I was all set to
write about Tropics' lovely little elctro-soul album Rapture this week, but you know what they say - it never rains but
it Drizzles, and Drizzy-Drake went and Beyoncéd us (which is a verb, right?)
with a new album late Thursday night. This means I spent the weekend unpacking
the mixtape If You're Reading This It's
Too Late and for a rap fan, few things hold so much promise of fun.
One of the most
interesting things to me about Drake is his near Bob Dylan-like penchant for
fueling his own back story. Since he first came on the scene he's painted
himself as someone struggling up through the ranks to get where he is now, or
"started from the bottom, now we here." But that always struck me as
a little cloying. Not to discount his very real rise to the upper echelons of
both rap and pop music, but his version of "the bottom" is several
rungs up from the bottom guys like ScHoolboy Q or Chief Keef actually came
from.
Drake keeps up
this trend on If You're Reading… and
really ups the place-making of his city. Drake raps about Toronto like it's MacDre's Bay area, Wu-Tang's New York or Common's Chicago (let's face it – Common
was always much more a Chicago rapper than Kanye ever was), even if it's not
like those places at all. You'll hear references to "the 6" (short
for 416 and 647 – Toronto's area codes) all over the album, and he's really in
the headspace of his home town and the scene he claims (correctly) to rule
over.
Drake's headspace
is an interesting place, and since his second album he wasn't the guy you
played in the club – he was the guy you played on the way home in the early
morning hours, bleary-eyed and wondering if you should've broken away from your
friends to talk to that girl giving you eyes across the room, and even worse,
what happens now that you did? Part of what makes him so fascinating is the way
he thinks about the things most other rappers drone on and on about – luxury
items and women. Drake raps about these things too, but it's always in a
conflicted way. "I'm turnin' into a nigga that thinks about money and
women/Like 24/7, that's where my life took me" he raps on "Know
Yourself" like he's not sure how he got to this point in his life. There's
a weariness to his writing that seems unimaginable to almost any other 28 year
old.
He's in this vein
for the first quarter of the album, taking shots at his "enemies" (my
favorite is "I got rap niggas that I gotta act like I like/But my actin’
days are over, fuck them niggas for life"), talking about his
"woes" like they're something any average person can relate to
(they're not), and wondering what the point is of all the money and women when
he still feels isolated. That really is one of my favorite things about Drake –
his approach to his topics is so damn human, so amusingly befuddled and even at
times annoyed that it's hard not to relate to him, even when he has more money
and success than you'll ever have. Who wouldn't be confused by such monumental
success at such an early age, particularly when everyone wants something from
you?
This inability to
trust invariably bleeds into his other main concern – the women in his life.
From fear that his calls are being recorded to women who only seem to want to
talk about him on their Facebook timelines (after getting asking him for his
wifi password, no less) it's clear he is very much still on the hunt for the
right person.
This pursuit
leads to some of the best songs on the tape – take "Now and Forever,"
the clearest successor to 2013's "Hold On, I'm Coming Home." The song
is about how now that Drake is home, he feels trapped, too afraid that he's
going to miss something – his chance to do something great – to stay for long.
While he has to go for now, he promises his woman he'll be back to "bring
it home to you."
"Jungle"
is a baby-making beauty, tinged with regret and self-doubt that ranks as the
second-most honest song on the tape.
Drake is at his
most open on "You & The 6," a heartfelt, one-sided conversation
with his mother, where he asks her to let him make his own mistakes with the
women in his life while simultaneously crediting her guidance in helping him
keep his head on his shoulders. He raps "I know you wanna arrange it, you
told me she's free Thursday/And I'm sure that she's a angel but she don't want
this life/The timing ain't right/Maybe one day but even one day with us is a
time of a life," and anyone with a Jewish mother can immediately recognize
the well-meaning meddling that we sometimes have to deal with. It's just the
right amount of loving, bitter and forgiving, and could well be one of the most
honest songs Drake has ever recorded.
While mixtapes are
normally the area for up-and-coming voices in hip-hop to prove themselves, when
a star of Drake's magnitude drops one, they are usually throwaways – demos,
unfinished tracks or snippets of ideas still being developed (like Lil Wayne's
Sorry 4 the Wait tapes). This is Drake, however, and If You're Reading This certainly doesn't fit that description –
it's as meticulously put together as anything he's done, features some wildly
interesting interludes (I'm a sucker for "Wednesday Night Interlude"
which features OVO's PARTYNEXTDOOR warbling over an insanely pretty beat) and just
sounds fucking amazing.
As usual, all
credit goes to Drake's sonic designer and musical soulmate Noah “40” Shebib.
This guy is just something else, and his work with Drake somehow seems to
getting deeper and colder with every release. Check out the icy beat he lays
down on "10 Bands" – it sounds like he cribbed it from an Ice Temple
from The Legend of Zelda or something. The cymbal taps on "Madonna"
sound so amazingly crisp that you'd think the drum machine is right next you –
it's that clear.
The word on the
internet seems to be that If You're
Reading This was released as a mixtape to fulfill contractual obligations
with Cash Money Records and get Drake out of his contract with the label, and that
theoretically means we could be seeing another "official album" from
him before the year is out. In the end, perhaps the best show of Drake's status
is that he can take something seemingly thrown off and make it sound this
great. He's getting better all the time (no small feat when you consider how
great he was to begin with), and I can wait to hear what he cooks up next.
If You're Reading This It's Too Late is out on Cash Money.
No comments:
Post a Comment