This time last year, it seemed like Drake was down and out, struck mute by the fallout from his beef with Kendrick Lamar. But with the triple release of ICEMAN, HABIBTI, and MAID OF HONOR this summer, Canada’s most successful rapper recemented his position as one of the genre’s most beloved. That was thanks in no small part to the runaway success of “Shabang,” “Janice STFU,” and “Cheetah Print,” this summer, but I knew Drake was back for good a few weeks ago, when he announced a surprise video premiere on YouTube.
The FOMO short film was more like a compilation of music videos – The FADER staff were especially partial to Loe Shimmy and Drake dressing up as War Machine and Iron Man in the clip for “I’m Spent” (Revisit our interview with Loe about working with Drake). Drake also debuted a handful of new songs, including a few collaborations with Don Toliver, and now a few of those tracks have made their way to streaming as a deluxe edition of HABIBTI. Drake and Don Toliver’s rework of “Choosin Texas” by Ella Langley is now “Solar Eclipse;” the pair also link up with Yebba on “Cold Shoulder.” Then there’s “Classic PT2,” a solo cut that extends a fan-favorite from the original version of HABIBTI.
“QUEBEC” is the head-and-shoulders highlight from the entire batch, built around a wisp of a melody. Drake’s incessant flow seems to skip across an invisible drum pattern: when the kick drum finally pulses beneath his breathless verse, more than a minute into the song’s runtime, it pushes Drake to gently modulate his vocals, his harmonic intervals shifting as his voice grows more urgent. On its face, the lyrics of “QUEBEC” are as incorrigible, and hedonistic as any of Drake’s late-period work.
But as with ICEMAN standout “B’s On The Table,” there’s an uneasy undercurrent to his raps: “I can’t sleep without a fuckin heater in here,” he keens, the sort of melodramatic statement you’d roll your eyes at if he wasn’t singing it so passionately. “Bring you to my crib, it's a cathedral in here,” he murmurs near the end of his verse. “Dancin' in my kitchen, it's Ibiza in here.” Later, he’ll boast that his 747 plane only fits 40 people, a ludicrous ratio of seating to square footage.
It’s tempting to write all of this off as a real-estate flex, and it is. But it also seems to reveal a deep-seated paranoia, evoking the feeling of constantly checking over your shoulder whether you’re at church or the club or simply boarding a commercial flight. Partway through the drumless first half of “QUEBEC,” Drake intones, “Strange things are happening, I swear that’s the Feds.” Phantoms and Cartier skeletons aren’t the only specters haunting Aubrey Graham, but he knows how to channel the spirit.
