C-Styles
Superstar
if the "Wu-tang forever" song doesn't have HALF the lyricism of "I bomb atomically Socrates' philosophies and hypothesis" then He owes us an apology!!
Drake Talks “Wu- Tang Forever” & “Pound Cake” ft. Jay Z w/ Billboard
- Thread starter BastardChild
- Start date
Kendrick Llama
Rookie
Gonna have to throw Wu Tang discography in the recycle bin and anything else associated with them after this drops
I hate that kind of "lyricism"
Real
Location: Under Your Skin
all the time2 Jay verses on a Drake track
God is good
The real question is....
Did the Wu sign off to let him to do this?
Did the Wu sign off to let him to do this?
C-Styles
Superstar
why would you hate the multi's??
Because its obvious that its just that "multis"
And for the sake of accuracy lets quote it right
"I bomb atomically Socrates' philosophies and hypothesis
Cant define how I be droppin dese mockeries"
This makes no sense
First off philosophies and hypothesis dont define "how"
Matta fact u cant provide definition for "how" u do something
He's just saying sht to rhyme
This is why I said I hate that type of "lyrical miracle spiritual" "lyricism"
Mannnnnn, shut the fukk up. Quote the rest of the verse and say "He's just saying sht to rhyme".Because its obvious that its just that "multis"
And for the sake of accuracy lets quote it right
"I bomb atomically Socrates' philosophies and hypothesis
Cant define how I be droppin dese mockeries"
This makes no sense
First off philosophies and hypothesis dont define "how"
Matta fact u cant provide definition for "how" u do something
He's just saying sht to rhyme
This is why I said I hate that type of "lyrical miracle spiritual" "lyricism"
How the hell you gonna over analyze one of the greatest verses in hip hop history? That verse is just genius. nikkas is funny as shyt
Full article
It's hard enough to make a hit song without wondering whether it’ll end up on the front of a hot sauce packet. But Drake can’t pretend he doesn't know that’s a possibility. The 26-year-old rapper/singer born Aubrey Graham has a knack for writing songs whose lyrics turn up in unlikely places, from Twitter hashtags to the “funny-quote-goes-here” space on Taco Bell’s Border Sauce. (For evidence of the latter, see Drake’s Instagram, username Champagnepapi.) Since he first popularized the millennial proverb and Oxford English Dictionary word of the year candidate YOLO (You Only Live Once) on the song “The Motto” two years ago, Drake has gone from being the hope of a new generation of rappers to the poet laureate of a new generation of adults. The phrase “started from the bottom” isn't just the name of his 2013 Billboard Hot 100 top 10 single: It’s shorthand for denoting triumph despite inauspicious beginnings. “No New Friends” (featuring Rick Ross and Lil Wayne), the spiritual successor to “Started From the Bottom,” is more than a club banger—the saying itself is repellent for poseurs. “I’ll be out trying to get a sandwich or something and the guy will say to me, ‘I’d give you a free drink with that, but you know, no new friends,’” Drake says with a laugh. “I swear I’m not sitting around going, ‘What’s the new meme going to be?’ But I do spend a lot of time when I'm writing, especially lately, trying to make something for people to live by. I’m trying to make anthems that are empowering to people, to find phrases that I haven’t heard before. I’m not just going to sit here and be like, ‘fukkin’ bytches, getting money!’”
