Drake first made it onto my radar when he was called out for being “The Softest N**** In The Game” by an online commentator pretending to be Ghostface Killah.
At the time I was an undergrad, listening to a lot of conscious hip-hop. Somehow through reading continental philosophy and listening to Dead Prez I contorted myself into being able to laugh at Drake for being “soft.”
As a grad student who took the time to dwell more deeply about affect and Blackness I ran across Drake again.
I wasn’t on top of the world anymore. I was about to graduate with a Masters degree in a field that prides itself on being indefinable. I didn’t have the time or the money to finish a PhD, and my personal priorities were evolving. I hadn’t started at the bottom, I certainly wasn’t at the top, and I was unsure about what came next.
Drake is famous, definitely at (or near) the top of his field, and I think critics are still being pretty unfair to him.
Hotline Bling, like much of his other work, isn’t a work of slut-shaming. Or, at least, it doesn’t have to be.
90s Nostalgia and the Dopamine Hangover
It seems like virtually every young person has 90s Nostalgia, whether or not they were born this side of the 2000s, but as someone who lived during the 90s, I can tell you the 90s aesthetic alive and well on social media is much different than the one I lived through.
Sure, the sadness and alienation expressed by groups like Nirvana, Marilyn Manson, and Insane Clown Posse was loud, but it was about being excluded from society. Affirming an outsider status, and letting the thrill of rebellion take over comes with a certain thrill, and gives a rush.
Lately though, the outsider stance just doesn’t seem authentic anymore. Outsiders too, can “make it” and have success break them. For all the popularity of those who would claim to defy the system, George Bush won the presidency. As the public imagination starts to accept a postmodern condition as the “new normal”, we recognize that an outsider status isn’t possible anymore.
Wither Team Drizzy?
Few artists understand the postmodern condition more than Drake. His story lacks much of the “authentic” political provenance of Tupac and Biggie. A Black Jewish child star on a children’s TV show, and now come up in the rap game, Drake seems as confused by his success as he is happy about it. Notably, even though he’s gaining money and fame, he’s still worried about being successful.
I’m interested in seeing Drake as someone who’s curious about investigating masculinity and experimenting with masculine affect. Seeing the reactions to his most recent video, Hotline Bling, have surprised me in that they seem more interested in painting Drake with a broad brush of misogynist than in doing a making a more nuanced read of his work.
Towards a Useful Sadness
A more productive reading of the video might be about the way that problems follow you.
You don’t need to be a trained psychoanalyst to know that critics are often projecting. When Drake counsels the song’s subject that “You should just be yourself, right now, you're someone else” I think it’s likely himself that he’s speaking to.
Transforming one’s life into a bacchanal is often less than satisfying, and who would know better than a famous musician?
Drake’s not mad at the woman he’s speaking to, he’s just imagining her life, wondering if she’s happy, perhaps regretting dragging her into the circles she now inhabits.
Perhaps there’s a future for her there! Perhaps she’s happy there!
Certainly, and I’m not disputing that she is.
But at the same time, there’s a meditative sadness to the vacuity of sadness in Drake’s music, and I think it’s a useable sadness. It helps tease out some definition on broader psychic structures that lie at the root of our ability to be hypocrites, to accumulate more than we need, to focus on the future instead of the present.
To merely condemn Drake, rather than rescuing a productive perspective on his work, I think may miss out on this important reading.
