Tag: drake (page 1 of 1)

Illustration of a melting snowman tipped sideways out of an upside-down ice cream cone. The snowman has a mustache and a deadpan expression. A Santa hat sits knocked off to the side. Drawn in loose black line art on a white background.

May 29, 2026 / 0 Comments

Make Them Care

I tried. I really did. It’s been two weeks since Drake’s ICEMAN came out, and after giving the album a few fair listens, I can acknowledge the bops and his skill as a rhyme slinger when he’s properly motivated. And while there are many things he’s trying to make the audience do on his most important release since the early part of his career, the one thing he couldn’t do is make me care. He acknowledges early on in “Make Them Cry,” the introductory track, that he should be maturing. He says “40” is pressing him to dig deeper, but over the next seventeen songs, he doesn’t do that. Instead, before he even gets to the end of this opening salvo, he reverts to his toxic masculinity and tendency towards ruminating over transactional relationships.

In the last six months, I’ve been buoyed by fresh music from De La Soul, Nas, and Conway the Machine that showcase points of view that have matured with age. Each artist acknowledges how life has affected them while still delivering the boom-bap in their own unique ways. In between spins of ICEMAN, I’ve found Conway’s You Can’t Kill God With Bullets to be a palate cleanser. The East Coast rapper whose face doesn’t move tells an incredible story of loss and grief that runs in parallel with his success in hip hop and business, all while elevating his lyricism and delivering the motivational hustler anthems he and his upstate New York compatriots are known for.

De La Soul’s Cabin in the Sky is primarily a beautiful eulogy for Dave “Trugoy the Dove” Jalicoeur, a seminal member of the trio who passed away in 2023. This is the group’s first release since his untimely death, and it never sways far from reckoning with his absence, celebrating his life, and honoring his spirit with what is ultimately an uplifting collection that fits right in with their long discography filled with records that have reflected where they have been at each stage of their life.

Nas’s collaboration with DJ Premier, Light-Years, has remained in rotation since its release, particularly his collaboration with AZ, “My Story, Your Story.” What I have appreciated about Nas’s most recent bodies of work is that you can feel his status as an elder statesman without him having to depart from the style of rapping with which he came onto the scene over 30 years ago. You don’t have to change what makes you you to show growth. Just don’t hide who you are, and we will connect with it on wax.

At some point in a long musical career, you should want to trade disposable hits for substance, especially after your crown has been tarnished and your character has been questioned but that seems beyond Drake.

Losing the 2024 beef with Kendrick Lamar gives him an opportunity ripe for showcasing emotional work, and I give him credit for acknowledging his defeat, but what he goes for on this album isn’t reflection or even resurrection but revenge. “Make Them Pay” is the strongest song on the album, with rhyme schemes and flows that are effective flips and rebuttals of those two-year-old bars from Lamar. None of those directed at Dot land more than a glancing blow, but those aimed at people to whom he has real relationships and affection sting. There’s genuine sentiment behind the clever barbs for Lebron James, J. Cole, and DJ Khaled. Ultimately, though, there’s little meat on the bone. He comes across as an internet reply guy, self-satisfied with finding the perfect meme or attempting to ratio the Original Poster over interrogating his own role in the situation.

Maybe the problem, though, is that Drake is more of a character to be portrayed than who Aubrey Graham is as a person. We don’t know that guy. We only get to know “the boy,” a nearly 40-year-old man-child who can’t believe that these transactional relationships he’s been in may be emotionless arrangements for the other parties as well, be they women he’s dated, collaborators, or famous friends. Is the real man, Aubrey, the kind of person who thinks shouting out Adin Ross and Samuel Bankman-Fried in 2026 is a flex? That’s the kind of person whose album cover gets adopted by Trump’s White House for feeling MAGA-coded. For every time I get amused by a punchline or the way something is delivered, there’s another where I just shake my head at the incredulity. Being a memelord at this big age is not the move.

We almost get to something approaching self-reflection on “Firm Friends,” ICEMAN’s penultimate track. Over a stripped-down Conductor Williams production dominated by slow-tempo piano strikes, Drake’s rhymes glide over the song, earning the popular compliment of modern hip-hop fans, “He’s talking, bro!” And he is. He talks directly to individuals, institutions, and, perhaps, even himself as he explains where his head is at right now and how he plans to operate in the future. At one point, he threatens to turn “The Boy” into “The Man,” but worries that people won’t understand.

And that’s where he loses me again. If you’re truly the greatest rapper alive as you continuously claim, that’s what you’re supposed to make us do.