As he approaches his feverishly anticipated third major-label album, Nothing Was the Same (arriving Sept. 24), Drake’s ability to affect culture is at an all time high. He’s sold 4.5 million albums since his 2010 debut, Thank Me Later, according to Nielsen Sound-Scan, and has appeared as a lead or featured artist in the top 10 of the Hot 100 a dozen times. With 10 No.1s to his name, he’s topped Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart more than any artist in history, besting even his mentor and Nothing Was the Same sparring partner Jay Z. At this year’s Grammys he won best rap album for 2011 sophomore effort Take Care, beating out elder statesmen like Nas, Rick Ross and the Roots. With all that momentum, it’s easy to see why Drake, and his tightly knit, proudly self-sufficient crew October’s Very Own, are starting to see the world as their oyster. Drake was always the brooding, introspective type, pondering the downsides of success even before he could finish boasting about achieving it. But these days, he’s more comfortable in his skin than he’s ever been before. For once he’s not anxious about finding love, or the haters, or the kind of music he wants to make. The guy who once famously sang the words “I wish I wasn't famous,” is, for the moment, happy. “There’s a lot less sort of ambient ballad moments on this album where I’m searching or longing for something,” Drake says of Nothing Was the Same. “That sentiment is gone. Now I’m just kind of like, ‘You know, I’m 26, I don’t know what the fukk else I could be doing better than this. I feel incredible about how I’m able to support my family and friends and how supportive my family and friends have been of me.’ “A lot of people get on and it’s like they’re just waiting to get more on,” he continues. “They’re always waiting for a bigger moment to come. But I’ve started to realize that this is it, this is the moment. And it reads, you know? People come up to me now and they’re like, ‘Man, you look good! You look like you’re happy.’” That inner peace has so far held up against external stressors. Drake says he’s made it a habit to ignore all commentary about him online, positive or negative. On any of the numerous occasions when another rapper tries to goad him into a public contest, he’s trying to let it roll of his shoulders. After hearing West Coast peer Kendrick Lamar’s instantly incendiary verse on Big Sean’s recent single “Control,” in which Lamar goes for the jugular of every rapper he deems a threat, including Drake, the latter says he “went about my day, went and got dinner and kept it moving.” “I didn’t really have anything to say about it,” Drake says of the verse, which has so far inspired responses from A$AP Rocky, Joey Bada$$, former Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson and too many others to count. “It just sounded like an ambitious thought to me. That’s all it was. I know good and well that Kendrick’s not murdering me, at all, in any platform. So when that day presents itself, I guess we can revisit the topic.”
Much of the energy Drake isn't spending on worrying or feuds has gone into growing his October’s Very Own movement, the nucleus of which is his native Toronto. OVO started as a crew with a blog in 2008, a platform that served as a kind of post-Hypebeast, pre-Tumblr manifestation of its members’ taste in expensive shoes and indie music. But as Drake’s career took of, so did the crew’s ambitions. In 2010 it celebrated the inaugural OVO Fest, an annual, Drake-centric summer festival in Toronto now backed by Live Nation. In the four years since its debut, the festival has drawn superstars including Kanye West, Stevie Wonder, Jay Z, Eminem, Lil Wayne, Sean “Diddy” Combs and a reunited TLC, to name a few. Last year, Drake and OVO partners Oliver El- Khatib, Drake’s co-manager, and Noah “40” Shebib, his longtime producer/engineer/confidante, took a logical next step when they signed a deal to launch OVO Sound, a new label set up at Warner Bros. Records. “We had talked about a label for years, but now is the time when it feels right,” says El-Khatib, 29. “We’re mature enough and we understand the business enough and we have the infrastructure now. It’s not so scary anymore.” A rapper of a certain stature starting a vanity label has long been a well-worn trope in the industry—Hip-Hop Mogul 101. But in Drake’s case, he had already demonstrated a rare capacity to break new artists before the effort to monetize. In 2011 he and El-Khatib catapulted the career of the mysterious, ambient R&B singer the Weeknd, now signed to Republic, when they promoted his debut mixtape, House of Balloons, on the OVO blog. In another A&R coup one year later, Drake assembled the second-most lucrative hip-hop tour of the year ($21.5 million gross, according to Billboard Boxscore) when he corralled rising stars in the genre including Lamar, A$AP Rocky, 2 Chainz, J. Cole and Meek Mill for 45 dates in the spring. Just this June, he gave nascent Atlanta trap trio Migos an unlikely candidate for song of the summer when he jumped on a remix of its luxury anthem “Versace,” which has subsequently climbed to No. 36 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The first two acts signed to OVO Sound are Partynextdoor, a 19-year-old narcotic R&B singer in the vain of the Weeknd or Atlanta’s Future, and Majid Jordan, an electro-soul singer/producer duo featured on Drake’s latest single, “Hold On, We’re Going Home.” Both artists hail from Toronto and, for now at least, have been carefully obscured to the public. But if OVO Sound is successful, soon Partynextdoor, Majid Jordan and other young acts with Drake’s sensibilities—emotional primacy, a keen appreciation of melody and an internal sense of mood and atmosphere—will infiltrate the airwaves of America and the world. “It’s not some sort of righteous mission, but there’s a lot of talent up there,” El-Khatib says of Toronto. “We have a responsibility. We built this bridge to the USA, so let’s help other kids across, keep building and see where it goes.” “The goal is to continue to push the culture forward and form a team that can really contribute some great music to the world,” Drake adds. “My ears are definitely out. I’m looking to hear the next wave.” Drake himself is signed to another artist with a label—Lil Wayne’s Young Money Cash Money Billionaires imprint at Cash Money Records/Republic. So he’s intimately familiar with the potential pitfalls when one artist signs another.“Being an artist that’s signed to another artist, I understand how much of a representation I am of that artist,” he says. “So I want to be extremely selective. I want artists who are, first and foremost, genuinely good people who are good to be around, and second, who have pure talent and will make me look smart for signing them [laughs].”
