After a turbulent month, the release of Drake’s Scorpion feels unlike any previous project from the artist who’s been on top of the game for the better part of a decade. There’s more at stake this time around. Hip-hop fans may have expected a long back and forth battle between Drake and Pusha-T, but after Push unleashed “The Story of Adidon,” Drake refrained from responding. Drake’s silence sets the stage for what should be a telling opener on Scorpion. Will he address the accusations of hiding a child? Even if it’s not a full diss track, will he address the Pusha situation at all? Only time will tell, but the past has shown that he’s quick to air out his personal vendettas, and more, on a project’s first song.
Ever since So Far Gone catapulted him to stardom in 2009, each of Drake’s projects has used the intro as a moment for introspection—streams of consciousness where he airs out his current state of mind and telegraphs his next moves. Songs like “Fireworks,” “Over My Dead Body” and “Legend” revealed where Drake believed he was in his career arc. Scorpion is likely to include a song in that vein, although we’ll have to wait and see exactly what he has to say.
To understand how this musical strategy evolved for Drake, you have to think back to 2009. Heading into the release of So Far Gone, then 22-year-old Drake was still ironing out the kinks of his signature sound. This was not only a vital moment in his own artistic development, but a transitional period in hip-hop as a whole. Months prior, Kanye West released 808s and Heartbreak which Drake, and many other artists, cite as a major influence. While creating So Far Gone, Drake was confident in his skill set but still struggling with uncertainty about his future in the music industry. “They tryna shoot down my flight before it lands,“ he opines on the track.
In a 2009 interview with Complex Drake actually laid out the intro strategy he’d come to use time and time again, saying, “It starts with this monologue, ‘Lust for Life,’ of me crying out in my head the things that I never say. The things that I was just thinking, that was my mindset.” Later during the same interview, he elaborated further on where he was at the time. “Not only was I confused about my career, I was also in a very destructive, sort of exhausting relationship with a female and it was just a bad headspace for me to be in. So that’s where the tape starts.”
Looking back on “Lust For Life,” that confidence undercut by uncertainty comes across clearly:
The game got these old hand prints on it
But I'ma be the one to pour cement on it
Uh, and start over
And show up in a Margiela tux, I don’t really give a fuck
And we only gettin older
So what I tend to do is to think of today as the past
It’s funny when you comin in first
But you hope that you last
You just hope that it last
So Far Gone is truly the beginning of Drizzy’s mainstream rise. The balance of confidence and vulnerability he shows on “Lust For Life” effectively set the tone for his career.
Following the massive success of So Far Gone, and his first hit “Best I Ever Had,” anticipation for Drizzy’s first proper album was high. On June 15, 2010, he dropped his major label debut Thank Me Later. Thematically the album serves as Drake’s introduction to fame, containing a handful of cuts about how he was adjusting to his new life, along with hits like “Miss Me” and “Find Your Love” that highlighted his versatility as an artist. Drake used the intro “Fireworks” to break down his concerns with his newfound superstardom. Picking up right where he left off on the So Far Gone EP cut “Fear”—where he wondered if having money would change his life—Drake opened the song rapping:
Money just changed everything
I wonder how life without it would go
From the concrete who knew that a flower would grow
Looking down from the top and it’s crowded below
My fifteen minutes started an hour ago
Truth over fame, you know I respect the blatant shit
When I hear ‘em talking, I just don’t know what to make of it
Hate is so familiar to me, I’m slowly embracing it
Doesn’t come natural, bear with me, it could take a bit
Drake didn’t shy away from the difficulties he was facing adjusting to his new status. On “Fireworks,” everything is on the table—he touches on self-doubts, issues with his mother and father, and even alludes to his relationship with Rihanna. Drake was starting to become a household name, but you could hear that the fame was taking a toll on him.
Just over a year later, when Take Care came out, Drake was in a completely different headspace. He wasn’t just happy to be one of rap’s newly minted stars, he was already gunning for the throne. Determined to not fall victim to the “sophomore slump” he got back in the studio and made some of his best work to date. It took him a few months, but he adjusted to the spotlight. Instead of the worrisome “Lust for Life"—where he wondered if his career would even last—“Over My Dead Body” finds him bragging that he “killed everybody in the game last year” and pondering what he’d be doing in 10 years.
In a Q&A with Stereogum a week before the album’s release, Drake detailed how his approach to this project was different from his previous work. “I’ve embraced the position I’m in. I said something on Thank Me Later like ‘I wish I wasn’t famous.’ That hurt me because I realized months later I don’t feel that way. All my friends are happy. I’m rich. I can do whatever I want. I can go wherever I want. I made opportunities for people…If you don’t feel me, fuck you, take care. That’s basically what It’s about.” That mindstate was the start of a new trend—Drake asserting himself and his position in rap. On “Over My Dead Body” he asked:
Are these people really discussing my career again?
Asking if I’ll be going platinum in a year again?
Don’t I got the shit the world wanna hear again?
Don’t Michael Jordan still got his hoop earring in?
