The Middle of Nowhere #2

Welcome back with another installment of the column. It feels good to write these. There’s a lot to unpack so let’s start with the thought experiment I still haven’t quite cracked the code on, revolving around one of my favorite writing topics: Drake.

Honestly, Nevermind & The Tug of War of ‘Vibes’

Drake is brilliant and bafflingly lazy. He’s one of the most gifted pop artists we’ve had in the past decade, releasing some of the most stunning, lovingly crafted pop and R&B songs to grace mainstream audiences. It’s obvious when he gives a fuck; songs have actual structure and texture that indicate genuine craftsmanship and tangible thought — whatever that looks like for one of the biggest artists in the world at least. Take “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” so strikingly simple but assembled with loops and soft tones that carousel around the brain for hours. Drake has spent a lifetime mastering the aquatic effect in his music; spotlighting real emotional distance that give the song some semblance of weight, light and refreshing enough as to not overbear, and effortlessly catchy.

There’s also the inverse in evaluating the Drake experience. His music can be maddeningly insecure and far too concerned with the wants and expectations from his audience. It leads to vague nothings signaling ‘Real Hip-Hop’ without ever putting in the legwork to say anything of real distinction. This is most evident in his rap songs, too hesitant to ever stray from mid-tempo marathons accompanied by hollow samples, hinting at nostalgia. It’s Drake’s bread and butter and it’s not even necessarily a bad thing in a vacuum. The best way to assess it is through a comparison. “The Ride” is shouldered by a suffocating vocal loop from The Weeknd as Drake laments about the repercussions of fame and how his audience could never empathize with his situation no matter how much he raps about it. It should be pretty grating in theory but there’s a palpable paranoia shrouded in his lavish flexes. By the end of the song, he acknowledges that these frustrations are the byproduct of the journey he’s determined to see through until the end. Fast forward a decade later, songs like “Champagne Poetry” and “7AM on Bridle Path” should expand upon what the journey has been like, how the perspective compares and contrasts, if he has any epiphanies or wisdom to impart through more experience. But the details are all but bypassed. As long as it signals importance through indistinct writing, his job is done.

These are the plights of the hesitant Drake fan; highly aware of the faults he has a thin-skinned artist but forever crossing their fingers on the hope he stumbles upon genuine brilliance. It’s easy to diagnose the various career arcs that inform the man behind these songs and albums. It’s much more interesting to assess the qualities that make a truly great Drake record. When he’s not saddled with crushing expectations, not creating as a means to fill out a quota, his music is significantly truer to himself. It’s why the projects he’s too anxious to label his best work as albums; they’re mixtapes, playlists, vibes, whatever he wants to call it. It’s not One of Them Ones™. It’s a shame. When Drake is the most free to create, he delivers his truest, most interesting work. Honestly, Nevermind feels like his most honest work in terms of what he wants to create.

I understand why someone would groan at Honestly, Nevermind. It’s crushingly mid-tempo and not especially colorful, trapped in fluorescent blues and drowned in its aquatic tones.“Texts Go Green” is strikingly minimal for its 5 minute runtime. This wouldn’t be an issue if the song had parts. But it largely meanders in its space as Drake resists against different tonal changes or vocal alterations. As jarring as his falsetto is on “Falling Back,” it can at least claim it has distinct sections to carry its 4 and a half minutes. It’s why I hesitate to call this a House album as I’ve seen it labeled. It’s kind of a Dance album in the same way you drunkenly sway your hips in the club at 2am. Honestly, Nevermind is hardly some new exercise in House music, even if it has some of its elements. Rather, its components act as new equipment in the larger Drake experience. The album isn’t unlike anything we’ve heard from Drake before; he’s hinted at these ideas for years, whether its OVO remixes of SBTRKT, mingling in dancehall, or sampling Moodymann on “Passionfruit.”

Perhaps that’s the key issue with the album: we’ve heard it before. It doesn’t try to be House music. It’s merely some vague form of dance under the Drake umbrella. You could argue he’s been focus-testing this album since he signed Majid Jordan. And yet, I’m still absolutely enthralled by Honestly, Nevermind. Perhaps something so familiar can be so strikingly bold because of the alternatives he has provided. Regardless, the album contains some of his best pop songwriting, drenched in loneliness and tons of tequila. Drake has spent his entire career trying to convey the void he clearly feels and the emotions that spawn from within it. Where he fails in specific writing, he amplifies through extreme distance. While he often sings literally about the space between him and the woman he’s lusting for, the subtext clearly indicates that he’s doing anything to spark some semblance of a connection to find a form of empathy. “Passionfruit” sees Drake lamenting the miles between them and how it’s tearing their relationship apart. At some point, he just gives up, “don’t pick up the pieces, just leave them for now, they keep falling apart.”

