Did we need a folder of ambient Miami Storm videos, aside from three unreleased tracks?
Haven’t we had enough of Drake this year? Too much, some (most?) would say, but that didn’t stop Toronto’s most popular rapper from deleting 100GB of data for seemingly no reason other than maybe to clean up his hard drive.
The release includes three unreleased tracks – “It’s Up” featuring Young Thug and 21 Savage, “Blue Green Red” and “Housekeeping Knows” featuring Latto – which do not significantly expand Drake’s already extensive discography.
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Those are the headlines, but then there’s the other 90+ gigabytes of content consisting of videos, photos, and who knows what else, because sifting through all that garbage requires a level of dedication reserved for true Drake fans and/or Kendrick Lamar wanting to finish the job he started.
For Drake fans and casual observers, there are plenty of clips from Drake’s recording process, his video shoot for “Hotline Bling,” and, inexplicably, an entire folder dedicated to a storm in Miami documented with a cell phone. There are literally 13 videos of rain falling and wind slapping palm trees. An entire folder. This dump could have been an email.
But perhaps the most telling, or at least the most unbearable, video is in the folder labeled “40_Keys.” It contains two dozen clips from Noah James Shebib, better known as 40, a fellow Toronto-based record producer, songwriter, record executive, and former child actor who has worked with Drake since 2009.
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In one video (one of the longest in the drop, clocking in at a sluggish 11 minutes), Shebib, with a broken finger and an unlit joint constantly hanging out of his mouth, tinkers around at a piano and waxes poetic about Drake’s unparalleled career, and you begin to understand why the artist puts out so much boring, uninspired content in the first place.
“The further we get in our career, the bigger the songs get, the better he gets, which is pretty phenomenal,” says Shebib, noting that it is literally no one who can be compared to Drake’s career trajectory. He adds that people often use Michael Jackson as a comparison, but he isn’t sure “Michael was even in the position that Drake was in for as long.”
Meanwhile, somewhere on a private yacht, Beyoncé was inexplicably rolling her eyes.
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According to Shebib, who is currently working on Drake’s 2021 album Certified LoverboyMJ has had ups and downs in his career, but Drake is on a nonstop rocket ride and he doesn’t know “if it’s ever going to stop.”
And then they have the audacity and nerve to bring up Stevie Wonder – arguably the greatest talent pop music has ever seen. Listen. Stevie Wonder has produced (and literally produced, arranged, composed and performed) some of the greatest albums of all time, including The best album ever, Songs in the key of life when he was 26. You don’t compare Drake to Stevie Wonder.
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You don’t compare Drake to Michael Jackson either. Drake had some hits, some good albums, and some great songs, but when you’re surrounded by people telling you how incomparable you are, it might seem like a good idea to release 100 gigabytes of useless content under the guise that it’s worth it just because the artist is releasing it.
If Beyoncé has now released 100 gigabytes of data – who are we kidding, Beyoncé has not even Renaissance Visuals. And that mystique is far more interesting, if frustrating, than the tendency to give too much away.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.
