volume 145 - it's all a blur

have you heard of drake?

memes of the week 🤠

i wonder if he still has his gear

hiphopdx

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this the look the bouncer gives you while he checks if your face matches your ID

we need Tanner’s take expeditiously

*gulps*

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happy Tuesday y’all :)

today is all about Drake. he’s omnipresent in mainstream culture whether you love him or hate him

i’m an “old” fan. “Best I Ever Had” was my Myspace profile song (if you remember those). which is wild because there are kids that only know his recent stuff

(yup, i’ve become the oldhead i would complain about when i was younger 🥲)

i got the chance to see him live in Austin last week, so this volume will be half concert review / half 30k foot view on what makes Drake Drake

his “no facial hair, no gym” phase was *wild* in retrospect lmao

this week’s playlist will be a favorite song from each of his albums, a feature, and a loosie. his discography is so massive that it’s just hard to pick just a few. but god gave me his hardest battle and i was up for the challenge 🫡

this week’s music ⤵️

the show was everything i wanted and more 😌

i didn’t realize how serious knowing the set list beforehand can be for certain fans. it was floating around online but i didn’t want to partake. i’d rather be surprised instead of validating the script like i’m a tax auditor

i don’t want to know everything. maintaining the mystery keeps life interesting :)

his discography is so deep he’s of course going to miss some tracks but he did perform a deep cut (if it can be even called that for an artist this big lmao) for each stop:

akademiks

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he opened with “Look What You’ve Done” and i damn near cried. he let the sample rock for a bit as he entered the arena like a WWE wrestler:

wordonrd

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once he got to the stage, he was reading to a hologram of his younger self!! like wth. i could tell it was a real person underneath but people still don’t know how it works:

wordonrd

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Complex did an investigation and it’s some kid from Texas who they somehow displayed Drake’s face over. he gets to be front and center for every show lmao

how did they find this kid? does he get paid enough? why is Drake gatekeeping this tech??

after that, he reminded everyone why he’s such a good performer. he’s done this for so long that he knows how to work a crowd. utilizing the whole stage, letting the audience sing out popular parts of his songs, his breath control, and even all the corny shit for his stage design:

it’s exactly what you think it is (via @HipHopDX)

it’s hard to describe but trust me: he had these horny ass laser-pointing robots playing off each other hahaha

at one point, he took a page out of a pastor’s playbook and took a break from the show so everyone next to each other could intro themselves and shake hands lol

one live performance did convert me on a song he released recently. when he dropped “Search & Rescue” earlier this year, it was such a letdown. with BNYX on production, i thought it was gonna be a banger

but y’all, when i saw this song live it was hella ducking good!! once i realized what song it was, i was on my “comeeeee anddd rescueeee meeee” til i lost my voice lmao

my absolute favorite part was when he did house versions of his afrobeat songs. i was in heaven. it was everything i love in one wrapped and tucked nice n neat like a lil burrito

i’ve been thinking about how to sum up the Drake experience and landed on this:

with his acting background, he’s perfected the ability to code switch across generations, backgrounds, and sounds

think about it for a second. he has turnup songs, turndown, jersey club, plugg, london drill, bachata (he has a song with Romeo Santos lmao), and favela funk??:

(still waiting for him to take on Detroit rap lmao)

he might not execute them all 100% well, but he’s the gateway for his fanbase to go deeper into those genres. just like how he’s the gateway to rap / r&b for the general audience (e.g. “i don’t listen to rap but i listen to Drake” crowd)

he’s so embedded in mainstream culture that people feel like they need to have a strong opinion one way or another. we don’t need to have opinions on everything let alone be contrarian just for the sake of it. we like what we like and we keep it moving!

in the end, it was all worth my time and money. i’m a big believer in guaranteeing the experience you want and i don’t regret going at all

my bank account mad as hell but no IG video, live album, etc. can make up for what i witnessed

memories are priceless ❤️‍🔥

- claudio / claud / @offballscreen

6’2 meets 6’1