Eccentric billionaire, nerd, and all-round cool dude Bill Gates has given hip-hop fans what they have all been clamouring for; public acknowledgement of his name drop in Beyonce‘s latest smash hit, Formation.
In an interview with Wired, the Microsoft genius voiced his surprise that the Queen B had taken it upon herself to include a name drop in the polarising new single, where she declares “I just might be a black Bill Gates in the making, cause I slay.”
“I hadn’t realized that she did that until somebody in the office actually sent me a copy of the lyrics and I said, ‘Are you serious? This is kind of a strange set of words here,” Gates noted, clearly showing that he is not too familiar with the fact that his name is thrown around as a euphemism for extraordinary wealth within hip-hop.
“I guess it’s nice that people consider me successful,” Bill continued. “I actually haven’t met Beyonce. I know Jay Z, because when I did some humour right when I was retiring from Microsoft—he was nice about participating in that, and did a great job on that. I guess I should do a Bing search and see if there are more uses of my name that I don’t know about.”
I’m not sure what’s worse. The fact that Bill Gates has not yet had the pleasure of meeting Beyonce, or that he just used the phrase “I should do a Bing search.”
C’mon Bill, you’re not fooling anyone.
While Formation clearly has Bill Gates perplexed, the song has been met with protest and a polarising response as to the political and racial messages behind the track. Even resident hip-hop hero Killer Mike made his thoughts on the track public.
Image courtesy of Forbes.