I was sitting alone at my Dell XPS lava brick in a half-lit office park in Los Angeles, finding newer and more inventive ways to describe the same five kinds of basketball highlights. When If You’re Reading This dropped, I was actually working the (blog) night shift. Despite If You’re Reading This not performing as well as his other albums, commercially, it has outsize cultural impact.
But only artists who are mega-superstars already can stop the Earth spinning on its axis with little to no advance warning. Worse yet, Views was limp and uninspired, where If You’re Reading This still, today, is like a shot in the arm.īy the end of 2014 Drake had picked up a head of steam with several SoundCloud one-offs that energized the spacious angst of NWTS, creating songs you could actually queue up at parties, like “0 to 100 / The Catch Up.” He’d also entered a new tier of success-the popular line on If You’re Reading This was that it fulfilled Drake’s contractual obligations with Cash Money, clearing his path to mega-superstardom. Music critic Steven Hyden described the listening experience of 2013’s desolate, deliberately paced Nothing Was the Same as “a little soft rock, even by well-established softness standards.” 2016’s Views was even more maudlin, way longer, and required you to believe that Drake was a compelling protagonist of his own mafioso story, which all led to the most tepid reception of any Drake album since his 2010 debut, Thank Me Later. The rap commentariat dubbed Take Care a classic, and it is, but Drake is often a total bummer on it, equal parts romantic entitlement and trashing-my-own-house-party dejection. It’s 17 tracks long, there’s nothing on it resembling a radio single, yet it holds together-and holds up-better than most event albums. If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late was released two days later at the stroke of midnight, and I don’t think it’s especially important whether we classify it as an “album” or a “mixtape,” although it was originally supposed to be hosted by DJ Drama. Williams was a walking bucket, in other words-wet, from everywhere suddenly, but not overly fussy or in a hurry about it. Toronto reversed a 10-point deficit, and like so many other nights in his first Sixth Man of the Year season, it felt as though Williams couldn’t miss, even though he technically only shot 50 percent. (They’d sweep Toronto in the playoffs that year.) DeMar DeRozan iced the game, but down the stretch the Raptors went to Lou Williams, who led all scorers off the bench: He walked over screens he dashed into the paint he snuck down the baseline he hit spot-up jumpers. Obviously that never materialized, but short of a brief spell in the late 2010s when Drake was beefing with Ross protege Meek Mill, the two have never failed to deliver heaters that run the gamut from bodying Chicago drill beats to imploring women to get their names tattooed as the ultimate sign of devotion.On February 11, 2015, the Washington Wizards went to Canada with hope and left with a two-point loss to the Toronto Raptors, whom they just couldn’t seem to close the gap on in the East at the time. There was even talk of a proper joint album, which Ross tentatively dubbed The YOLO Tape at the time. We all became family and it just continued to be that way.” He knew I would've gotten my shoes muddy for him. “From day one, when I met him, he was just one of them people that I really fuck with.
And he always be the young fly brother,” Ross once told me. “Whenever we get in the booth, I always play the big brother role. With Drake entering his imperial phase working on his critically acclaimed Take Care, and Ross in the midst of his own Teflon Don, the two were on similar creative peaks that yielded a lot of studio time and winning collaborations.
Their chemistry stems from the extensive time Drake spent in Ross’ native Florida, back when he lived in Miami for a spell in the early aughts. As Drake put it on The Rap Radar Podcast, they’re always on the same, unspoken wavelength-he can send Ross something soulful like “Gold Roses” or upbeat like “Money in the Grave” and get the complimentary feature he’s looking for without any direction. Drake and Rick Ross have been appearing on songs together since 2009 and making one-on-one collabs since 2011, and they bring something special out of each other-all of these songs would be counted among their best by fans. Last night, one of hip-hops most enduring duos added a new song to their oeuvre.
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