Having firmly established himself with Take Care in 2011, Drake kept his foot on the gas in 2012 by featuring on a number of records that dominated the charts before returning to solo work with 2013’s Nothing Was The Same. He kicked off his third studio album with the 40-produced “Tuscan Leather” where he highlighted how seemingly effortless this stretch of his career was:
Comin' off the last record, I’m gettin' 20 million off the record
Just to off these records, nigga that’s a record
I’m livin' like I’m out here on my last adventure
Past the present when you have to mention
This is nothin' for the radio, but they’ll still play it though
Cause it’s that new Drizzy Drake, that’s just the way it go
The tone of the project was one of Drake “bossing up” and making it clear to other artists that he was going to be on top for a long time. His confidence was booming and he still had his sights set on the future:
Owl chains like credentials, you know you see the necklace
My life’s a completed checklist
I’m tired of hearin' ‘bout who you checkin’ for now
Just give it time, we’ll see who’s still around a decade from now
That’s real
Still, he takes a few bars to showcase some vulnerability by rapping about his then-strained relationship with Nicki Minaj:
Not even talkin' to Nicki, communication is breakin'
I dropped the ball on some personal shit, I need to embrace it
I’m honest, I make mistakes, I’d be the second to admit it
Think that’s why I need her in my life, to check me when I’m trippin
Even as Drake dealt with the highs and lows of success, he never took a backseat. By 2014, it was clear he had the Midas touch—every song he put out was a potential hit, from features like iLoveMakonnen’s “Tuesday” to throwaway loosies like “0 To 100." On February 12, 2015—when Drake dropped If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late with no prior announcement—it was already obvious the project would be the most braggadocious release of his run. You could hear the confidence oozing through in his songs. The first track was titled “Legend”—a designation Drake gave himself that was impossible to deny. The opening lines on the mixtape effectively set the tone for the project:
I’m too good with these words, watch a nigga backtrack
All I know, if I die, I’m a mothafuckin' legend
It’s too late for my city, I’m the youngest nigga reppin'
Oh my God, oh my God If I die, I’m a legend
“Legend” was the perfect record to start with because it highlighted how he was feeling at the time, literally singing his own praises. In a 2016 sit-down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Drake spoke about why he felt it was necessary to release a project with this type of sound and content. “I just woke up one day like this is my time, this is my ting, I run this,” Drake told Lowe. “I was proud of all we had accomplished and I made that switch like yo it’s my time for however long, until I decide it’s not.”
By early 2016, when gearing up for the release of his fourth official studio album Views, he was in the midst of the most tumultuous stretch of his career. While most would say he came out victorious in his highly publicized back and forth with Meek Mill, he was still dealing with the subsequent questioning of his credentials as an MC. In response, he and his OVO team began embracing the “us against the world” mentality, exemplified by the promotional single “Summer Sixteen.” Evidently feeling that some friends had betrayed his trust, he channeled these emotions on the Views opener “Keep The Family Close.”
All of my “let’s just be friends” are friends I don’t have anymore
How do you not check on me when things go wrong
Guess I should’ve tried to keep my family closer
Much closer
All of my “let’s just be friends” are friends I don’t have anymore
Guess that’s what they say you need family for
Cause I can’t depend on you anymore
Drake has acknowledged that he was an “angry yout” when he was writing Views, so “Keep The Family Close” serves as an appropriate intro. Views went on to do great commercially, earning him his first solo number one with “One Dance” and selling over one million copies it’s first-week, but the project was met with lukewarm responses, as fans and critics were unsatisfied.
The critical reception may be why when Drake dropped his next project, 2017’s More Life, he made it clear that it was a “playlist” and not an album. He told DJ Semtex “I didn’t want people to say this is my next album. Views was my album. This is something that, after Views, I was just inspired. I wanted to keep the music flowing.” Perhaps Drake was unsatisfied with how Views was received, or maybe he was still hungry and felt that he had more to prove. Either way, he was clearly still angry and agitated. On More Life opener “Free Smoke,” he didn’t just want to beat his competition, he wanted them to move far away or just get buried:
I wanna move to Dubai
So I don’t never have to kick it with none of you guys
I didn’t listen to Hov on that old song
When he told me pay it no mind
I get more satisfaction outta goin' at your head
And seein' all of you die
And I seen a lot of you die
“Free Smoke” is a culmination of where Drake has been headed the past few years. He’s no longer happy to be here or wondering about his future like he was on “Lust For Life.” Nor is he even interested in engaging with his competition like he was on “Over My Dead Body” or even “Tuscan Leather.” Instead, he’s secure in his status and wants to create even more space between him and anyone you might compare him to.
That outlook is likely to show up on Scorpion when it drops this week. Despite the Pusha beef, Drake’s momentum is still strong. He’s dominated 2018 with two No. 1 singles, “God’s Plan” and “Nice For What”—the latter of which is still a Top 10 hit even after the Pusha disses. Still, the beef puts the album’s rollout in a different context. It will be exciting to see what kind of music he has in store and more specifically, how he sets the tone. Expect him to do it early on.
