It's hard to watch Drake fight with paternity on "Scorpion".



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Drake has been safe for a long time. Throughout his career he has consciously built one of the world's largest rap parachutes. He proved that he was one of the greatest adepts of popular culture, inspiring the general public by adopting pop as a vernacular, borrowing from the many musical traditions of the global black diaspora, and generally folding the parts of his personality that are not quite as cool in his overall character. That's the main reason why, every time he's had the opportunity to talk, he's never come out with scars. Even after Pusha T gave it a month ago with "The Story of Adidon", there is still no real way for Drake to fail . At this point, he is sufficiently reassured that, commercially, he will probably find himself at the top of the food chain until he wants to go back or back. to quit.

Although he transcends commercially hip-hop, any disciple midway through his career knows that he is jostling for respect in a genre that, according to many, leaves little leeway for someone like him – non-American, perceived as privileged. , painfully cheesy sometimes – to not only enter, but to thrive against all odds. But Pusha T, a schoolboy-rap-nothing-is-out-limits artist, saw the play to change the narrative and on his response to Drake's "Duppy Freestyle" he revealed Drake had spawned a son with a former adult movie actor, and kept him from the public eye. According to Push, not only was Drake a father, but an absent father. With the diss, lines like Drake's "I could never have a child and still be here kiddin" round "of More Life " Portland "started to take a different meaning and to appear hypocritical.

In the following month, fans waited for a response from Drake, allegedly banned by defenseman and mentor J Prince. But on his last album Scorpion instead of continuing to fight with Push, Drake was forced to talk about a new part of his life that seems to be the source of discomfort, of Embarrassment and suffering.

Drake mentions his son and the reasons for not revealing it a few times on Side A and Side B's excessively long album – but most references to his child come in the form of nerdy punchlines that get feel emotionally distant. On "8 Out of 10" he insists: "The only deadbeats are the ones I rap." On "Emotionless", one of the albums of the album, he insists: "I did not hide my child from the world, I hid the world to my child", mentioning that he wanted to protect himself from the comments that people could have about his son on social networks.It's right.But it's hard to read his intention.On the one hand, we do not know much about Drake's personal life Apart from the gossip and his carefully organized online personality, his articles on social media deal less with his intimate life than with promotion.On the other hand, he talked about disagreeing with his own father, broadcast the names of the government of his former outings, and began not to like to see his miserable mother in her music over the years.So, as many have speculated, Pusha T may have heard to say that Drake would reveal his son on Scorpion and used it as ammunition.

The s lines without conviction about paternity stop on the last song of Scorpio "March 14". For most of its five-minute duration, Drake's discomfort is palpable.

It breaks my mind
Single father, I hate when I hear him
I used to challenge my parents on every album
] Now I'm embarrassed to tell them that I ended up as a co-parent [19659007] Still promised to the family unit
I wanted it to be different because I went through it
But that's the hard truth now
The fairy tales are saved for the stories I'm telling you now
Neither do you want to worry about the sake of the story
Or who likes you more or who does not. is not here
Who did what to whom before being here

The song exposes Drake accepting the hard reality of being a father in a way that 's not the only one. he would never have thought possible. But more importantly, it happened in a way that he passionately wanted to avoid. "I had to accept the fact that it's not a can," he sulks at the opening of the song. He recounts that he had only been twice with his son's mother and that in his youth, his mother had told him to be careful because it was enough to miss a child for which we are not ready. In expressing this kind of victimization, he also frames his son's mother as an error that is secondary in the grand scheme of things. But there is a clear idea of ​​this plague of Drake because he reached the thirties before realizing that he had not considered his mother's advice. And now that he is a father, he is forced to revisit his injury from his own childhood to make sure that he will not put his son to the same test.

In "Fireworks", the first piece of Drake's first album Thank Me Later he introduces his father, Dennis Graham, to the world with: "My father called me knowing that I Always listening And he still has the foot out, guilt trippin '/ It's been years, though, I'm just learning to take care of it.' Drake has spent most of of his life in Toronto with his mother, periodically visiting his father in Memphis. Before his father became the lovable man, dressed noisily with the big mustache we came to know, he was a source of tension in Drake's life and music. Throughout "March 14," there is a feeling that Drake fears that the relationship he will have with his own son will suffer the same fate. Lines like "I'm here on the front line / I'm just trying to make sure I see it sometimes" and "I've got an empty cradle in my empty crib" better illustrate that.

This is an unexplored territory for an artist who, throughout his career until now, seemed to be impervious to any real evil. This is the first time that a sense of defeat is noticeable in his tone. But this is not unjustified.

Nothing can prepare you for parenting, especially when you have not planned it. There is something to be said about the shame of being a black person and recreating the broken family structure. You can go all your life so motivated by paranoia not to become a representation of a violent image, only when the household of both parents does not happen to you in your adult life – when you are supposed to be able to exercise your better judgment – shame can paralyze you. And the transcendence of race is the wish of many parents to give their children more success and stability than they had. When you grow up in a household without both parents and you have to feel as if you were the reason for their separation and the reason they disagree, it is understandable that you do not want to subject your own child to the same possibilities .

These are valid reasons for shame and suffering, reinforced by the fact that one has the impression that Drake is doing a cleaning job with his tail between his legs because Pusha T l & # 39, beat at the punch. When we look back at Drake 2018, we do not only remember Push for the only person to do real damage to the Toronto titan, but he could end up becoming an anti-hero. If it was not for him, Drake might not have felt obliged to show what he had used to hide us. Drake, the anthem of the summer, will always be cherished, but what will cement the legacy as he continues to age as a true veteran of rap, it is d & # 39; to have these difficult conversations with himself and his audience, even if they are painful.

This article was originally published on Noisey US.

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