singles

"Successful"
Drake, feat. Lil' Wayne and Trey Songz

Pillow played this track for me a few weeks ago. I downloaded it and proceeded to study it (in all of its heavy hotness) on my iPod, on the train and the street. Drake, as most of y'all been knowing, is Jimmy, wheelchair-bound Degrassi heartthrob, one of a team of wholesome and compelling Canadian daytime television teens (cult-status beloved Stateside). He rhymed occasionally on the show. But, for many this year, it came as a surprise that he was recording an album under Lil' Wayne's aegis, clurrrb "canoodling" with Rihanna, generally being a rapstar. His summer single "Best I Ever Had" was big, especially with Young World, but I was unconvinced. I found it irritating and puerile. This guy, "Successful," on the other hand, has soul and weight (an aforementioned "heavy hotness"), lyrical punch--"My girl love me but fuck it my heart beat slow." The first bars are dungeon-ous, casting one into hazy depths, a backward, basement church. Trey's refrain is apathetic to the max, slow and careless, a supposition, an expression of vague desire for a vague property. Half Memphian, half Great Northern Jew (bestill my heart), Drake's stories are lingually street (I mean, spoken in the manner of most hip hop), but the meat of them and his point of view are pretty privileged, at ease. He is not a "striver" or even a pretend "striver." He doesn't want to fail; he wants recognition, "success," but he needs for nothing. He has swagger, but he has indecision also, a kind of waffle-y quality that is more the rakish, gambling-indebted "profligate son" of Anthony Trollope novels than gangsta'. He was never in a gang (outside of the Screen Actors Guild), and he's not going to pretend such (certainly not when Wayne is around). Kanye is similarly middle class, but he's such an inaccessible asshole. Drake is relatable, and that second verse has a chilled morosity that I find quite moving (Kanye is NEVER moving, never more than a shallow hipster, who crafts fine beats and hooks). Drake seems like a sort we've been seeing and will see more of, a post-hip hop hip hop artist. Of course, that last verse laid down by Weezy ("best rapper alive," born of the Deep South and Birdman and "hot blocks," traditionally [?] hip hop), after a brilliant pause, like a hidden track for the MP3 generation, is miles ahead of Drake's, full of pleasure and mannerisms and wordart (not -play). Maybe this track is a fluke for our young man, buoyed up by his betters? I hope not....I think not.

addendum: I was being over-tough on Kanye. For rhetoric? For T. Swift? One day soon, his antics might become sympathetic...only the most insecure sort of person postures so. He has a habit of cutting off his nose to spite his face, sort of eroding his substantial catalogue with a whole mess of braggadocio...pretty human, pretty sweet, really.