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.

Verses

PAGE

This is the place; there, where the torch doth burn.

First Watchman

The ground is bloody; search about the churchyard:
Go, some of you, whoe'er you find attach.
Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain,
And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,
Who here hath lain these two days buried.
Go, tell the prince: run to the Capulets:
Raise up the Montagues: some others search:
We see the ground whereon these woes do lie;
But the true ground of all these piteous woes
We cannot without circumstance descry.

Re-enter some of the Watch, with BALTHASAR

Second Watchman

Here's Romeo's man; we found him in the churchyard.

First Watchman

Hold him in safety, till the prince come hither.

Re-enter others of the Watch, with FRIAR LAURENCE

Third Watchman

Here is a friar, that trembles, sighs and weeps:
We took this mattock and this spade from him,
As he was coming from this churchyard side.

First Watchman

A great suspicion: stay the friar too.

Enter the PRINCE and Attendants

PRINCE

What misadventure is so early up,
That calls our person from our morning's rest?

Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, and others

CAPULET

What should it be, that they so shriek abroad?

LADY CAPULET

The people in the street cry Romeo,
Some Juliet, and some Paris; and all run,
With open outcry toward our monument.

PRINCE

What fear is this which startles in our ears?

First Watchman

Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain;
And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before,
Warm and new kill'd.

PRINCE

Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.

First Watchman

Here is a friar, and slaughter'd Romeo's man;
With instruments upon them, fit to open
These dead men's tombs.

CAPULET

O heavens! O wife, look how our daughter bleeds!
This dagger hath mista'en--for, lo, his house
Is empty on the back of Montague,--
And it mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosom!

LADY CAPULET

O me! this sight of death is as a bell,
That warns my old age to a sepulchre.

Enter MONTAGUE and others

PRINCE

Come, Montague; for thou art early up,
To see thy son and heir more early down.

MONTAGUE

Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night;
Grief of my son's exile hath stopp'd her breath:
What further woe conspires against mine age?

PRINCE

Look, and thou shalt see.

MONTAGUE

O thou untaught! what manners is in this?
To press before thy father to a grave?

PRINCE

Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,
Till we can clear these ambiguities,
And know their spring, their head, their
true descent;
And then will I be general of your woes,
And lead you even to death: meantime forbear,
And let mischance be slave to patience.
Bring forth the parties of suspicion.

FRIAR LAURENCE

I am the greatest, able to do least,
Yet most suspected, as the time and place
Doth make against me of this direful murder;
And here I stand, both to impeach and purge
Myself condemned and myself excused.

PRINCE

Then say at once what thou dost know in this.

FRIAR LAURENCE

I will be brief, for my short date of breath
Is not so long as is a tedious tale.
Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;
And she, there dead, that Romeo's faithful wife:
I married them; and their stol'n marriage-day
Was Tybalt's dooms-day, whose untimely death
Banish'd the new-made bridegroom from the city,
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
Betroth'd and would have married her perforce
To County Paris: then comes she to me,
And, with wild looks, bid me devise some mean
To rid her from this second marriage,
Or in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her
The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
That he should hither come as this dire night,
To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,
Being the time the potion's force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
Was stay'd by accident, and yesternight
Return'd my letter back. Then all alone
At the prefixed hour of her waking,
Came I to take her from her kindred's vault;
Meaning to keep her closely at my cell,
Till I conveniently could send to Romeo:
But when I came, some minute ere the time
Of her awaking, here untimely lay
The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.
She wakes; and I entreated her come forth,
And bear this work of heaven with patience:
But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;
And she, too desperate, would not go with me,
But, as it seems, did violence on herself.
All this I know; and to the marriage
Her nurse is privy: and, if aught in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrificed, some hour before his time,
Unto the rigour of severest law.

PRINCE

We still have known thee for a holy man.
Where's Romeo's man? what can he say in this?

BALTHASAR

I brought my master news of Juliet's death;
And then in post he came from Mantua
To this same place, to this same monument.
This letter he early bid me give his father,
And threatened me with death, going in the vault,
I departed not and left him there.

PRINCE

Give me the letter; I will look on it.
Where is the county's page, that raised the watch?
Sirrah, what made your master in this place?

PAGE

He came with flowers to strew his lady's grave;
And bid me stand aloof, and so I did:
Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb;
And by and by my master drew on him;
And then I ran away to call the watch.

PRINCE

This letter doth make good the friar's words,
Their course of love, the tidings of her death:
And here he writes that he did buy a poison
Of a poor 'pothecary, and therewithal
Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.
Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
And I for winking at your discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.

CAPULET

O brother Montague, give me thy hand:
This is my daughter's jointure, for no more
Can I demand.

MONTAGUE

But I can give thee more:
For I will raise her statue in pure gold;
That while Verona by that name is known,
There shall no figure at such rate be set
As that of true and faithful Juliet.

CAPULET

As rich shall Romeo's by his lady's lie;
Poor sacrifices of our enmity!

PRINCE

A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Exeunt