Drake’s international ear brings him and dance music full circle.
Drake is a master of throwing curveballs. The now-35-year-old rapper has been juking fans’ expectations since he arrived on the scene as an aspiring artist back when he was still just a cast member on a cable teen soap opera. Heck, his very existence as THEE superstar rapper of the past decade defiantly flouts rap conventions. You probably already know the spiel at this point and have probably long since chosen your position on whether this is a boon or blasphemy. With his new surprise album Honestly, Nevermind, Drake may have thrown the biggest curve of his career yet. Fans have never expected hardbody rhymes from The Boy, but they could at least rely on receiving a collection of sad boy anthems and passive-aggressive caption raps with each new Drake project. Instead, many were utterly flabbergasted to press play on a compilation of dance tracks inspired by late fashion designer and DJ, Virgil Abloh, showcasing a global palette of mainly South African-originated house styles like gqom (the “gq” is pronounced as a click in isiZulu, one of the nation’s 14 official languages) and amapiano. As for me, I was delighted. For the past three years, I have been predicting a wave of Black artists making a pilgrimage to dance music, including such pioneers as Channel Tres, Duckwrth, and even Vince Staples (Big Fish Theory was right there). That Drake – who has always cottoned on to international subcultures as both an extension of his eclectic tastes and savvy stylistic evolution – is the one to lead the charge is deliciously fitting. Just look at the mainstream relevance of UK drill music and its New York-based offshoots in the wake of Drake’s 2019 collaboration with Headie One. Before that, it was Nigerian Afropop, UK grime, and way, way back, you may recall, the house-inflected title track from his sophomore album, Take Care. Not only does Drake’s embrace of house music on his latest represent a full-circle moment for him but it is also one for the genre itself. Over the course of the last several years, there has been a cornucopia of articles on the internet recounting the origins of house and techno music in Black subcultures in cities like Chicago, Detroit, and New York in the 1970s and ‘80s.
