Former US President Barack Obama stole a page from comedic history for his surprise appearance at the first of a five-game exhibition on Wednesday ahead of the squad’s Paris Olympics send-off. The 44th commander-in-chief sat front row at T-Mobile Arena to catch some of the best hoopers of the country, including LeBron James, Steph Curry and others, battle it out against Canada.
Team USA’s ultimate slow victory over Canada wasn’t the only glorious feat that went viral. Before the players set the court on fire, Obama unintentionally imitated comedic art in real life while greeting the players and coaches for what’s to come at the 2024 Summer Olympics.
That’s not all. Kendrick Lamar’s super-viral triumph over Drake following their war of words—seemingly culminating with the Pulitzer-award-winning artist’s diss track, “Not Like Us”—also somehow made it to the arena.
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Barack Obama’s fortuitous re-creation of the iconic Key & Peele sketch
The former president perfectly stuck the landing with his inadvertent plan from the old Key and Peele playbook.
Visuals, now gone viral on social media, show Obama gradually walking up the line, dapping up all the players, and enthusiastically giving them hugs. However, the scene swiftly takes a U-turn when he reaches the Caucasian members of the team and coaching staff, as he sticks to straightforward handshakes with them.
X/Twitter lit up in flames of hilarity fire as fans continued sharing the video forward, pointing out its uncanny resemblance with a nearly decade-old sketch from Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele’s Comedy Central series parodying pop culture, race dynamics, ethnic stereotypes and more.
The hilarious “Obama Meet & Greet” sketch visualises Peele as the former president who, as the title suggests, meets with a group of onlookers after his presidential speech. However, not everyone receives the same enthusiastic treatment.
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Hilariously enough, Obama himself has been in on the jokes in the past as Key once debuted as his classic character, Luther – the then-president’s “anger translator.”
Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” plays out Team USA’s victory over Canada in 1st Paris Olympics exhibition
In addition to Obama’s appearance receiving a roaring response on social media, the USA vs Canada exhibition game also found its share of love from the hip-hop fandom as Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” sounded the alarm for Team USA’s 86-72 victory over Canada.
The layered euphemism goes deep, especially since two months ago, Lamar rounded out his months-long diss track wars with Drake, a Canadian rapper, with this very song.
Rubbing salt in his hip-hop rival’s wounds, Lamar took shots at Drizzy by releasing a 6-minute video, rife with allusions dragging the Toronto rapper’s name, days ago. Lamar had no plans of going easy on and previously even achieved checkmate at his one-off “Pop Out: Ken & Friends” concert at the Kia Forum in California in June.