The Spotlights Makes You Nervous

Drake “Karaoke”

Hip hop is a genre full of totally reprehensible people, but it usually doesn’t matter because the rappers are charming, funny and compelling. Drake is not any of those things. On the scale of things, he’s not a bad dude, but he may be the least likeable rapper I’ve ever encountered: Dull, uncool, excruciatingly whiney. If you listen to Thank Me Later from start to finish, it is obvious that hanging out with this guy would be kind of a nightmare. At his best, he comes off like a character in the sort of fiction where the point is that everyone is a horrible, narcissistic douchebag. At his worst, he just seems like he’s out of reality television.

Drake mainly writes about being uncomfortable with the fame and money he worked hard to attain and being heartbroken by women. Most of the songs on the record owe a huge stylistic and thematic debt to Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreak, though he doesn’t come close to that record’s mixture of vulnerability, humor, ambiance, and artistic risk-taking. Kanye is no less petulant, but he’s a character. He bitches and moans, but he can get you on his side. Listening to Drake drone on can be like getting cornered by a self-absorbed bore at a party. The mystifying thing is how in spite of his unpleasant persona, lack of charisma, and mediocre talent as a rapper and singer, I still basically like a lot of his music, and the album works as a whole. How does this make sense?

“Karaoke” makes sense because the tone of the piece is plaintive and shell-shocked enough to mitigate Drake’s icky sense of entitlement. It sounds cold, but very human. He’s trying to figure out what’s going on in his life, to suss out what is “real”. The basic emotion of the song and the record as a whole is always up front, even if Drake articulates himself in a way that makes him come across as an ass: He just wants to feel grounded. We all wanted to feel grounded, right? Sure, you might make this emotional connection in spite of Drake, but it’s still there in the music.

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