Has there ever been a loser as clear as Drake? When his long cold war with Kendrick Lamar turned into an all-out feud last spring, the stakes seemed relatively low. Both artists seemed immune to the real consequences: a pair of megastars playing chicken with Monopoly money. Lamar, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and seventeen Grammy Awards, is the de facto laureate of rap, a linguistic prodigy who loves free jazz and theatrical concept albums. Drake, on the other hand, is a tireless hitmaker with as many number one singles as Michael Jackson, a gender-fluid Lothario whose forays into ’90s R.&B., Caribbean dancehall, and British grime have come to define contemporary pop. -musical canon. Despite representing different factions within hip-hop, the pair have spent a decade indirectly competing to position themselves as the best rappers of their generation. But in March, a few months after J. Cole claimed, in Drake’s song “First Person Shooter,” that he, Drake and Lamar were the “big three,” Lamar expressed his resentment in a guest verse from Future and Metro Boomin. stating that “I am just a big me.” Thus began the feud between Drake and Lamar that lasted for months (Cole quickly backed out), culminating with “Not Like Us,” Lamar’s coup de grâce. The song, with choruses about Drake being a pedophile and its supporting materials, is educational material. music video and a live-streamed concert cemented Lamar as the winner. For a distortion song, it has reached an unthinkable level of popularity: Last month, California used it as one of its state songs during the roll call of the Democratic National Convention.
While Drake hurled insults about his rival’s height, his bank account, and his inability to deliver punches (rap’s usual trigger points), Lamar painted a damning portrait of Drake’s humanity. Those accusations of pedophilia? Unfounded, of course, but what about that time a fourteen-year-old boy Millie Bobby Brown Did you admit that Drake texted you, “I miss you so much”? Or the resurgent shorten Of him kissing a seventeen-year-old girl on stage? (Drake brushed aside these claims in “The heart part 6“, rapping, “If I was fucking young girls, I promise I would’ve been arrested / I’m too famous for this shit you just suggested”). When Lamar chastised Drake for being a deadbeat father and a “colonizer,” the Internet unearthed receipts corroborating the account. It’s been six years since Pusha T scorned Drake for “hiding a child” and not being “black enough,” criticism that left an indelible mark on his reputation. Lamar pressed deeper into these tensions until they drew blood, describing Drake as a gambling addict and a pathological liar whose own friends vilify him; a womanizing manchild whose insecurities have led him to cosmetic surgery and substance abuse; a soap opera actor turned pop star disguised as a rapper and thug.
In the past, stars looking for a narrative reboot probably would have looked for a national magazine profile, a “Saturday Night Live” pitch ad or a Netflix documentary. But, in 2024, Drake has found the modern solution of flooding the internet with content. Last month, he published a documentary and data dump, 100 concerts for your helmeta low-tech website with an alphabetical folder list of new music, unused promotional material, and nearly eighteen hours of behind-the-scenes footage dating back to 2010. (Recently, he uploaded more content to the site, much of it (This is from the recording sessions for the 2013 album “Nothing Was the Same”). Although the clips are grouped in loosely organized groups, they have no shape or structure, there is no clear way to discern what matters and what doesn’t. In the first dump, we see Drake as an attentive father, walking with his little one across an empty stage; we also see him as a loving friend, greeting his siblings and telling them he loves them. Other clips depict him as an obsessive artist. , attentive to every detail, unable to leave the studio, and like a benevolent, jovial boss with a private plane and a worrying amount of tracksuits and an ever-smoking hookah When women appear, they are strippers counting money. the club or dancers doing choreography to Drake songs. In the following dump, featuring content from a few years earlier, we see a charming, idealistic version of Drake, a wide-eyed boy desperate to actualize his greatness.
Of course, this content is not intended to be consumed in its entirety. (The deluge recalls a plot from the first season of “Veep,” in which Vice President Selina Meyer orders a “partial full disclosure” of the documents in her office, knowing that the press will never be able to see through all of them.) ) Stars from Taylor Swift to Morgan Wallen to Post Malone have deployed similar strategies to achieve cultural ubiquity: thirty-song albums with multiple deluxe editions, extended world tours, and enough new content to stay at the top spot. mind, all the time, in the popular imagination. Perhaps as a result, audiences expect saturation and resent more careful curation. (Frank Ocean, for example, has released two albums in twelve years, exiling himself from this culture of constant exposure despite being one of pop’s most famous stars; fans frequently take to social media to lament the lack of new material ).
