Drake season is here. The rap star released his latest album, Scorpion, early this morning and it’s a sprawling, excessive double album that will undoubtedly inspire sprawling, excessive internet debate about the rapper. And with every new Drake album comes lots of classic Drake-y lines; the kind oscillate between Instagram caption-ready bars to goofy punchlines to a severe lack of self awareness to nauseating emotional labor. Scorpion doesn’t necessarily have the corniest of Drake, but there’s still plenty of material that made listeners laugh outright out of second-hand embarrassment. Here are some of our favorite.
“I know a girl happily married ’til she puts down her phone/ I know a girl that saves pictures from places she’s flown/ to post later and make it look like she still on the go/ look at the way we live” from “Emotionless”:
Much of Scorpion centers around two things: the birth of Drake’s son … and the fact that the rapper reads mean tweets about himself. The latter often leads to moments of melancholy over how social media is seemingly poisoning people and not allowing them to enjoy life without trying to prove something to strangers, which is a thing that Drake assures the listener he has never done. A lot of “Emotionless” tries to flip the controversy of him hiding his child into a positive, saying that actually he was doing his child a favor because the outside world and media are “poison.” It’s an extremely silly line in a song full of them and the fact that he only uses women as his examples of “social media obsession” highlight his continued fixation on what women do on their phones.
“I’m not with the ra-ra, I am a Dada” from “Mob Ties”
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For one, “Dada” is short for “Don Dada,” Jamaican patois for “crime lord.” (There was no way that Drake wasn’t going to have Jamaican slang and references on this thing.) “Dada” is also a nomenclature for “father,” which Drake is trying to insist he’s happy to admit he is now.
“My uncle tryna change my energy with stones and crystals/ but it’s gon’ take more than that for me to control my issues” from “Sandra’s Rose”
Drake raps about being temperamental often and will remark about people in his life trying to save him from having such negative attitudes. On More Life, The song “Can’t Have Everything” had a voicemail from his mother expressing concern about his anger. Not to mention that it’s fun to imagine Drake’s uncle trying to save him via the power of crystals.
“You say I led you on, but you followed me/ I follow one of your friends, you unfollow me/ then you block them so they can’t see you likin’ someone just like me/ I expected more from you honestly” from “Summer Games”
Drake is “relatable” in a culture that seems to value that a great deal. Here he is thriving in the pettiness of college-level dating rituals of the social media age. He’s 31.
“I need to know how the new nigga you got does the same thing I do for a living but is way less wavy” from “Jaded”
It hurts to be one of the most successful artists of a generation and still play second-fiddle.
“I want my baby to have your eyes, I’m going against my own advice/ should I do New York? I can’t decide, Fashion week is more your thing than mine” from “Finesse”
There was no way this album was going to end without heavy allusions to Drake’s alleged relationship with Rihanna. The two aren’t on the best of terms, and Drake makes references to Fashion Week and not being able to be around her in public. Creepily suggesting he wants his kids to have (hypothetically) her eyes is just another example of Drake’s total lack of self-awareness about what he projects into the world.
“Your silence is drivin’ me up the wall, up the wall/ I cannot tell if you’re duckin’ calls or missin’ calls” from “After Hours”
Drake’s neurosis is real–he cares too much. It’s easy to imagine him rapping this line 10 minutes after not hearing back on his last text to some girl.
“I always need a glass of wine by sundown/ I always get your ass over here somehow/ I hope that the apocalypse is the only thing that doesn’t come now” from “Final Fantasy”
Drake is not good at being sexy–the production on his music can sound sexy, but he basically never pulls off sounding sexy in a verse. Here he clunkily tries to fit an explosive double entendre into his “smooth, bedroom” record—especially awkawrd since the apocalypse feels like a guaranteed bet now more than ever.
“This the first positive DNA we ever celebrated” and “October baby for irony sake, of course I got this 11 tatted for somebody, now it’s yours” from “March 14”
To be fair to Drake, he’s new to being a dad. We can only hope that, over time, he will learn how to say actually loving things to his child … ones that aren’t a reminder that their existence was unplanned and completely caught their father by surprise.