It's hard enough to make a hit song without wondering whether it’ll end up on the front of a hot sauce packet. But Drake can’t pretend he doesn't know that’s a possibility. The 26-year-old rapper/singer born Aubrey Graham has a knack for writing songs whose lyrics turn up in unlikely places, from Twitter hashtags to the “funny-quote-goes-here” space on Taco Bell’s Border Sauce. (For evidence of the latter, see Drake’s Instagram, username Champagnepapi.) Since he first popularized the millennial proverb and Oxford English Dictionary word of the year candidate YOLO (You Only Live Once) on the song “The Motto” two years ago, Drake has gone from being the hope of a new generation of rappers to the poet laureate of a new generation of adults. The phrase “started from the bottom” isn't just the name of his 2013 Billboard Hot 100 top 10 single: It’s shorthand for denoting triumph despite inauspicious beginnings. “No New Friends” (featuring Rick Ross and Lil Wayne), the spiritual successor to “Started From the Bottom,” is more than a club banger—the saying itself is repellent for poseurs. “I’ll be out trying to get a sandwich or something and the guy will say to me, ‘I’d give you a free drink with that, but you know, no new friends,’” Drake says with a laugh. “I swear I’m not sitting around going, ‘What’s the new meme going to be?’ But I do spend a lot of time when I'm writing, especially lately, trying to make something for people to live by. I’m trying to make anthems that are empowering to people, to find phrases that I haven’t heard before. I’m not just going to sit here and be like, ‘fukkin’ bytches, getting money!’”
As he approaches his feverishly anticipated third major-label album, Nothing Was the Same (arriving Sept. 24), Drake’s ability to affect culture is at an all time high. He’s sold 4.5 million albums since his 2010 debut, Thank Me Later, according to Nielsen Sound-Scan, and has appeared as a lead or featured artist in the top 10 of the Hot 100 a dozen times. With 10 No.1s to his name, he’s topped Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart more than any artist in history, besting even his mentor and Nothing Was the Same sparring partner Jay Z. At this year’s Grammys he won best rap album for 2011 sophomore effort Take Care, beating out elder statesmen like Nas, Rick Ross and the Roots. With all that momentum, it’s easy to see why Drake, and his tightly knit, proudly self-sufficient crew October’s Very Own, are starting to see the world as their oyster. Drake was always the brooding, introspective type, pondering the downsides of success even before he could finish boasting about achieving it. But these days, he’s more comfortable in his skin than he’s ever been before. For once he’s not anxious about finding love, or the haters, or the kind of music he wants to make. The guy who once famously sang the words “I wish I wasn't famous,” is, for the moment, happy. “There’s a lot less sort of ambient ballad moments on this album where I’m searching or longing for something,” Drake says of Nothing Was the Same. “That sentiment is gone. Now I’m just kind of like, ‘You know, I’m 26, I don’t know what the fukk else I could be doing better than this. I feel incredible about how I’m able to support my family and friends and how supportive my family and friends have been of me.’ “A lot of people get on and it’s like they’re just waiting to get more on,” he continues. “They’re always waiting for a bigger moment to come. But I’ve started to realize that this is it, this is the moment. And it reads, you know? People come up to me now and they’re like, ‘Man, you look good! You look like you’re happy.’” That inner peace has so far held up against external stressors. Drake says he’s made it a habit to ignore all commentary about him online, positive or negative. On any of the numerous occasions when another rapper tries to goad him into a public contest, he’s trying to let it roll of his shoulders. After hearing West Coast peer Kendrick Lamar’s instantly incendiary verse on Big Sean’s recent single “Control,” in which Lamar goes for the jugular of every rapper he deems a threat, including Drake, the latter says he “went about my day, went and got dinner and kept it moving.” “I didn’t really have anything to say about it,” Drake says of the verse, which has so far inspired responses from A$AP Rocky, Joey Bada$$, former Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson and too many others to count. “It just sounded like an ambitious thought to me. That’s all it was. I know good and well that Kendrick’s not murdering me, at all, in any platform. So when that day presents itself, I guess we can revisit the topic.”
