Sam Walsh
As I begin writing this, I’m trying to do something that I have dreaded since last Thursday night, re-listen to Drake’s Scorpion. In Kanye’s recent NY Times interview, he admitted “Drake’s the #1 rapper.” In the days since its release, Scorpion is already breaking streaming records. In passing, it seems like Drake is at the top of his game. He’s heard these stats in his last three releases. That praise of Drake stops however, when one sits down to listen to Scorpion. More accurately, that praise stops at approximately track seven or eight when you look at the track list and see that you have still have two-thirds of the album left. In fact, in the time it took to write this first paragraph, I already gave up on my 3rd attempt to relisten to the album.
So how do these two sides of Drake interact? How is he both incredibly popular and incredibly boring at the same time? While he deserves credit for training listeners’ ears to associate his music with something enjoyable, there are some specific ways that he keeps relevant. First and most obvious, Drake is backed by some of the most powerful people in the music industry. His OVO Sound label is distributed by Warner Bros. Music, he has a deal with Apple Music and he has a huge deal yet to be announced with Adidas. These are just the beginning of Drake’s partners. The important thing about these partnerships is that they all are have a lot riding on Drake being successful. These companies also have a lot of resources to promote Drake’s success.
The second way of keeping relevancy (possibly encouraged by the first) has to do with charts and streaming numbers. This is his album lengths. While many listeners were frustrated with Drake’s recent projects and their bloated runtimes, the song count may have still worked to his advantage. Views was 20 songs, More Life was 23 songs, and Scorpion tops the bunch at 25. I won’t go too into detail as to how Billboard counts streams for its album sales, but essentially, it has a set number of song streams that count as one full album sale. By Drake having more songs on his albums, he will get more album sales from less listens, and therefore top Billboard’s charts even easier. More mainstream artists are doing this, Migos’ Culture II was 24 songs, Lil Yachty’s Teenage Emotions was 21 songs, and Chris Brown pushed the idea to its maximum by releasing a 45-song album last year (shortly followed by a deluxe Christmas edition with over 55 songs).
While this formula may work for Billboard charts and other streaming algorithms, it takes a toll on listeners. It is a slog to get through all the albums mentioned above. Culture II and Scorpion are each the length of a feature film. Many music critics have confirmed the boredom these albums inflict, and the trend is watering down the importance of artists’ full albums. Popularity and listeners are now more driven to explore artists through playlists instead of albums. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but the trend leads audiences to care less about a long form statement like To Pimp a Butterfly, and instead listen to songs that try to encapsulate a mood or statement into one song, which is much harder to do. As a result, songs that look to achieve mainstream success are much more focused on attaining a vibe that projecting a message.
This comes back to Drake and Scorpion, which is full of vibes and void of substance. One of the frustrating things about Drake’s career path and this album is that he consistently squanders the opportunity for mainstream hip hop to be good. As Kanye and I agree, Drake is #1 right now, and his setting the tone for the rest of rap culture is agonizing.
Listening to Scorpion, the only thing Drake seems to be making any effort in is making as many people feel neutral about him as possible. The album is an exhausting meditation in trap beats and that one flow that Drake has. The R&B half isn’t much better, and where it is, the album becomes only more frustrating. In the early songs he hits his classic croons, but with some interesting vocal edits and beats that make the listener hope for an electronic R&B Drake album. That flickering hope is soon ripped from listeners when the trap beats come back, and his commitment to a “R&B” side wavers. While Emotionless (on the first disc) is one of the better songs, it also gives a great one-word thesis for the entire album.
Scorpion and Drake’s recent work make me deeply question how anybody can call Drake their favorite artist. Drake is the poster-boy of ingenuine, everything he does feels like a PR move. His inauthenticity is apparent more than ever post-Pusha T. There is no desire to improve on his part, as he’s settled on cruise control for two or three years now. After acting tough on Duppy Freestyle, he ran away from a Pusha T diss (one reminiscent of the old-school rap beef Drake desires so hard to reignite and crown himself king of). He waited until after the Pusha T drama cooled down, and started rapping tough again on Scorpion, something that seems undeserved now more than ever. He doesn’t handle Pusha’s revelation of his child particularly well either, mostly trying to defend himself and dropping mostly reactionary bars to the whole situation. Drake once again feels ingenuine, which reflects poorly on a genre that is full of lyrical honesty.
This album made me angry, but that is an unproductive mindset. Instead, I’ve found myself wondering, how can Drake make a good album? What needs to happen? He seems to be quite comfortable in his own success, and not particularly interested in pushing any musical boundaries. The first clear change is that his albums need to be shorter. As I mentioned before, it seems that his lengthening of his track lists is to top Billboard charts.
An interesting paradox to this plan is Kanye’s recent album rollout strategy, projects with only seven songs. While I would argue that these albums are often too short, and put each song under more immense pressure, Drake wouldn’t have to do something quite so extreme. The upside of albums like Kanye’s is, because they are so short, audiences are more interested in running the whole album back as soon as they are done with it. While Ye had its shortcomings, the album still topped the Billboard album chart upon release and had all 7 of its songs in Billboard’s top 40. His projects since have not had quite the same success, but they aren’t by Kanye West. With more seven song albums on the way, including potentially one from Chance the Rapper, the short album trend may catch on.
Secondly, it’s time for Drake to find a new slant. His rapping about success is becoming more played out each record, and while his crooning is more interesting than his rapping, the style does not have the same novelty it once did. After hearing the beginning of Side B, it really made me hope that he tries a new style of instrumentals under his raps or singing. Nice for What was full of aggressively cut samples and guest vocals, and Pain had interesting chopped up vocals from his as well. If Drake did a 10-song album with a producer like Kaytranada, new life could be brought back to his albums. After a repetitive album in Ye, Kanye’s Kid Cudi-assisted, rock-inspired Kids See Ghosts was an energizing new direction. While rock music is probably a bit out of Drake’s range, Kids See Ghosts is a good precedent for what he can do.
The last potential move of his is to be honest. I chose this last because it transitions well into why he never is going to make a good album. Drake has no intention of being vulnerable anymore. Sure, he feigns it on Side B tracks, but it’s nothing he hasn’t been said before. Even when he gets to lyrics about his complicated relationship with his son, they almost feel like an epilogue to an album full of rapping about his success and vaguely misogynistic lines about “relationships” with Instagram models. He has potential to do so, he’s a human being with feelings. Like Jay Z took advantage of with 4:44, his celebrity and relationships are publicized to the point that he doesn’t have to give any background on them in his lyrics. But we’re not getting a 4:44 type album from Drake anytime soon. There’s no reason for him to do so. This shows the overt lack of political commentary in any of his music. He didn’t even commit to the statement he was making in the blackface photos. Drake has enough industry backing to never have to “try” again. He could retire before 35 (his self-imposed career expiration date) and be set for life. Hell, he’s an actor already.
So as much as I hope that the quality of Drake’s music will someday match his success, it probably won’t. As hip hop begins to reach a more mainstream audience, we have to accept that much of that mainstream appeal will be from a drop in quality. That’s not a universal statement, Chance’s Coloring Book and Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy were good examples of reaching mainstream success while keeping integrity in both artistry and personality. But as rap grows, Billboard charts will recognize the Drake’s and Post Malone’s more than the Pusha T’s and Tyler, the Creator’s. That’s okay, but just remember to think about what you’re listening to. Try something new and weird every few weeks, try a new genre, get bored with artists who aren’t changing anything. Or just listen to Drake, he’ll top the charts anyway.
