I developed a relationship with Drake in early 2017. It was a mild February, if I recall. Drake was everywhere in those days. I had been familiar with him since "Find Your Love" (2010), when he started to blow up every Summer with songs like "I'm on One" (2011) and "The Motto" (2012). Drake started a run of consecutive no.1 US albums nearly a decade ago with Thank Me Later, never to come back empty handed without a no.1 album for longer than 3 years. In the spaces between albums, he owned with preleased singles/collaborations, like with Rhianna's "What's My Name?"(2015) and "Work" (2016). Most recently, his album Scorpion (2018) dominated the charts worldwide. Drake rightfully put the flex on them:

"It's a rollie not a stop-watch shit don't ever stop."

Here's the thing though. Drake is kind of trash --insofar as he isn't a musical artist. An artist makes art. Drake sells an image; he is a salesman offering a brand sprinkled with absolute bangers. In other words, Drake is a brilliant commercializer. (As a rule of thumb: whatever is popular is alwayscommercial now).

"But wait— you said you were into Drake! You quoted his sh*t and everything!"

Well, I do mean what I said. I genuinely enjoy Drake's music. I'm blessed to have Drake's lyrics and melodies flow into my mind, sometimes when I'm drunk. But point me --honestly point me-- to anything Drake's done lyrically that isn't about Drake being some huge come-up baller or him being sad over his sex life.

I'm not saying that those themes are bad--that persona resonates really well and songs like "Weston Road Flows" and "Marvin's Room" do a great job communicating that. But what Drake's been doing in his collected works isn't about speaking or having a relationship with us, the listener. He's been successfully able to, first: build a relatable identity or persona and second: create a musical style characteristic of his brand. We're trying to have a relationship with Drake, but Drake is out there just trying to build a relationship with himself. And he's got us along for the ride.

Kanye West, another commercializer who's unique in his capability of producing art, has famously put celebrity's relation to sales this way:

"If you can communicate product, you can make money off the product."

-Interview clip linked here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=348GtrwOzN4

Drake, at 140M USD net worth, has always communicated just one product throughout his career. He has never not sold a narrative that is perpetually distraught, but perpetually glorious. He represents the anguish in our lows and our megalomaniacal dreams at our highs.

"Drinking every night because we drink to my accomplishments
Faded way too long I'm floating in and out of consciousness"

-Headlines (2011) from Take Care

"Rock me real slowly
Put a bib on me
I'm just like a baby, drooling over you"

-intro vocals in Jungle (2015) from If You're Reading This It's too Late

"Came up, that's all me, stay true, that's all me
No help, that's all me, all me for real"

-All Me (2013) from Nothing Was the Same

"Cleansin' my soul of addiction for now
'Cause I'm fallin' apart, yeah"

-Passionfruit (2017) from More Life

Drake's music oscillates between supreme confidence and supreme insecurity, a bipolar condition of an unending phase of adolescence. That's why Drake is 32 years old writing songs about being immaculately established, about being in High School, about being emotionally impotent. He always performs about how he's incapable of escaping girls who have "got [him] in [his] feelings" --which is an insolvable problem, considering he just wants girls to come over at 6:00am and bang. This emotional cycle perpetuates his lyrical content, kind of like how we perceive Taylor Swift's music and the cycle of her "relationships." In a weird kind of split persona/self psychological phenomenon, I think this cyclic adolescent-type regression is the reason Drake is grooming 15-year old Stranger Things star Millie Bobbie Brown. ("I miss you so much" he texted her when she was 14).

Something has happened recently, however. Drake is doing and saying things he's never said before. It's enough to be noticeable. And it's usually ironic.

Let's talk about God's Plan --the Grammy's best rap song of the year. Thematically/lyrically, it's the same formula as any other Drake song. Drake is at the top of his game, the haters are after him, and he has some gripes about sex with women in his life. But it's the music video that's really the interesting bit. On the surface the video is about Drake "giving back" to black families in Miami. If you've ever wondered about why a rapper from Toronto would do this, you and I are on the same page, and obviously in way too deep.

