I Stood In Line In the Name of Drake For Two Hours, and Nothing Was The Same

Note: This was originally published in Vol. 56, Issue 3 of the Strand, which you can read here. Linking to individual articles on ISSUU, the publishing format that the Strand uses, is impossible, so I’ve reposted it here for the sake of direct linking. I encourage you to read it by clicking the link, as you’ll be able to see it included with the illustrations.

On Thursday, Toronto’s very own Drake held a ‘pop-up’ store at Stussy’s Queen and Ossington flagship building. His new album, Nothing Was the Same, leaked to the world earlier this week and officially drops September 24th. In the interests of the free swag offered and my fandom for October’s Very Own, I trekked out to the Stussy store in overcast weather with a friend. We arrived about a half hour before the scheduled 1 PM opening time, to a line stretching about two major blocks north and four times as long as you would expect considering the album had yet to be legally released and nobody had had the chance to hear it!

Whether you love him or hate him, Drake’s ever-strengthening grip on post-‘808’s emotive rap has put Toronto on the map musically, especially since he seems to have shed his “ATL-boy-at-heart” ruse and started to rep the 416 more often in his music. On first listen, Nothing Was the Same comes across as an extended chest puff, and he reiterates this toughness through a flow and veracity improved enough that he may manage to graduate from being the rap game’s sensitive little brother. Whereas previous Drake outings seem like a recorded struggle between his desire to be the tough top dog and the Nicest Guy In The World, on NWTS the repeated bouncing back and forth seems less identity crisis and more embracement of both sides. It takes a nuanced understanding of one’s own emotional range to sequence your album so that five minutes after listeners hear the toughest verses you’ve ever dropped (“Worst Behaviour”) they’re subjected to a sensual RnB masterpiece (“Hold On We’re Going Home”, featuring guest vocals from Victoria College’s own Majid Jordan — dream big, kids). Off the bat, Drake comes across as an intelligent guy, but playing these sort of games with your own sequencing shows a pretty high level of self-awareness.

An hour had passed in line and we had moved about ten feet forward. Idle chatter about whether there would be enough t-shirts to turn the streets of Toronto into a walking OVOfest, and falsely chipper twentysomethings limp-wristedly giving away Red Bulls occupied our time. All the time I’ve spent trying to convince myself “Marvin’s Room” is, like, totally something I identify with and all the times I’ve drunkenly chanted how much I’m “lovin’ the crew” was about to pay off in the form of a black t-shirt. In the meantime, though, a representative from Quaker would like me to try their new quinoa snack bar. Somewhere here there’s a good metaphor for Drake’s Top 40 success and his concurrent respect amongst the indie crowd. As one of the few stars today who can bridge what usually feels like an infinite gap, he’s afforded a certain special level of leeway to do what he pleases. However, it’s not just a matter of happenstance that causes this — the man has earned this spot in the middle of music’s venn diagram.

Drake’s rap abilities are good, but not great. His singing abilities are good, but not great. His recipe for success is that he’s skilled in both, which creates an end product unique in that that both me and my mother can agree on putting Drake on in the car. The key strength of NWTS is his improved ability in both these fields, and producer/sidekick Noah “40” Shebib has not only mastered the right sort of beat to work with Drake’s sometimes-choppy flow, but has managed to nail a distinct style that works both with Drake’s persona and carves out a dreamy Xanax-fueled niche for OVO Crew.

Nowhere is this more evident on the album’s standout track, “Pound Cake/Paris Morton Music 2”. The song itself may be the best yardstick to see how far Aubrey has come since the days of “Best I Ever Had”, the first half being a beat that makes you feel like you’re floating on top of the very clouds that are behind Drake’s head on the album’s cover. He backs right into the beat and almost sits down on it like a couch, bragging so easily about being the best in the game that you expect him to have one hand on the mic and the other knuckle deep in a bag of Doritos. The difference between this boast and boasts of his past is that for the first time, you can’t hear him aiming it in any direction — even with Rap Game Bruce Springsteen, aka Jay Z, featuring on the track. The Hov’s output the last little while (take your pick how far back “last little while” applies) has been mediocre at best, but the contrast of Drake’s easy and breezy bar slinging versus Jay Z’s senile recycling of lines and rhymes on the track just serve to remind everyone that damn, Drake might have actually climbed to the top without us realising. In true Drizzy fashion, the second part of the song is named after a former flame that is presumably one of the many women to have changed his life forever. Moving into the second part, the beat switches up into something that sounds like he just beat the final boss in a video game. This more active snare-driven part gets Drake up off the couch, but he stays just as boastful while confidently prophesizing on life and women as he is wont to do.

Drake’s improved rapping ability means he manages to pack more lyricism into each track, as he’s not taking a meditative pause between every bar. After the the coda-like “Come Thru”, there album closes with a posse track with celebrity chef 2 Chainz and that kid who lives a couple of doors down that just won’t go away, Big Sean. “All Me” is the sort of song that only comes around every year or so; Drake’s “Mercy” if you will. It’s the sort of song you immediately want to know all the words to, chock full of enough killer couplets that you can’t pick just one favourite. While both guest verses are solid contributions, with 2 Chainz keeping his formula simple and Big Sean jumping in with a schizoid verse chock full of clever metaphor, our protagonist shines the brightest as he seems to have saved his best wordplay for the end. “I touched down in ’86/Knew I was the man by the age of 6/Even fucked the girl who used to babysit” impresses any teenage boy who once had a babysitter more than any amount of cocaine, strippers or money could inspire, and when he claims he’s “on a roll like Cottonelle/I was made for all this shit”, you implicitly have permission to lose your shit. The audacity required to compare yourself to soft toilet paper when you have the reputation that Drake does makes dropping that self-aware bombshell at the very end of the album the equivalent of the most impressive of mic drops. Drake’s entire career has been marred by his dual tough/sensitive persona, but the first time you finally take off your headphones after listening, you’re reconsidering his role as rap game Garnier Fructis. Drake’s telling us yes, it’s possible to be tough and sensitive all at once, and we’re all kicking ourselves because for the first time it seems pretty obvious.

We finally got to the block with the Stussy building on it. Yet another person was walking up the street in one of the free tshirts, and he seemed to be yelling something. 400 people left in line. 50 tshirts left inside. “But we’re so close!” everyone thinks at the exact same time. Everyone then takes a look ahead and realises that no, we are not that close, and there are 400 people in front of us in line. My hopes of being a walking billboard for Drake were dashed. Torn up. Sad, depressed, distraught. As I left, I did the only thing I know to do when I’m feeling overly emotional, I needed to connect to someone else who could understand what I’m feeling. So I put my headphones on and played some Drizzay.