I don't think you're fully appreciating what is about to happen here. If you do, then you are free to go home. If not, prepare to be filled in. Drake is about to retake the winter with his upcoming album, Nothing Was the Same--scheduled for release this Tuesday. And personally, I cannot wait.
Just as Jay-Z has held down the summer (a typical time for unbridled fun, living only for the moment, and a reacquaintance with irresponsibility), Drake is establishing himself as rap's Jack Frost, giving us music for that cold, harsh season of imposed solitude.
Perhaps it is for these reasons that you still may not fucks with Drake. You'd prefer to listen to the consistently upbeat (by comparison) musical stylings of a Jay-Z, or a 2 Chainz, or a Lil Wayne (all of whom Drizzy has collaborated with...decent evidence of his versatility and talent I'd say--at the risk of excessive cosigning)--individuals who, respectively:
-rap about having so much dominion over the genre to really have any worries
-are not shy about their penchant for molly and weed, and pine only sarcastically about loving bad bitches and liking to fuck
OR
-literally have a song entitled "I Ain't Got No Worries"
But alas, you poor, summer-born child. Like he did in early 2009 with So Far Gone (before the release of which I had failed to look past what I knew about Degrassi's "Jimmy" and realize the truth), and again in late 2011 with an ambivert's anthem in the form of Take Care, Drake has returned to remind you that life is not some big party.
If you live roughly anywhere above the 38th Parallel (as a vast, though possibly underrepresented set of rap fans do), your life is (more likely than not) more like this:
...than it is like this:
To put it another way, fans of his music appreciate the bravery in Drake's admission that the environment of The North (read: Toronto) leaves him more inclined to feel like this:
...than to feel like this:
Those of us who live in climates that are almost inhospitably cold for most of the year have to live different lifestyles than the scenes of L.A., Miami, and Hot-lanta that recent rap-canon has placed at the fore of general consciousness. It's been a nice September, August, and July (not as much June though). Like most every year, we enjoyed the short-lived luxury of bee-lining it out of work/class/internship/whatever, right to the bar that has the best tuesday, and just playing it by ear for the rest of the night. Everyone's going everywhere, and everywhere something's going on.
But now it's back to regular business. Forget weekday activities. Forget where you're going out. Now, it won't take much to talk you out of going out at all. On a given winter's night, your friends with girlfriends will invariably be with their girlfriends. You can't blame them. For at this time of year, when it comes to satisfactorily occupying your free time, one must always go with the safe bet.
Your safe bet will involve briefly doing rock-paper-scissors with your remaining friends/roommates to determine who will have to put on their layers, and run across the snow-covered street to the liquor store to get the Jack Daniels for a shoulder-shruggingly exciting night in. Summer's would-be empassioned campaigns to go to So-And-So's "party," has been reduced to an armchair concession of a mere rumor that So-And-So is "might be having people over"--at which point the decision is made unanimously that it would be too much trouble to go...even if the facts could be better confirmed.
By the time the mounted iPod has gotten to the "Lord Knows" track, the conversation has naturally turned to whether So-And-So is still with Whatsherface. And after a beat in the discussion, your friends ask you why it didn't work out with Whatsherface's friend, Ol' Girl... because "she seemed really into you, bro." Then you all lapse into your own anecdote about how ambiguously you left things with Kate, or Lizzy, or whatever unsettlingly cliche woman's name applies at the time.
It's not a glamorous way to spend the majority of your year. Maybe it's not even an ideal way. But it's real... and Drake is there with you in the background, getting the highlight stories of your blase lifestyle to rhyme.
The man told you his junior and senior albums "will only get meaner." Get thou ready for 11th grade.
click here to check out the Drizzy interview containing some of the ideas this post echoes:
