Drake could only come from Canada. That certain thing that Sasha Frere-Jones calls a post- hiphop sensibility? Totally Canadian. There's almost-zero aggression and no stories of street crime in Drizzy's music. He's all Niggas in Paris joie de vivre which seems the prevailing tone in contemporary rap (though violence is making something of a comeback; "Stab Bruno Mars in the goddamn esophagus" raps Tyler the Creator). Then there's Drake's early career turn, as a wheelchair-bound student, on Degrassi. There's the strong nostalgic and confessional motifs. Marvin's Room is a simple song with a great gimmick: Drake drunk-dialling an ex-girlfriend and simultaneously telling her about the superstar life and about missing her.
He's a very-good rapper in the traditional sense, clever and punny. But, I agree with Frere-Jones when he says that Drake relies less on metaphor and wordplay than the typical superstar rappers. Nas raps seemingly sui generis, his nonsense-words coalescing like Pollock's drips. Andre 3000 so effortless in driving us back to his old neighborhood to hang with Sasha Thumper or flying us to Paris where he would have "grabbed her by the waist and kissed her / but we were in the middle of Whole Foods and those foods ain't supposed to beef but you think they hated tofu". And Drake leaves way too many silent-spaces to over-fill 3 minutes of aggression the way Weezy does on 6'7".
Since Drake is post-hiphop, then there's something about him beyond just raps. What I most love about his music are the hooks, especially the hyper-sensitive, between the verses: "Fuck that nigga that you love so bad / I know you still think about the times we had... I'm just saying you could do better / tell me have you heard that lately." His music, the psudo-intellectualism, the everyman-ness, the emo-feel, has a lot to do with me. With how I value Friday-night banter with my friends, with my Monday to Friday single-guy existence, with the sensitivity that's un-manly if too public.
Big Ghostface, the anonymous blogger who writes satirically in the style of Ghostface Killer, listened carefully to Take Care. And his review of the album feels even truer than Frere-Jones's. Young Ghostface goes song by song and, in the process, makes great fun of Drake's persona. He includes unflattering photos of Drake, most of which readers sent in. There's one where Drake is lying fetal on-stage after his knee gave out. One where Drake hugs Justin Bieber. One where Drake has a bent wrist. There's one where Drake looks like he's reading his freestyle off his Blackberry (I do sometimes get the impression that Drake's raps feel complicated when they should be complex, in the same way you can sometimes feel an author writing when instead he should be invisible). Big Ghostface calls Drake "The Human Croissant", "Wheelchair Jimmy", and, best, the syllables rolling off the tongue, "Young Garnier Fructis".
As good as this review is, with that over-the-top voice and vivid imagery, the irony is obvious. The real Ghostface Killah is in his mid-forties and two-decades removed from real relevence. The blogger Big Ghostface is, in a sense, speaking on behalf of all those rap-fans who once were young, but are now middle-aged. Of course they're pining for a hard-man's words, for the old hip-hop that was, to paraphrase Public Enemy, the black-CNN. Young Ghostface hates on Drake like how rappers used to battle. But me, I don't need my rappers to battle anymore. I want them to sing about those
