Lena The Plug removed her wedding ring after hugging Drake during his Kick livestream Saturday night, and the clip has been running laps around the internet ever since.
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It happened during the strangest segment of an already strange broadcast. Drake spent about three hours on Kick marking the ninth anniversary of Stake, the crypto casino that has sponsored his streams for years, giving away more than $1 million in cash and prizes. Somewhere in there it stopped being a gambling stream and turned into a variety show, complete with a “20 v 1” dating contest hosted by Nelk founder Kyle Forgeard. Twenty women, one Drake, and a set of increasingly ridiculous bits.Lena made the final three alongside influencer Jordyn Lucas and goth streamer Pinkchyu. The ring came off after her hug. Drake gave her $25,000 and an all expenses paid trip, reportedly to New Zealand.
Then he picked somebody else.
Pinkchyu got the “wife” designation, which Drake handed out after she asked whether he was into “silly” roleplay and then told him to bark. He barked. He also offered to buy her mother a house. Lucas got placed in the best friend category with $25,000 and a Birkin. So Lena took off the ring, made the top three, and finished as a runner up to a woman who made Drake do a dog impression on camera. That is the actual comedy of the clip and it is getting lost in the way people are framing it.
Because the framing is where this is going sideways. A lot of the reposts are running it as Lena giving Drake a hall pass or throwing her marriage away, and that is not what anybody actually said. What is on tape is a ring coming off after a hug during a bit. Nobody in the segment used the words hall pass. Lena has not commented. Drake has not commented on it either.
It is also worth remembering who these people are before anyone starts writing eulogies for a marriage. Lena and Adam22 have been publicly, loudly in an open marriage for years. They have built entire content careers around discussing it. So a flirty exchange on a livestream is not the scandal the repost captions are selling. Adam22 has said nothing publicly since the stream, and given his track record of commenting on everything, the silence is more likely disinterest than devastation.
The bigger picture is that Drake keeps doing this on purpose. He has spent the last stretch of his career embedding himself in streamer culture rather than traditional media, and it keeps working. This one broadcast produced a dozen viral clips in a night. He also used it to send shots at Jay-Z and Roc Nation and to warn other rappers that “the pen isn’t dry,” which means the same three hours generated both a beef story and a dating show story. Nobody is better at making sure there is always something to clip.
Whether the ring means anything is a question only two people can answer, and neither of them is talking.
