D.R.A.M. got a big boost recently when Beyonce posted an Instagram video of herself dancing to “Cha Cha,” one of the highlights from the MC’s #1EpicSummer mixtape. The Virginia rapper recently annotated several songs for Genius, including his signature track. “I was out in the LES when I got word that the Queen herself posted an Instagram to MY record,” he wrote. “Not anyone else’s, but mine! I lost my mind to the point where I literally stood on the closest bench and hassled random people walking down the street, being like, ‘HEY, BEYONCÉ LIKES TO CHA CHA!!!’ They looked at me like I was trippin’. Oh I was trippin’ alright. Thank you so much Beyoncé.” (After he finished tripping, D.R.A.M. later added his own verse to Beyonce and Drake's "Can I.")
D.R.A.M.’s other annotations suggest that he has powerful emotional reactions to music. For Bilal’s “Sometimes,” he wrote,” About the 100th time I listened, I was going through a situation with a girl who fucked with my emotions. I threw shit, fucked up my room, and bit the pillow hard. Then at the end it just made me feel like, ‘Damn, what have I done? I just fucked all this up.’”
But the effect of Bilal on D.R.A.M. pales next to the impact of Parliament: “I first heard [(You’re A Fish & I’m A) Water Sign] in 2008," he writes. "I was just high as a bitch. I don’t know why I was just sitting at my computer desk and I had this little bullshit subwoofer but I had it on repeat for like three hours. I want to say I shed a tear—sometimes music makes me cry, call me whatever you want. Movies, too. But this shit touched me. It isn’t some change-your-life type of shit. It doesn’t have any motivational message. It is literally about fucking. But it’s just the scope of the music, it sounds so underwater.”
Read the rest of the annotations here.
