A New Jersey school district has placed a principal on administrative leave while it investigates the production of a rap video about drugs and gambling that was made at his high school.
Rap star and Paterson native Fetty Wap, who dropped out of Eastside High School, returned there to shoot the video for his latest single "Wake Up," which was released last Friday.
The song is a stoner's anthem with lyrics like, "I ain't really trippin' over school / Let's get Wiz Khalifa high and / Get meditated, over medicated."
The Paterson school district said it's placed the Eastside High School principal of operations, Zatiti Moody, on administrative leave with pay as it investigates how the video was allowed to be shot there.
"As there are procedures that must be followed in securing the use of our facilities, whether all procedures were followed is in question and being investigated – and will be addressed as a personnel matter," Terry Corallo, the district's spokeswoman, wrote in an email to NBC 4 New York.
"The district does not endorse the content of this video," Corallo added,
It's not clear when the video was shot, but Corallo said it happened during non-instructional hours.
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The video shows Fetty Wap, whose real name is Willie Maxwell, rapping near trophy cases and lockers inside the halls of the school, at times with young people whizzing by on skateboards.
It also features images of people drinking out of "40 Wap" malt liquor bottles, smoking out of makeshift apple bongs, and a stripper dancing on a pole in the classroom.
One scene shows a young boy posing as a teacher sitting at the front of the classroom with the chalkboard behind him reading things like "Let's Get Wiz Khalifa High" and "Team Kush" — a reference to a strain of marijuana.
Corallo said no students participated in the taping of the video.
The 24-year-old rapper said in a statement released by his publicist, "I went back to my old high school because I love my city. I wanted to show the students of Paterson that someone who walked those same hallways they walk everyday and sat in the same classrooms shown in the video has become successful. If I can do it, they can do it, too."
When the song was released on April 20, Fetty Wap posted an open letter on his Instagram account to go alongside it, aimed particularly at disaffected students.
In it, he writes, "I can't lie, school was never really important to me. I hated when that alarm clock went off, my moms coming in my room to wake me up. I wanted to do things my own way and school was in the way."
Fetty Wap gained mainstream recognition with his single "Trap Queen" in 2014.
