“I’m changing from boy to a man, no one to guide me, I’m all alone.”
July 2, 2018 4:39 PM   Subscribe

Scorpion is a whole shitload of Drake [The A.V. Club] “It is the album-length equivalent of the “get you a man who can do both” meme, and it is longer than hell: over 90 minutes of ceaseless, unyielding Drake, always being Drake as hell, complaining about Instagram and ex-girlfriends and the travails of being Drake. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. He’s always had a penchant for the ridiculous, and part of liking Drake is making fun of Drake. But Scorpion is serious about it.”

• What It Means When Spotify Has Nothing to “Recommend” But Drake [Pitchfork Media]
““This weekend, Spotify blanketed its app in Drake. The streaming giant “recommended” his new album, Scorpion, to each one of us, regardless of our usual taste in streaming music, by putting his face on the cover of every playlist—even those not featuring his songs. Perhaps this decision was driven by profit, or they just thought it was funny, seeing Drake gamely play the poster child for “Ambient Chill.” Or maybe they realized that they could, so they did. The gesture reminded me of nothing so much as when Apple, in September 2014, deposited a free download of U2’s then-new album, Songs of Innocence, in everyone’s iTunes folder, whether we wanted it there or not.” [...] For Spotify, the reveal is that what their playlists and recommendations are really about is not, lo and behold, you. It’s about them, and the power they gain from our data and wield through their algorithms.”
•Drake Spam Flooded Spotify This Weekend, Making People Upset [Gizmodo]
“The Drake spam so annoyed some users that they began demanding Spotify refund their payment for the month. (A Spotify customer service person told Gizmodo they don’t offer refunds because they’re annoyed about Drake.) Regardless, it’s clear that saturating the streaming service with a single artist’s mug is a good way to spark avoidable outrage. Spotify’s deal with Drake is somewhat puzzling, considering Drake’s reported $19 million contract with Apple Music. Whether the artist is on good terms with the Cupertino company is up for debate after Drake’s reference to Apple Music executive Larry Jackson in his remix of Jay Z’s “Family Feud” track, on which Drake ripped on Jackson for ostensibly giving him a bum deal. Spotify did not immediately respond to our request for comment about the Drake deal and the uproar it caused. But the company did tweet about the artist’s album on Saturday, stating it was streaming at a rate of 10 million times per hour.”
• How Drake Made ‘Scorpion,’ the Most Ambitious Album of His Career [Rolling Stone]
“Drake‘s ambition grows more grandiose every year. In 2017, he released the genre-hopping, 22-song More Life playlist, which sounded like an attempt to conquer every sector of popular music at once. He one-upped himself last Friday with Scorpion, a 25-track double album designed to shock, awe and discombobulate. Pulpy Nineties R&B samples collide with piercing drums; morose singing drones beneath emphatic raps, modern Memphis hip-hop rubs up against retro New York boom-bap, slow-rolling Houston rhythms battle nervy New Orleans bounce, a wispy Michael Jackson sample stares down a blasé Jay-Z verse. Scorpion is a miracle of modern big-budget record-making – think Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson, except the drummer is sending his parts from Tennessee, while the backing vocals are beamed in from Australia, where the lead singer of an off-kilter R&B group spends six hours stacking the parts on an Aaliyah re-harmonization. To achieve this sort of synthesis for 25 tracks, Drake has to be a musical omnivore, highly collaborative – nearly 30 different producers are credited on Scorpion.”
• Daddy Issues: On ‘Scorpion,’ Drake Is a Father of Many Styles—and Also a Child [The Ringer]
“Listening to Scorpion, I cannot suppress a queasy feeling that Pusha gave his adversary something of a gift. Although Drake only mentions his son on three of these 25 songs, they are the most striking moments on the record and the ones that suggest the possibility for an emotional maturation, or at least a few new themes to emerge in his music in the future. The raw, unprocessed nature of a song like “March 14” suggests that Drake was not going to rap about his son on this record had Pusha not called him out—and yet it’s bleak to imagine what Scorpion might have been without its meditations on fatherhood. “Is there more to life than digits and banking accounts?” he asks on one of the (should-have-been-cut) songs that sounds like it was recorded before he was publicly acknowledging his son. Fatherhood could be that missing piece that Drake has always been searching for, but as Scorpion ends, he does not yet seem to have realized that. It’s haunting that an album so exhaustingly populated with women, “family,” and now even his own progeny can still end like that: “I’m all alone.””
• Drake Uses Women's Work On Scorpion Instead Of Giving Them Their Own Voice [Refinery 29]
“ Drake has spent the majority of his career embedding judgmental lyrics about women into his music. There was the slut-shaming of the 2015 single "Hotline Bling" ("Got a reputation for yourself now...Started wearing less and goin' out more / Glasses of champagne out on the dancefloor") and let's not forget his perpetuation of the stereotype that women need saving on 2009's "Houstatlantavegas" ("You go get fucked up and we just show up at your rescue"). But it's been most insulting when the Canadian rapper samples a prominent female artist on his music and then proceeds to diss women. On Scorpion, he takes it to the next level by using work from some of the world's biggest female artists on songs that aren't kind to women. This isn’t surprising considering misogyny in hip-hop, rap, and R&B has been a consistent problem; it’s even more evident in looking at how few female rappers make it to the top of the charts. Drake may think he’s positioning himself as an advocate by sampling women of color on his tracks who have been shrouded by history, but he’s more often than not no better than his peers. Frankly, it would be more effective if women just got to have a voice of their own.”
posted by Fizz (18 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Nice link roundup! I also like Stereogum's take on the album.
posted by Frobenius Twist at 5:02 PM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


Pusha > Drake.
posted by Fizz at 5:33 PM on July 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


Drake does seem like one of those people who would show up with a little hedcut next to the dictionary entry for "overexposed".

