When we last saw superstar rap mogul Aubrey Drake Graham at Bridgestone Arena, his platinum-selling Views was streaming in record numbers. It was 2016, and he was continuing a nearly decade-long rise, carefully riding the line between relevance and overexposure. This year, however, we saw the first noticeable stumble in Drake’s previously infatigable stride. His highly publicized beef with a fellow veteran MC, Pusha T, escalated to a fever pitch, dramatically altering the context of Drake’s new album Scorpion and leaving a mark on his carefully cultivated brand.
Drake operates more like a subscription service than your standard album-cycle artist. His post-Views releases leaned into pleasing fans. 2017’s More Life, which he described as a “playlist” as opposed to a mixtape or an album, yielded the infectious ballad “Passionfruit” and went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200. January 2018’s Scary Hours (a two-song release marketed as an EP) hit another home run with “God’s Plan.” The music video, in which Drizzy gives away stacks of cash and participates in other altruistic activities, proved the man had plenty of viral magic left in him after “Hotline Bling.”
In May, Drake’s successful streak faltered when Scorpion single “I’m Upset” dropped the same week as Pusha T’s brutal diss track “Infrared.” In the track, Pusha fires off accusations of inauthenticity at Drake; he also reignites his long-running rivalry with Cash Money Records, painting Drake’s mentor Lil Wayne as washed up. Drake clapped back with the stern-but-civil “Duppy Freestyle,” which seemed like little more than a publicity stunt, given that Scorpion was due to drop the next month. Then, Pusha took things from zero to 100 on May 29 with “The Story of Adidon,” which succeeded where no foe had before: It put a sizable chink in the hitherto bulletproof armor around Drake’s public persona.
Released with a recontextualized 2007 promotional photo of Drake in blackface as its cover, “The Story of Adidon” alludes to 2017 rumors — which turned out to be true — that Drake secretly fathered a child named Adonis with former adult film actress Sophie Brussaux. Pusha describes Drake as a deadbeat dad, waiting to make this information public until it could be useful in promoting a shoe line (called Adidon) that Drake was rumored to be working on with Adidas. Scorpion producers tell Rolling Stone that “March 14,” one of several tracks on the sprawling double album that sounds like a response to “Adidon,” was finished before Pusha released his track. There’s only limited concrete evidence (Jay-Z’s reference to the June 18 death of rapper XXXtentacion in “Talk It Up”) that some tracks were recorded between “Adidon” and Scorpion’s release on June 29. In any case, the least savory parts of Scorpion seem even less appealing after Pusha’s critique.
The pre-release single “I’m Upset” found Drake pledging his devotion to bachelorhood and reaffirming his long-standing aversion to paternity. Grimace-inducing lines like “I can’t go 50/50 with no ho” are countered on cuts like “8 out of 10,” though it feels like the rapper is making a last-minute dash for the high road: He’s settling into his “role as the good guy,” kissing his son on the head as a kiss-off to would-be haters. On “Emotionless,” Drake describes the self-obsessed social media universe that has kept his career skyrocketing as a dark and unsatisfying substitute for reality: “I wasn’t hiding my kid from the world / I was hiding the world from my kid,” he insists. Scorpion closes with the aforementioned “March 14,” a rambling open letter to Adonis. Despite problematic lines like “the first DNA test we ever celebrated,” the track reinforces Drake’s endearing vulnerability.
Drake is a walking cultural event and a one-man meme machine, and seeing him make a gaffe was a guilty pleasure for some. But it’s even more satisfying to watch an entertainer of his caliber handle the pitfalls of fame (about which he’s rapped so often) by doing what he does best: entertaining. Most of Scorpion’s intimidating 90-minute run is a surprisingly easy listen. The OVO Sound production team dials back the restless sonic exploration of the past few years and returns to form with more streamlined structures and inventively flipped samples, making for a much more consistent listen than anything the man has released since 2015’s surprise mixtape If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late. Scorpion broke first-day streaming records on Spotify and Apple Music, and it was the first album (by any artist) since Views to spend four or more weeks following its release at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
By the time the Kiki Challenge (the Instagram-born dance craze inspired by the Scorpion single “In My Feelings”) became the kind of viral epidemic that keeps parents awake at night, “The Story of Adidon” had faded from our collective browser cache. All the same, by turning Drake’s monolithic brand on its ear, Pusha T might have done his adversary a solid. The looming threat of fatherhood is one of many juvenile themes in Drake’s repertoire critics have long called on him to retire, and his new perspective on Scorpion is one he can’t convincingly retreat from. Being a single father isn’t exactly edgy, but neither is being a 31-year-old strip-club philanthropist.
And let’s face it: Drake’s penchant for corny punch lines suggests he’s probably better at dad jokes than diss tracks.