Understand.

May 5, 2024 / 0 Comments

Kendrick Lamar’s West Side Rallying Cry

On my 20th spin of Not Like Us, I figured out why Kendrick Lamar‘s latest is so electrifying. The last time LA hip hop was up was Nipsey Hussle’s Victory Lap at the GRAMMYs in February of 2019. His death a couple of months later, followed by Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and several others less than a year later, turned the city and the music melancholy and insular. The pandemic would soon follow, and the LA sound has rarely found a reason to celebrate since then. You don’t take the lap when the victories are rare, fleeting, or pyrrhic.

The energy is different today. As I walked around my neighborhood with that Mustard beat blasting on repeat and Kung Fu Kenny going dumb with his South LA accent turned all the way on, I had this vision of people opening up their windows, poking their heads out, smiling, putting on their house shoes, and coming out to step to this. It’s not merely a diss record. Not Like Us is a West Coast rallying call.

The song is the fourth diss track that Lamar has released this week in his ongoing battle with Drake, though the consensus is that he won. Not Like Us includes strong bars covering the scandalous accusations many people glom onto. However, it is overwhelmingly an indictment of Drake as a culture vulture. Besides the rapping, which you always expect to get from Kendrick, the structure and vibe of the record are about showcasing what’s possible when you are of a place, people, and culture.

Not Like Us seems destined to be a national hit but it sits perfectly in a mix with Kalan.FrFr, Blxst, 03 Greedo, JasonMartin, Lil Vada, and BlueBucksClan. There’s a California timelessness to it as well. Check out these mashups with Hit ‘Em Up and No Vaseline (shout out to DJ Fred Litt).

It even reminds me of We’re All in the Same Gang.

We back outside!

Before Not Like Us came out, I saw parallels between Lamar’s strident stand for morality and authenticity and his strong beliefs about racial identity, manhood, and parenthood with those of August Wilson. I’d been reading Patti Hartigan’s biography—August Wilson: A Life—while this back-and-forth between the two rappers has been going on.

Wilson had his diss battle of sorts in the 1990s. The playwright gave an influential and controversial speech called “The Ground on Which I Stand” in 1996, hitting some third rails in the theatre community and the country. Robert Brustein, a theater critic who was rarely a fan of Wilson’s, took the opportunity to challenge his positions.

They went at each other in the press, on TV, and in speaking engagements until culminating in the equivalent of a rap battle called The Big Event. Wilson’s battle with Brustein was fairer than Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake. The playwright and critic were both about something. They cared passionately about their craft while coming from two very opposed points of view. They were both well-read, adept with words, and had real animus.

In 2024, Drake doesn’t measure up, so he lost before it began.

August Wilson, who was biracial and fair-skinned, always identified as a black man. His white father was absent and abusive, and thus, perhaps it is no surprise that much of his work centers around what it means to be Black, a man, and a father in America throughout the 20th century.

Wilson never understood hip-hop. The blues was the music that moved him. He’d have found a kindred spirit in Kendrick Lamar, though.

While a conversation between the two is not in the cards, I’ll twist my fingers into Ws and dance it out to these K.Dot hits while interrogating the lyrics like I might a signature speech in one of the plays in Wilson’s cycle.

December 15, 2018 / 0 Comments

2018 in Music

“Miss me with that bullshit. You ain’t really wild, you a tourist. I be blackin’ out with the purest.”

— Kendrick Lamar

Unapologetically black. That’s how I liked my music this year. Not just black, per se, (though that was where my head was tbh) but unapologetically whatever it was trying to be. That could be unapologetically pop. Unapologetically fun. Unapologetically woke. Whatever. Just make me feel like it’s real, that I’m real, that who I am and what I am is not only okay but brilliant.

King’s Dead did that for me from its very first notes. Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, James Blake, and Future with my favorite of all the songs on the epic Black Panther Album (Music from and Inspired by the Movie) is ultimately a villain’s anthem but one that reeks of authenticity. It sounds like California. Black California from the bay to the South of LA. When Jay Rock says, “My name gon’ hold up. My team gon’ hold up,” I feel that shit.

My last.fm charts will say that All the Starz from the same album is my top track, but it’s treating King’s Dead from the Black Panther album and Jay Rock’s Redemption as two separate tracks. Combined, it’s close to 100 spins.

The 2018 Mixtape

My methodology this year for figuring out my faves was to look at each month separately rather than focus on my listens in aggregate though those numbers were a secondary factor. My mixtape reflects my favorite song of each month from January through November as well as my favorite discovery.