Like, I don't even listen to his music and I'm tired of the dude just from watching one too many Raptors games last year.
posted by selfnoise at 5:42 PM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


Drake always has interesting beats, and I like his laidback rapping/singing style, but man oh MAN am I tired of the “I’m a womanizer but I admit to being conflicted about it so I guess that makes it ok” routine. Get a new shtick!
posted by tantrumthecat at 5:58 PM on July 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


I don't live in the US and I think I am a little too old to get this, but even prior to the Spotify thing, I couldn't turn around without seeing Drake's picture. What's going on here? Like half the memes on imgur use his picture, and he seems to randomly pop up in unrelated Google image search results. Am I going crazy? Is it marketing?
posted by Literaryhero at 6:04 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'm sure he enjoys being the biggest fish in Toronto but man I'm sick of this guy's constant appearance in city blogs.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:06 PM on July 2, 2018


Am I going crazy? Is it marketing?

A little bit of both. I mean, this was my Spotify dashboard this morning. Ugh.
posted by Fizz at 6:08 PM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


i'm halfway done with this drake album and also i'm halfway done with this drake album
@austin_walker
posted by ODiV at 6:32 PM on July 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


There was the slut-shaming of the 2015 single "Hotline Bling"

I've never had a problem with this song, because I always figured we were supposed to find the narrator kind of sympathetic, but mostly pathetic - as with Marvin's Room, that "fuck, I'm drunk calling my ex again" feeling, and in this case, "fuck, I'm drunk stalking my ex on Instagram again".
posted by airmail at 6:33 PM on July 2, 2018


Drake always has interesting beats

Clearly we have listened to two completely different sets of Drake songs.
posted by eustacescrubb at 7:06 PM on July 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


This is Taylor Swift all over again. Look: if you've been exposed as a villain, don't release an album (or double album, ugh) proclaiming what a nice, misunderstood person you are. It's exhausting.*

*Or maybe do, because I will listen to "Nice For What" every day until the end of summer. At least Drake remembered to have a good single on his album...
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:13 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


The fact he has the nerve to call himself a “single father” for sympathy when he only saw his son once when he was two months old...ugh, just ...
posted by saucysault at 8:23 PM on July 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


I don't much care for Drake, but I am fascinated by Aubrey Graham. And I always liked him on SNL.

In any case, I am more inclined to believe that he really is conflicted about being a womanizer than I am that Marshall Mathers is not, in fact, deeply misogynistic. Although, yeah, on preview, that's some shit about the single father thing. He needs to step up and do better.
posted by Ruki at 8:33 PM on July 2, 2018


Spotify was pushing this album on me HARD Saturday morning, so I gave it a whirl at the gym, and I can't tell what was more annoying: looking up and occasionally seeing the TV that they keep tuned to Fox News, or listening to Drake whining about how hard it is to be Drake.

It's way too long, it's weak, the only single-worthy track dropped what feels like MONTHS ago and the feel-good "women are so great" vibe of that is ruined by the misogyny threading throughout the rest of the album. Especially by the time the last track pops up and he's telling his son how important it is to just forget who did what to whom before his birth... like, of course you say that, you had your PR person out slut-shaming the mother of your child before you got those paternity results, I'm sure you'd like your son to never find that out or care about it. And hey, maybe you should try wearing a condom sometime, my dude.

In summation, fuck Drake.
posted by palomar at 9:03 PM on July 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


The fact he has the nerve to call himself a “single father” for sympathy when he only saw his son once when he was two months old...ugh, just ...

I can't think about Drake now except in the context of how he was/is collecting Birkin bags for the woman he will one day marry and the Pusha track. I love the memes, but that is the person.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:25 PM on July 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


It’s no “I’m shutting shit down at the mall.”
posted by octobersurprise at 12:29 AM on July 3, 2018


The appearance of Drake all over my carefully curated doom metal/stoner rock/viking revival Spotify dashboard resulted in a series of existential crises, starting first with the mere appearance of Drake, progressing through consternation about the inability or outright refusal of popular culture and its delivery mechanisms to respect and fulfill the needs and desires of those of us who appreciate art adjacent to or outside of the mainstream, and ultimately culminating in a sighing resignation to the fact that this might be the price we pay for the convenience of streaming services. Look, Spotify, I love you so much because you allow me to follow Wikipedia-like jaunts down hidden and obscure trails of our sonic landscape, but your data has got to be telling you that I don't want to listen to Drake.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:27 AM on July 3, 2018


Is this that guy who did the music for the Wii shopping channel?
posted by straight at 8:25 AM on July 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


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