I ended up researching this, and it seems to have a legitimate basis. In short: in 2011 Miami writer/musical artist Uncle Luke criticized the rap industry for filming in Miami and giving nothing back. Six months later when Drake wrote "The Motto," he told Uncle Luke lyrically that he doesn't care and that he would continue to rape Miami.

"Tell Uncle Luke I'm out in Miami too
Clubbing hard, fuckin' women ain't much to do
Wrist bling, got a condo up in Biscayne
Still getting brain from a thang, ain't shit changed"

I guess 7 years later, Drake came back and performed God's plan's video as an apology and as, presumably, a bigger man. A small woke step, for sure.

Let's take our next step through this rabbit hole closer to the present, and look now to Drake's collaboration with Travis Scott in "Sicko Mode" (2018).

Drake has two verses in this song, the opening verse and the closing verse. The closing verse is textbook Drake; it seems to be in regular form that he recalls girls High School.

"She's in love with who I am
Back in high school, I used to bus it to the dance (yeah)"

But the first verse is interesting. I listened to the song four of five times before it hit me. Drake might actually be trying to saysomething here. I highly encourage you to watch the music video on this one. It opens with a Instagram-tone depiction of an impoverished neighborhood outside a city. Black children are biking in a group through the neighborhood, presumably coming home. Then, all of a sudden, Drake appears. He's walking in the middle of a railroad track, Christ-like while a colossal moon blocks out the sun in the background. His lyrics come in:

Sun is down, freezin' cold
That's how we already know winter's here

Wait… The sun is down? Winter is coming? Holy sh*t Drake --are these metaphors? You didn't have sex with a girl in a jacuzzi during a snowstorm, did you?

My dawg would prolly do it for a Louis belt
That's just all he know, he don't know nothin' else
I tried to show 'em, yeah

Let's take this section line by line.

Who is Drake's "dawg" that he's referring to here? Rap Genius says its literally his dog (named Winter, woah). This makes perfect superficial sense, if you don't think about any of the connotation. Rap Genius is a literal disappointment, on this front. "Dawg" is an expression of familiarity. It's not "nigga" --that's a racialized term he chose not to use. It's not a cousin or "cuz" –that's a term that would imply a kinship level of familiarity. No, I think most likely that "dawg" is a person Drake extends a brotherly love for. Given the context of the music video, Drake's "dawg" is a person living in poverty. The person Drake is talking about would "do" an unspecified "it" –anything—for a Louis-Vuitton belt, a symbol of opulence, money, and success.

"That's just all he know, he don't know nothin' else."

Drake's dog is vulnerable, he's ignorant. If only Drake's dog knew that there was something more than just an empty race for wealth and status. So far, this is a sociopolitical message delivered in a modern sense of poetry. This is pretty woke, Drake.

I tried to show 'em, yeah

Wait hold the f**k up. "You tried to show them?" Drake, until just now, you've done nothing but the exact opposite. What was that you were saying a few years back, with DJ Khaled and Lil Wayne?

"All I care about is money and the city that I'm from"

- I'm on One (2011) from DJ Khalid's album We The Best Forever

Look at this image taken from the music video here.

Drake and Rick Ross in the music video for I'm On OneCash Money Records (2011)

Look at what Rick Ross is wearing. He's not even in a f**king shirt. He and Drake's crew got the chains on and everything. Rick Ross in this video is like some out-of-place older guy you'd notice in a janky-ass club, make eye contact with, and then never look at again. You put a Christmas hat on him and he looks like some playfully racist version of Santa. It's nighttime in the video, and you can tell, even though they're covered, that Rick Ross' nipples are probably rock solid (considering that the breeze that you know is just getting up in there).

Right there is the irony. Right there is the crux of the whole thing going on with Drake right now. The breaking development of a persona perpetually adolescent, anti-capitalist sentiment from someone so markedly capitalist. How can the famous ultra-elite sell sex and gangster ideology to the masses for millions, prostitute their image and abandon their private lives, immerse their psyche in an inflationary, ego-confused division between what is real and imaginary, and then, after all that, try to legitimately carry a sociopolitical message? How can you be woke and then take that wokeness, commodify it, market it, and commercialize it for profit?

As a fan of Drake, and curious case-studier of his musical persona, I can't help but wonder --where is this all going?