Drake’s 100 Gigs appears inspired by “photo dumping,” a mode of social media posting that is popular for its appeal to authenticity. On Instagram, when influencers or celebrities (or anyone, really) post a dump, the goal is to appear ironically aloof and dangerously cool, as if the content was put together without thought or consideration. This suggestive, fragmented presentation of self is what 100 Gigs captures: Drake positioning himself as cool and funny, boisterous and beloved, so in on the joke that he’s exempt from being the butt of it.
And yet, what the dumpster doesn’t communicate is the fabric of Drake’s inner life. In a collection of footage from the first dump tour, we see him leading prayer circles before taking the stage: “I’m going to go out and do exactly what you put me to do on this earth,” he tells God, as if hired. Hands crowd around him. “Just sit back and watch.” The rare dives into Drake’s psyche come during casual interviews with close collaborators like Noah (40) Shebib. He mentions his friend’s “psychotic” ambition, his maturation as an artist, and his turn toward more “aggressive” music, but he resists analyzing Drake further, even when gently pressed.
The decade-old clips offer rare glimpses into Drake’s creative process as he crafts some of the best material of his career. Write and record favorites “Furthest Thing” and “Connect,” and sample verses from “Trophies” and “Who Do You Love?” The footage highlights the depth of Drake’s talent: he sings and raps with tempestuous ease, landing on one inspired idea after another, making minute mixing decisions that bring a song into focus. The most recent images, however, reveal less about Drake as an artist. Almost every track he works on is already done, save for a tweak or finishing touch. We don’t see him write a verse or work his way into a melody; just once you sit down and listen to possible rhythms to record. While working on “Scorpion,” he asks 40 to turn down Future’s ad-lib on the song “Blue Tint,” then nods while another producer reviews the album’s mastering notes. During the “Her Loss” sessions, Drake and Lil Yachty vibe in the studio and talk about the magic of Yachty’s single “Poland.” Otherwise, much of the dump is a profound act of absence, with almost everything worth watching abandoned on a secret hard drive or not filmed at all.
It’s hard to remember, but Drake’s early music was radically transparent, even relatable. In his first three commercial projects, “So Far Gone,” “Thank Me Later,” and “Take Care,” he revealed personal flaws, romantic failures, and deep-seated insecurities between flexible raps and bouts of overconfidence, creating an interplay of delicious contradiction. . One moment, he’s one of “the realest niggas in the fucking game” (“She Will”); the next, she sobs into a glass of rosé and begs an ex to come over (“Marvins Room”). Drake was also an inventive formalist, singing and rapping over hybrid production styles until each distinction dissolved into a singular whole. Their latest albums are neither identifiable nor inventive: they are dispatches from hell. As one of the most famous humans alive, he presents himself as someone who exists in a high realm: a Michael Corleone, isolated in his mansion, powerful and paranoid, clinging to his increasingly fragile empire. His last two albums, “Her Loss” and “For All the Dogs,” look for enemies everywhere: women, mostly, but also anyone who dares to take Drake’s name in vain.
Last year, in a rehearsal Of fame, novelist Rachel Kushner wrote: “You can meet a celebrity but you can’t know them, because the very status of celebrity is born of image and distance, of unknowability.” Like Drake’s recent music, much of 100 Gigs portends a tomb of unknowability, a broken window into the life of an atomized idol. Although his songs directed at Lamar are some of the most invigorating songs he’s done in a long time, they wither in comparison to Lamar’s fiery character studies. Lamar is a ruthless examiner of identity, race, country and religion. Applying this probing lens to Drake elicited brutal reprimands. “You raised a horrible fucking person,” Lamar raps to Drake’s father in an epistolary verse over the impressively mean-spirited “meet the Grahams.” The pair may have begun their feud by fighting over who was the better rapper and more definitive auteur, but Lamar’s victory was less the result of technical prowess than narrative ingenuity, leaving listeners to imagine Drake alone on his property, surrounded by riches. but full of shame. 100 Gigs largely confirms this message, casting a sidelong glance at how a rising star became lost in the deceptive and lonely world of intractable celebrity. ♦
‘ www.newyorker.com ‘
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