I like this approach better because it acknowledges the rhythms of time more than the inertia of routine and the impact of the Spotify algorithms on my listening behavior. So instead of seeing a playlist dominated by a few albums and artists, you’ll hear some tracks that I forgot I loved right next to the records that I played the hell out of for a few weeks at a time. There’s a little symmetry here as well with a song featuring Sza—artist of my favorite track of 2017—and ends with a song by Janet Jackson who I have admired since I was knee-high and who just got nominated for the Rock & Roll hall of fame. She’s still got it.

The Albums

I haven’t looked at many of the end-of-year lists yet, so I don’t know what the consensus is around the top releases though I’m guessing some of my faves like Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer and Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy are on them. I know they are both GRAMMY nominated for Album of the Year. They weren’t my very top albums this year despite trying hard to convince myself otherwise.

Black Panther—both the compilation mentioned above and the Ludwig Göransson score—set the tone for everything I would listen to for the rest of the year. It primed me for Jay Rock’s full length, an artist I wasn’t checking for before King’s Dead and his instant anthem WIN which was the theme for the LA Sparks season well before it was played at nearly every sporting event the rest of the year. The score re-ignited my interest in film compositions which led to an April filled with the soundtracks to Arrival and Annihilation and Westworld and many a Black Mirror episode. Combined, Kendrick Lamar’s curated playlist for the best black popcorn movie ever released and that score was the best thing going all year. Full stop.

Beyond that, I enjoyed grown folks hip hop from Beyoncé and her husband and Phonte. I liked expansive sounds from The Midnight Hour and Abstract Orchestra, clever reworks from Kelela, and a pretty perfect pop album from Ariana Grande who is, perhaps, an even more interesting artist than she is a celebrity. She, too, is figuring out how to be unapologetically herself with each release.

My Fave Albums of 2018

Black Panther Album & Black Panther Soundtrack
Redemption – Jay Rock
Dirty Computer – Janelle Monae
Everything is Love – The Carters
Invasion of Privacy – Cardi B
No News is Good News – Phonte
The Midnight Hour – The Midnight Hour
Sweetener – Ariana Grande
TAKE ME A_PART, THE REMIXES – Kelela
Dilla – Abstract Orchestra

Other Notes

Shout-out to Drake for great singles and better videos. Jordan Rakei, Nightmares on Wax, and Little Dragon for great live shows. Rapsody, Gifted Gab, Noname and Princess Nokia for providing excellent counter-programming to the overwhelming masculinity and aggression still dominating popular hip-hop. And Aretha Franklin and Mac Miller for having existed.

Thank u, next.

The Raw Data

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April 22, 2018 / 0 Comments

Nice for What

“That’s a real one in your reflection.”

— Drake

Meditation: Healing Love, 12 minutes

I watched the college gymnastics national championship this morning. UCLA won in a thriller that required Christine “Peng Peng” Lee to put up two back-to-back perfect tens in the uneven bars and the balance beam. In the post-match interview, coach Valerie Kondos Field was asked about the quote she used to inspire her team that morning. It’s a remix of a King James Bible verse:

“Be anxious for nothing and grateful for all things.”

I’m not a religious person but that resonated. I struggle some Sundays to figure out what to write. This ritual is an exercise in gratitude, and the reality is I’m often most grateful for the mundane. I woke up this morning. I live in a place where the sun is shining. I want for very little. My body works. I enjoy the work I do and the people I do it with. I appreciate my friends and family (even if I don’t tell them enough). My life is more comfortable than most.

So what, each week, am I uniquely grateful for? Maybe it’s a song like “Nice for What” which reminds us that this is a short life; to do and be you; and that those you let in should care for you.

Maybe it’s that the book you most wanted to read—Sing, Unburied, Sing—was in the new release section of the library when you arrived after months of being unavailable.

Maybe I’m grateful for the adjustments to my morning routine that kept me clear of mind, on task, thoughtful, and disciplined most days.

Maybe it’s NBA playoff basketball which has been excellent.

Maybe it was feeling particularly good at my job this week.

Maybe it was for the opportunities presented to be kind to strangers and that I took them.

Maybe it was the Friday of self-care: a long lunch at one of my favorite places and an after-work massage that found and removed the tension in my muscles, my shoulders, and feet that I’m rarely aware of until they are gone.

Maybe, though, it’s all things. Even the hard things that require more of me. Especially, perhaps, those things that demand courage and voice with outcomes uncertain.

Be anxious for nothing and grateful for all things.

Okay.