How Drake Disrupted Kanye
Drizzy’s surprise album rockets to #1, while Ye fails to deliver on his brash promises
Last week began like any other, with the world talking about what an asshole Kanye West is. Kanye approached the Grammy stage that Sunday as a clueless Beck accepted the award for Album of the Year, then exited stage left before repeating his Taylor Swift stunt from a few years earlier at the MTV VMAs. But the night went on, the liquor flowed, and Kanye appeared on E! later that evening to voice his dismay with the Grammys. But you knew all of this already.
Looking back, it’s now clear that Kanye’s actions were less a spur-of-the-moment, drunken decision, but instead a calculated effort to set up the events of the next week, which would include the launch of his new Adidas Yeezy Boost shoe and release of his new single. Despite his “I’m a changed man” interview on Ellen less than a month ago, Kanye took a 50 Cent-esque approach to courting controversy, not coincidentally around the same time he was about to release new product.
On Thursday February 12th, at approximately 6:00 PM in New York, Kanye’s moment had finally arrived. NBA All-Star weekend had taken over the city, and Mr. West planted his flag by unveiling his new sneaker via live stream. The shoe’s reveal was accompanied by his new high-art song “Wolves,” a collaboration with another talk-of-the-Grammys, Sia, and buzzworthy next generation Chicago rapper Vic Mensa. Soon the world would tremble in his presence and kneel at his feet. They would excuse the fact that he acted like a dick at the Grammys just a few days earlier. “Brilliant,” they’d cry, forgiving all of his past transgressions.
Or so he thought. Like “Only One” with Paul McCartney released a month earlier, the response to the new song was considerably lukewarm. “Wolves” found Kanye somewhere at the crossroads of his 808s & Heartbreak and Yeezus albums; an incoherent, repetitive, autotuned mess, that would end up as just a blip in the ongoing 24 hour entertainment news cycle, ironically getting the “Kanye shrug” from both his fans and detractors.
This would not have been so damaging if his thunder wasn’t completely stolen by Drake, who Beyoncé’d the internet just two hours later that Friday with the release of a new, surprise album on iTunes, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. The album debuted at the top of the Billboard album chart and will be certified gold within its first week, selling 497,602 copies over the last five days.
It didn't help that Drake has essentially released the album that Kanye has been trying to make for the last three years.
The surprise album formula was pioneered by Jay Z and Kanye West in 2013, with Magna Carta Holy Grail and Yeezus respectively, and then perfected by Beyoncé at the tail end of that year. Drake is outside of rap’s royal family, but is indirectly throwing rocks at the throne, like upstaging the bride by wearing white to the wedding. Fans already knew that his upcoming 2015 album is titled Views From The 6 (the “6” being slang for his hometown of Toronto), so what exactly is If You’re Reading This…? Traditional rap marketing would tell us it’s a mixtape, like the one Lil’ Wayne dropped in January, Sorry 4 The Wait 2, a free download that failed to have the same impact as his buddy Drake’s release. Perhaps the disposable nature of the modern rap mixtape — unfinished songs, freestyles over other rappers’ beats, a DJ yelling on top of it—has completely devalued that medium. Drake’s asking price of $12.99 on iTunes for If You’re Reading This… psychologically sets it on a higher pedestal in the eyes of the consumer. The title itself encourages an impulse buy and charging an entrance fee makes a bold statement to the fan, which is “this isn’t my garbage.”
But as Drake told us on 2009's “Forever,” ironically featuring Kanye: “Dropped the mixtape, that shit sounded like an album.” The mixtape he refers to is his breakthrough release So Far Gone, which immediately set the bar higher for these free releases. Unlike many of his peers, he has set a standard for quality that finds even his SoundCloud droppings (“0 to 100/The Catch Up”) nominated for Grammys.
My first impression upon listening to If You’re Reading This… was that it was a huge mistake. I felt it was a collection of leftovers that wasn’t good enough for Views From The 6 and that Drake was quite audacious to charge people for it. It lacks a big crossover hit like “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” nor does it have another anthemic club knocker like “Started From The Bottom” or “Worst Behavior.” It’s unhurried, downtempo pace is par-for-the-course for a Drake album, but has no real singles to anchor it down.
That is, until it sinks in.
After about five listens, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late transforms from a series of melancholy leftovers into a fully realized album. It’s here where you really begin to see Drake’s talent shine through, as even his “scraps” are better executed than the singles Kanye is currently pitching to tentpole his next album.
It’s partly in the music—produced largely by multi-platinum beatmaker Boi-1da and longtime Drake collaborator Noah “40" Shebib—but also how Drake adapts to the beats themselves. He goes well beyond the standard 16 bar structure, effortlessly creating anthems just in the way that his lyrics are delivered. In other words, it’s not what he’s saying, but how he says it. Songs like “Energy” and “10 Bands” find him dynamically accommodating his cadence at specific intervals in the track, making certain lines sound like hooks. Without the listener realizing it, he’s conditioning them to sing along by employing the same vocal inflections on consecutive verses, so the next time you hear it you’ll be saying aloud: “I been in the crib with the phoooooones off / I been at the house taking noooooo calls!” This unique approach is what sets Drake apart from his peers and allows his incredibly sparse songs to be played at peak time in crowded nightclubs.
Multi-part, rap opera songs like “Know Yourself,” “Company,” and “No Tellin’” are able to accomplish what Kanye has been attempting to do through filtered autotune for so long. That is, to make unpredictability look like architecture rather than just random musings. Most importantly, Drake hasn’t forgotten that he’s a rapper, while Kanye seems to be crooning into the air aimlessly, like a tree falling in the empty woods hoping to make a sound.
As much braggadocio that bleeds from this record, Drake still somehow comes off as a down-to-earth dude, even if he may be just as arrogant as Kanye. “You & The 6” is a forthright, introspective letter to his mother, who seems to frown on the glamorous life. On this track again, he uses that same seductive effect with the word “mama,” to instantly familiarize the listener with his delivery and of course, to whom he’s speaking.
It’s no coincidence that he’s at his most fiery on the aptly titled, triumphant album closer, “6 PM In New York,” coincidentally the same time and place as Kanye’s fashion show. It’s not a dis aimed at Kanye, as they even performed together that same weekend. Yet Drake suggests that he should be a part of Jay and Ye’s Watch The Throne duo (“Been observin’ the game and felt like I’ve seen enough / Let’s drop a tape on these niggas then we’ll see what’s up / Yeah, boy you rappin’ like you seen it all / You rappin’ like The Throne should be the three of y’all”). This song represents a piece of the larger statement that he’s trying to make with this album: he’s reached Jay and Ye’s level. Most impressively, this isn’t even Drake’s best LP, but the work far eclipses the three songs Kanye has released so far this year.
It’s clear that Drake’s intention was not to upstage Kanye West, as he likely saw the start of NBA All-Star weekend—which is pretty much an annual, unofficial hip-hop festival—as the perfect time and place to drop his new album. It’s more than likely that West simply had the same idea. However in the new age of surprise albums, artists can no longer strategically schedule an “open” week for the release of their new album/single/shoe etc. Kanye’s behavior may have made him the talk of the watercooler on Monday morning, but delivering an experimental, overly pretentious single the following Thursday—coupled with Drake’s seemingly impromptu, show-stealing album release—ultimately ended up backfiring.
That said, Kanye’s next release better be game-changing, or he may have to finally resort to releasing that sex tape. That is, just as long as Kendrick Lamar doesn’t have a secret album scheduled the same day.
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