Much of the energy Drake isn't spending on worrying or feuds has gone into growing his October’s Very Own movement, the nucleus of which is his native Toronto. OVO started as a crew with a blog in 2008, a platform that served as a kind of post-Hypebeast, pre-Tumblr manifestation of its members’ taste in expensive shoes and indie music. But as Drake’s career took of, so did the crew’s ambitions. In 2010 it celebrated the inaugural OVO Fest, an annual, Drake-centric summer festival in Toronto now backed by Live Nation. In the four years since its debut, the festival has drawn superstars including Kanye West, Stevie Wonder, Jay Z, Eminem, Lil Wayne, Sean “Diddy” Combs and a reunited TLC, to name a few. Last year, Drake and OVO partners Oliver El- Khatib, Drake’s co-manager, and Noah “40” Shebib, his longtime producer/engineer/confidante, took a logical next step when they signed a deal to launch OVO Sound, a new label set up at Warner Bros. Records. “We had talked about a label for years, but now is the time when it feels right,” says El-Khatib, 29. “We’re mature enough and we understand the business enough and we have the infrastructure now. It’s not so scary anymore.” A rapper of a certain stature starting a vanity label has long been a well-worn trope in the industry—Hip-Hop Mogul 101. But in Drake’s case, he had already demonstrated a rare capacity to break new artists before the effort to monetize. In 2011 he and El-Khatib catapulted the career of the mysterious, ambient R&B singer the Weeknd, now signed to Republic, when they promoted his debut mixtape, House of Balloons, on the OVO blog. In another A&R coup one year later, Drake assembled the second-most lucrative hip-hop tour of the year ($21.5 million gross, according to Billboard Boxscore) when he corralled rising stars in the genre including Lamar, A$AP Rocky, 2 Chainz, J. Cole and Meek Mill for 45 dates in the spring. Just this June, he gave nascent Atlanta trap trio Migos an unlikely candidate for song of the summer when he jumped on a remix of its luxury anthem “Versace,” which has subsequently climbed to No. 36 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The first two acts signed to OVO Sound are Partynextdoor, a 19-year-old narcotic R&B singer in the vain of the Weeknd or Atlanta’s Future, and Majid Jordan, an electro-soul singer/producer duo featured on Drake’s latest single, “Hold On, We’re Going Home.” Both artists hail from Toronto and, for now at least, have been carefully obscured to the public. But if OVO Sound is successful, soon Partynextdoor, Majid Jordan and other young acts with Drake’s sensibilities—emotional primacy, a keen appreciation of melody and an internal sense of mood and atmosphere—will infiltrate the airwaves of America and the world. “It’s not some sort of righteous mission, but there’s a lot of talent up there,” El-Khatib says of Toronto. “We have a responsibility. We built this bridge to the USA, so let’s help other kids across, keep building and see where it goes.” “The goal is to continue to push the culture forward and form a team that can really contribute some great music to the world,” Drake adds. “My ears are definitely out. I’m looking to hear the next wave.” Drake himself is signed to another artist with a label—Lil Wayne’s Young Money Cash Money Billionaires imprint at Cash Money Records/Republic. So he’s intimately familiar with the potential pitfalls when one artist signs another.“Being an artist that’s signed to another artist, I understand how much of a representation I am of that artist,” he says. “So I want to be extremely selective. I want artists who are, first and foremost, genuinely good people who are good to be around, and second, who have pure talent and will make me look smart for signing them [laughs].”
