It's About Drive, It's About Power / The Rock's Rap Verse "Face Off"

About

It's About Drive, It's About Power or The Rock's Rap Verse In "Face Off" refers to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's rap verse in the 2021 Tech N9ne song "Face Off," notable for being The Rock's rap debut. The Rock's verse became the subject of memes and discussion in October 2021 about the absurdity of the actor rapping, since The Rock is not a career rapper. The verse received mixed reviews, as well as ironic praise in memes. It also became popularized on TikTok in lip-dub skits.

Origin

On October 8th, 2021, rapper Tech N9ne released his album ASIN9NE along with a music video on YouTube^[1] for the song "Face Off," featuring performances by King Iso, Joey Cool and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (shown below). The Rock is an actor and former wrestler and has never released or appeared in a rap song before this. The aggressively rapped lyrics^[2] focus on power and strength, with The Rock mentioning his Samoan roots at one point and referencing one of his catchphrases "boots to asses."

It's about drive, it's about power, we stay hungry, we devour
Put in the work, put in the hours and take what's ours
Black and Samoan in my veins, my culture bangin' with Strange
I change the game so what's my motherfuckin' name? (Rock)
What they gonna get though?
Desecration, defamation, if you wanna bring it to the masses
Face to face now we escalatin' when I have to put boots to asses
Mean on ya like a dream when I'm rumblin'
You're gonna scream, "Mama"
So bring drama to the king Brahma (Then what?)
Comin' at ya' with extreme mana (Ahoo, ahoo, ahoo)

Spread

The Rock's rap verse inspired contentious reactions from listeners, as well as ironic memes focused on the absurdity of The Rock rapping. On October 8th, 2021, the song's release date, music YouTuber^[8] ImDontai reacted to the verse in a video gaining over 1.1 million views in a week (shown below).

On October 9th, Twitter^[5] user @oscos posted "why tf is the rock rapping brah" along with the clip, gaining over 195,000 likes, 8.4 million views and 23,000 retweets in a week. On October 11th, Twitter^[6] user @beebinton tweeted "the rock rapping is literal proof we living in a simulation," gaining over 4,000 likes in a comparable span of time (shown below).

In the days after the song was released, it started to become popularized on TikTok, particularly the portion of the song featuring The Rock's verse. It is most commonly used in TikToks joking about how the song gets listeners hyped with its lyrics about drive and power and the fact that it's The Rock rapping it. For example, on October 14th, TikToker^[3] @thechristianlara posted a skit about getting up and turning your life around using the song, gaining over 3.8 million views in four days (shown below).

On October 16th, TikToker^[4] @zamasu______ posted a video of someone running at ridiculous speeds on a treadmill captioned "Me after hearing Dwayne rap," gaining over 15 million views in two days (shown below, left). On October 17th, TikToker^[7] @fakemichael posted a video about letting his beast mode activate to the song, gaining over 6.8 million views in a day (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References