I Want What They Have: Lily-Rose Depp and 070 Shake

Love is a many-splendored thing, especially when you’re gawking at it from the outside. In this column, we’ll be examining the celebrity couples that give us hope for our own romantic futures and trying to learn what we can from their well-documented bonds.

While I’m not typically one to romanticize the lives of Hollywood starlets—sure, it might seem fun to be a celebrity nepo baby, but I’m guessing there’s a whole lot of social anxiety and Ozempic pressure—I couldn’t help being charmed when I read a recent Us! Weekly headline about actress and model Lily-Rose Depp’s relationship with 25-year-old rapper 070 Shake.

I’m a huge fan of glamour girls dating rappers (just think of the joy that the newly wed Chrishell and G Flip have brought us!) and an even bigger fan of overtly queer PDA—which Depp displayed via Instagram Stories last week, after rumors about her relationship with 070 Shake (real name Danielle Balbuena) started circling during Paris Fashion Week in February.

“4 MONTHS WITH MY CRUSH,” Depp wrote, which absolutely fills me with joy, because…who celebrates a four-month anniversary? Queer women in their early 20s, that’s who! I didn’t come out until I was 24 or maybe 25, depending on your definition of “coming out,” but when I did, I delighted in what writer Amanda Richards called “second adolescence” in a 2019 InStyle article. “The idea,” as she put it, “is that we don’t get to live our actual teen years as our true selves, so when the time comes to be out and proud, we approach our relationships like teenagers.” Newsflash to all the other once-closeted queers out there who didn’t get to openly lust after the prom queen in high school: Approaching your relationship like a teenager is fun! It’s fun to hit the four-month mark and memorialize it on Instagram! It’s fun to refer to your partner as your “crush”! It’s fun to make out publicly like nobody is watching, even when the whole world is!

I don’t want to project my own experience onto Depp too much; yes, she previously dated Timothée Chalamet, but she has shied away from putting too fine a point on who she’s attracted to in the past, telling Nylon in 2016: “It’s not anybody’s business, because I am going to date whoever I’m going to date. …Kids don’t need to label their sexualities.” I’m all for this (not that this internationally famous 23-year-old really cares what an Elder Lesbian™ with a thrown-out back and a 9 p.m. bedtime thinks of her identity), and I’m also all for Depp and 070 Shake simply having fun together, because that’s exactly what love in your early 20s should be, whether it’s queer, straight, or some secret third thing I haven’t thought of yet.