right?

Yeah, we gave him the sauce. He was like, “I just got to be moving, I need the sauce like y’all. Don’t teach me how to dance dance, just how to groove and be on beat and look good on stage.” He’s a big brother to me too. We’ve been with him since that tour. He took us under his wing.

Okay, so Future asked for the sauce. What’s your advice to quarantined folks with time to fill who also want the sauce?

You got no excuses, you can’t even leave the house, so now is when you gotta practice. You might as well go in the living room, mount your phone up, and get to grooving. Start doing the “Toosie Slide.” It’s a vibe. It’s a comfortable-ness and freedom. People overthink it and think it’s a step by step thing. It’s not. You just got to be organic.

In between the Summer Sixteen Tour and now, you’ve been busy with all sorts of gigs, right? Like, you did the dance animations for an NBA 2K game?

Yeah, me and SheLovesMeechie did the dance animations for players for 2K17, and some of those animations are still on 2K20. That was right after the tour. Imagine just getting off that tour, one of the biggest tours ever, then doing the animations for 2K. I still play 2K to this day. I’m building a MyPlayer and it’s really my moves; I’m dancing like myself.

I saw your real-life hoop game too, when you smacked a Tory Lanez jumper in a game of one-on-one.

[Laughs]. So we did 2K, and the following year, Future went on tour again and brought us along. It was Future, Migos, Tory Lanez, and A$AP Ferg. When you on tour, you’re seeing the same people every day for months. On an off-day, we was just hooping and that game happened. Tory was provoking me. He really tried to embarrass me in front of all those people. He brought the whole staff outside, calling me, saying, “Go get Toosie!” He tried to do me dirty and I wasn’t going to let that happen. You saw the end result. When Drake saw that, he hit me up like, “Bro, why’d you do Tory like that?” I was the best hooper from that tour. We got the receipts.

Moving forward to now: When did you find out your name was going to be on the new Drake song?

He went back and finished the song after we sent him the dance. Then he called me, and he was like “Yo, everybody is in love with the dance. Everybody’s been doing it. We’re all calling it the Toosie Slide right now. It’s sticking and we might just call the song that.” Later on, he let me know he was officially going to name the song “Toosie Slide.” I was in shock. I couldn’t even believe it.

I have to imagine that’s pretty high on your career accomplishments list.

Oh, that’s number one for sure.

Did Drake tell you to post the clip dancing to the hook to get people talking about it?

Exactly. We’re the leaders of the dance community and he knows that. He wanted to get everyone up to speed before the song dropped. He was like, “Toosie, go ahead and post the video on your page. I want to see what it does.” Once we saw it was moving really, really fast, he was like, “Yo, my phone is going crazy right now. We have to drop it this week.” That’s how that happened.

We waited a long time before putting that clip online, though. Drake is a genius—he doesn’t rush the process. He makes sure everything is perfect and right. Our original plan was holding on the dance, and we was going to shoot a big music video. Unfortunately, the crisis brought everything to a halt. We was hurt that the video couldn’t get done, but it also worked in our favor a little bit, because everyone is on the Internet right now and people are bored at home making TikToks and dance videos. So we were like, let’s drop it on some big quarantine vibes. The world is in a dark place and we should bring some happiness. Drake felt like this dance was going to help bring people back together. It was a brilliant idea, because that’s exactly what it’s doing, bringing happiness to everyone.

How does the Toosie Slide stack up to the Tootsie Roll? Which is going to be bigger when it’s all said and done?

Toosie Slide, for sure. You know that. It’s a whole different era now. In my opinion, this is the biggest dancing has ever been, even compared to the b-boy era and the Crank That era. There’s a whole app dedicated to dancing, and now we’ve got the biggest artist of this generation making a dance song dedicated to a dancer who’s been a part of the culture. This is going to be way bigger than the Tootsie Roll.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Originally Appeared on GQ