(This is often done clumsily.) Generally, the woman is celebrated for having some careful balance of “street” and “class.” She can have “brains” so long as she also give “brain.” The rapper sometimes make an attempt at convincing said woman that her mind is just as sexy as her body. Blame it on the tastemakers.ĭestined for Top 40 radio at the moment mixing ends, the Song for Women always has a nice-sounding hook and lots of compliments about a particular woman.
DRAKE BELIEVE ME GENIUS FULL
On “Buried Alive,” Lamar raps in a halting flow about giving up his old narrative to “go and get some head off the strength of my music.” He remembers having drinks with Drake in Toronto before he’d signed a deal and talking “casually about the industry and how the women be the tastemakers for the shit we making.”Īfter wrestling with this idea, Lamar decides at the end of the track that he’ll give in to the industry’s needs: “So dig a shovel full of money, full of power, full of pussy, full of fame/And bury yourself alive.” The song, “ Buried Alive,” is a brief addendum to “Marvin’s Room,” Drake’s ode to the desperate drunk-dial and all of the bitches in his old phone. It’s not Drake who acknowledges it, but Kendrick Lamar, a rapper from Compton who just released his first major album, Section.80, last July, and who is currently opening for Drake on tour.
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Surprisingly, there’s one moment on Take Care that actually addresses the Song For Women, and the way women are treated in albums like Take Care. “The biggest thing about that song,” Drake said of “Best I Ever Had” just a few years ago, “is that a lot of women come up to me and say, ‘That’s my song, because it really makes me feel special.’” Sometimes, he invites one of the women up onstage so that he can kiss her. If there is one thing that no one does better than he does, it’s the Song For Women.ĭrake writes songs like “ Best I Ever Had” and “ Fancy.” At concerts, he uses lengthy interludes to point at female fans in the audience and say what he likes about each of them: Her pink shirt, her smile, her poster. & Rakim’s “ What’s On Your Mind” or ATCQ’s whimsical “ Bonita Applebum” for a basic tutorial in the craft - but Drake is just especially good at it. It’s hard to think of a current rapper who’s gotten as much out of this tradition as Drake, the 25 year old who is “hip-hop’s current center of gravity.” The Song For Women is not a new staple in hip hop - go back to LL Cool J’s breathy “ I Need Love,” Eric B. It’s called “Make Me Proud” - and it’s his requisite Song for Women. And, of course, there is one song on the album he reserves to sing directly to the ladies. On it, Drake talks about many women, and sometimes a single woman, and all the ways they’ve hurt and mistreated the rapper-singer from Toronto. Aubrey “Drake” Graham released his sophomore album, Take Care, the other week.