Honestly, Nevermind follows this thread of longing heartache on songs like “Flight’s Booked.” Here, Drake orbits around a Floetry sample, lamenting how long it’s been since he’s connected with his muse. There’s palpable desperation in Drake’s voice — something he sells really well — that not only has it been so long, but that it might be the last time. I’ve called his vague genre of Drake aquatic several times now. It’s the only descriptor that truly makes sense; not necessarily galactic, that insinuates some level of euphoria or at least a lack of weight. Rather, Drake frequently drowns in the pool of self pity, colored by various blues resembling chlorine. I recall my good friend Nadine Smith when she compared Drake to Phil Collins: moody, melodramatic, and pretty icy sometimes. Cutting through all of Drake’s egomaniacal noise, you see despondency and desperation.

Honestly, Nevermind is a battle for supremacy between genuine emotionality and Drake branded Vibes™ clash. To call this album a risk would be giving it way more credit than it rightfully deserves. You can see his worst impulses creep in. But the liberty to simply create is extremely contagious. His best songs are never created with such an obvious obligation to produce, they come from a genuine place. Honestly, Nevermind is the first time that’s happened across a full project since If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late. Gone are the burdens of attaching singles, micromanaging rollouts. It plays as an album that was created as purely as a megastar could create. If it yields such catchy, atmospheric results, why make him go back to the Formula™?

The Cut

My dear friend Dylan Green gave me a name for the quick hits section of the column, God bless him, I would’ve agonized over a title for months. Anyways, here’s some stuff I’ve been thinking about:

• I hate to say it man but this Young Nudy album, EA Monster, is kind of disappointing? Someone called him Gucci Mane in space which is pretty spot on but the beats feel super compressed here. Nudy is RAPPING though.
• “Ridin’ with a dog and a stick like a blind person” has been swirling through my brain for the past two weeks. Some outrageous lyrics from GrindHard E over a sample of maybe my favorite Stevie Wonder song.

• Summrs’ Fallen Raven is a bloated mess but I was at least interested at some of the takes at ’14 Chief Keef and old Gangsta Grillz tapes on songs like “Swing Ya Pole” and “Clear Da Bidness”
• The new Calvin Harris album sounds like a hostage situation. Grooves have never been stiffer. Halsey on “Stay With Me” sounds like she’s trying to lure people into a cult. Not proud to admit that Charlie Puth sounds great on “Obsessed.” No way that’s the same guy who did “See You Again.”
• I was generally skeptical of most Odd Future guys when I was in middle school because I thought that group was for a bunch of edgy, white weirdos. The new Domo Genesis album, Intros, Outros & Interludes, has me ready to do a big deep dive. “Victories & Losses” feels like the cloth in an old Nissan Altima.
• I just find it deeply amusing that EST Gee released a song titled “Love is Blind” and it’s still about murder and drugs. You’d think this run would get exhausting but he’s still bulldozing songs like he’s got something to prove.
• Additionally, “Lurkin,” the song Gee did with Mozzy sounds like they set a church on fire, that shit is insane to me.
• I was worried PinkPantheress was going to be absolutely absorbed by The Machine™ but I’m very happy to confirm she’s got one of my favorite singles of the year with “Picture in my mind.”
• It’s a shame I got COVID at the time of writing this because I’m playing a ton of Larry June and he just makes me want to get up and go get it. Some truly fantastic “Rise & Grind” and smoothie propaganda.
• Lord Finesse’s “Hip 2 Da Game” has been the ultimate cruising song lately. I could step out in some old sweats and a baggy college tee and I’ll feel like the flyest guy alive.

• Bilal’s “Soul Sista” makes me wanna start frying some fish or some shit. Or clean the whole house. Some special occasion, ‘we got company coming over’ kind of activities. A perfect song.
• I watched White Chicks for the first time in years. It’s definitely not nearly as amusing to me as it was when I was like 7 years old. But there’s still some incredibly funny, occasionally thoughtful jokes buried in between farts and Rosie O’Donnell jokes. More than anything, it makes me wish I got to try a Sprite remix. So much product placement of foods I wanted to eat again. The mid 2000s is a fever dream, take me back immediately.
• In The Mood for Love would’ve been an existential nightmare if I was in a different mood. That movie is agonizing. Heavy doesn’t feel like the right word for it but it definitely lumbers over the film and its reflection on lost love and, more importantly, lost time. It’s definitely an intimate, romantic movie, but it’s deeply misleading going into it expecting a regular romance.
• I learned Shaq was affiliated with Main Street Mafia Crips during his time in LA. My main takeaway is that I can’t imagine being 7 foot, 350 pounds getting down with a gang. Some point, you have to be too big to roll like that. Bringing too much attention.

That’s the column for the week. Thanks for reading, if you made it this far and you’re interested in supporting, follow me on Twitter @calebcat23. If you want to have direct influence on the column, I’ll let you pick out a couple quick hits to cover on The Cut for $5. If you want me to write something more long-form like I did with Drake and Beyoncé, I’ll let you pick what I write about for something more (still figuring out a price there, this all comes with the caveat that you don’t have me covering stupid shit in long-form lol.) I could use the help paying this car off and nothing would be a greater incentive to write. If you’re interested, DM me on Twitter, we’ll see what’s up. Other than that, I will be back with another installment of the column in a week or two.