This fakkit drake needs to keep the Wu out his fakkit ass mouth.
Cameron Strang, chairman/CEO of Warner Bros. Records—which provides distribution, marketing, promotion and sales support for OVO Sound—says he has great expectations for the future of the label and the OVO team. “They have very high standards, they set the bar as high as it can be, and they have a great work ethic,” Strang says. “I think they’re one of the real creative forces in our business.” Beyond OVO Sound, Drake is seizing the opportunity to multiply his earning potential with business ventures outside of music. Since his earliest taste of success as an actor on the Canadian teen drama “Degrassi,” he’s set a specific financial goal and deadline for himself every few years and worked diligently with his crew to achieve it. By the time he turned 25, for instance, the plan was to bank $25 million. And thanks to two platinum albums, touring and sponsorship deals with brands like Sprite and Kodak, he crossed that milestone with room to spare. But now the goal is exponentially larger—$250 million by the time he turns 29. To get there, he’ll need an expansive and creative investment portfolio, a sterling personal brand and more than a little luck. One thing he isn’t going to do, however, is cash in on the predictable “sell your soul” sponsorship deals that are often thrown his way, including those from some fragrance and liquor companies. Of interest to Drake are startup investments, real estate, a possible clothing line and brand partnerships that can extend his international profile. Earlier this year, he inked a six figure deal with videogame giant Electronic Arts to become the ambassador of “FIFA 14,” the latest in the soccer series that’s moderately successful in the United States but a phenomenon overseas. The franchise has sold more than 100 million copies in 51 countries worldwide, according to EA. “Drake is a very cultured, well traveled guy and he loves soccer and he loves the game,” says Adel “Future the Prince” Nur, Drake’s co-manager and head of business development (no relation to the artist of the same name). “This was really the perfect match where we took something that he loves and turned it into a business opportunity that made sense for both brands.” Coincidentally, “FIFA 14” and Nothing Was the Same will both be released Sept. 24, and Future says EA and Drake are in talks to do co-branding and cross-promotion at physical retail outlets. Nothing Was the Same is the culmination of four years of the Drake musical experiment, in which hip hop and R&B are held in careful equilibrium within the same artist.
Since his breakthrough mixtape So Far Gone rewrote the rules of both genres in 2009, Drake has faced pressures internally and externally to lean more in one direction or the other. The hiphop community chides him for being too soft, while the R&B community pines for more slow jams. But the holy grail for Drake, as he and his collaborators see it, has always been in the middle. The most potent formula, meaning the one that will reach the biggest audiences and take Drake to the heights that he dreams of, is one that marries the lyrical pyrotechnics of hiphop with the melody and inclusiveness of R&B and pop. “We are tirelessly, tirelessly searching for perfection, trying to find a balance, trying to change people’s path of what they’re listening to,” says Shebib, who produced or co produced approximately half of Nothing Was the Same in addition to handling mixing and engineering duties. “We’re not just taking a shot and saying, ‘fukk it, we love it. Hopefully the world will too!’ That’s just not how we make music.” The new album largely does away with the purely slow songs that can be found on stretches of previous Drake albums, mostly confining R&B elements to hooks, bridges and atmospherics. As a result, the collection hits harder and more frequently than his earlier material, with Drake putting his rapping prowess at the forefront. On the ’90s rap inspired song “Wu Tang Forever,” he weaves boasts of sexual virility around a plinking piano and rapid fire drums. The outro to the album, tentatively titled “Pound Cake,” features two incisive verses from Jay Z, even as Drake asserts himself above any and all competition by the song’s climactic ending. “Studied the game to the letter and I did it better, like I’m supposed to feel guilty?” he rhymes. “I think he feels a responsibility to rap music,” Shebib says of the album’s boombap influences. “It’s what put him here, it’s what got him to this place. And now that he is where he is, he wants to put rap on a pedestal as opposed to just copping out and becoming a singer. He’s a better rapper than he is a singer.” Additional production on Nothing Was the Same was handled by Detail, Boi1da, HitBoy and Hudson Mohawke, among others. One old collaborator that Drake didn’t get to work with due to time constrains is West, hip hop’s most visible genre bender and Drake’s most important influence. The two artists recently reconciled onstage at this year’s OVO Fest after nearly three years of not speaking to one another—a rift that many observers attributed to rivalry. “It’s just a natural thing that happens sometimes with artists. We have our own real lives, our own real friends, our own real families,” Drake says. “Me and ’Ye just fell into this thing where we hadn't actually talked to each other in so long that all this stuff got built up. Sometimes you just have to fnd the opportunity to tell someone that you really like and respect them. After that, everything can move forward.” Though they haven’t worked together since his first album in 2010, Drake says he’s looking forward to getting in the studio with West sooner rather than later. “Hopefully we give the world what they want, because I know they want it,” he says. “I know me and ’Ye could do some crazy shyt together.”
Since his breakthrough mixtape So Far Gone rewrote the rules of both genres in 2009, Drake has faced pressures internally and externally to lean more in one direction or the other. The hiphop community chides him for being too soft, while the R&B community pines for more slow jams. But the holy grail for Drake, as he and his collaborators see it, has always been in the middle. The most potent formula, meaning the one that will reach the biggest audiences and take Drake to the heights that he dreams of, is one that marries the lyrical pyrotechnics of hiphop with the melody and inclusiveness of R&B and pop. “We are tirelessly, tirelessly searching for perfection, trying to find a balance, trying to change people’s path of what they’re listening to,” says Shebib, who produced or co produced approximately half of Nothing Was the Same in addition to handling mixing and engineering duties. “We’re not just taking a shot and saying, ‘fukk it, we love it. Hopefully the world will too!’ That’s just not how we make music.” The new album largely does away with the purely slow songs that can be found on stretches of previous Drake albums, mostly confining R&B elements to hooks, bridges and atmospherics. As a result, the collection hits harder and more frequently than his earlier material, with Drake putting his rapping prowess at the forefront. On the ’90s rap inspired song “Wu Tang Forever,” he weaves boasts of sexual virility around a plinking piano and rapid fire drums. The outro to the album, tentatively titled “Pound Cake,” features two incisive verses from Jay Z, even as Drake asserts himself above any and all competition by the song’s climactic ending. “Studied the game to the letter and I did it better, like I’m supposed to feel guilty?” he rhymes. “I think he feels a responsibility to rap music,” Shebib says of the album’s boombap influences. “It’s what put him here, it’s what got him to this place. And now that he is where he is, he wants to put rap on a pedestal as opposed to just copping out and becoming a singer. He’s a better rapper than he is a singer.” Additional production on Nothing Was the Same was handled by Detail, Boi1da, HitBoy and Hudson Mohawke, among others. One old collaborator that Drake didn’t get to work with due to time constrains is West, hip hop’s most visible genre bender and Drake’s most important influence. The two artists recently reconciled onstage at this year’s OVO Fest after nearly three years of not speaking to one another—a rift that many observers attributed to rivalry. “It’s just a natural thing that happens sometimes with artists. We have our own real lives, our own real friends, our own real families,” Drake says. “Me and ’Ye just fell into this thing where we hadn't actually talked to each other in so long that all this stuff got built up. Sometimes you just have to fnd the opportunity to tell someone that you really like and respect them. After that, everything can move forward.” Though they haven’t worked together since his first album in 2010, Drake says he’s looking forward to getting in the studio with West sooner rather than later. “Hopefully we give the world what they want, because I know they want it,” he says. “I know me and ’Ye could do some crazy shyt together.”
Still FloW
Gawd Of Shinobi
ALBUM OF THE YEAR.... SIMP SEASON APPROACHES...
