This Week in Drake (Featuring Drake) - Who Drake Follows on Twitter Edition

"5AM IN TORONTO"

The above artwork is for "5AM in Toronto," the newest single by Drake. All in all, a threatening, disjointed owl is a pretty great metaphor for where Drake's at right now as both an artist and probably a human being. We had Kitty Pryde review it last week, and she compared to a really elaborate subtweet. Which is probably true—especially the, "Every song sound like "Drake (Featuring Drake)" line—what's way more interesting is the fact that Drake decided to record this song at all. According to the official Noisey liason in Canada Patrick McGuire, bars in Toronto close at 2 a.m. Which means that, unless Drake has some secret Illuminati-level party spot in Toronto that stays open past 2, he was sitting alone in his living room watching MuchMusic's rap show and brooding for three hours straight and then decided to record a power-drunk rap song about it.

What's interesting, however, is Drake's done this before. Prior to the release of Take Care, he sporadically leaked songs that would never end up on the album, usually through the October's Very Own Blogspot (also, Drake is the one remaining Blogspot user on the face of the planet). The best of these, in my opinion, was "Dreams Money Can Buy," which was essentially a prequel to "5AM in Toronto," hitting many of the same beats—Drake's awesome, you suck, your girlfriend is currently having sex with Drake as he's writing this very song don't worry about the logistics of having sex and writing simultaneously, etc. But what separates "5am in Toronto" from "Dreams Money Can Buy" is "5AM…" is a really mean song. Obviously, they're both objectively mean songs in that they take pleasure in pointing out other people's inferiority, but there was a sense of whimsy to "Dreams Money Can Buy" nastiness, as if the novelty of Drake being able to tell everybody to fuck off had infected all of us. A lot of this was afforded by the cooing Jai Paul sample, but it was still kind of endearing how psyched Drake was to sneer through an entire song. This time around, Drake seems genuinely pissed off about the fact that everything in his life is perfect. He literally goes off-beat to start screaming about how he made the Forbes list of richest rappers and that means all other lists—including, presumably, the MTV Hottest MC's list he was number-five on. He is probably even angry that we all love "5AM in Toronto." Nothing was the same, indeed.

MAKE IT RAIN (WITH TEARS)

Photo via Meaghan Garvey's Facebook.

I am from North Carolina, which is not a state known for quality strip clubs. There was one that was supposed to be pretty good called the "Penthouse Club" or something that was maybe an hour from the town that I grew up in that you were supposed to go to once you turned 18, but that was in South Carolina and I never went. There was also one maybe twenty minutes from where I went to school, but I didn't go to that one either. According to this TMZ article claiming that Drake and his friends brought a cardboard box full of cash to a Charlotte, NC strip club and made it rain until the club reached its maximum monetary saturation level, I missed out.

Going to strip clubs has always been a weird concept to me. Like, you're just supposed to watch naked girls dance around and give them money for dancing naked? Aren't there large swaths of the Internet devoted to allowing you to do that for free? There's an interview with Young Jeezy in Rolling Stone where Mr. 17.5 explains the concept of "Making It Rain," saying, "Just think, if you was in the village and you a hunter, you take pride in going out to hunt the prey and bring it back for the village to eat. In our situation, we took pride in getting money so that the hood could eat. A part of the hood was the strip club, so—in our minds—we looking at it like we putting kids through school, we buying school clothes, we paying tuition, we paying car notes. We felt like we was the providers… The women shouldn't have to go out and kill the goddamn elk."

Anyways, looking at the pictures of Drake and his fellow elk-killers throwing around well more than I make in a year made me hopeful for the future of humanity in a very weird way. Which leads me to my final talking point for this week in Drake, which is…

DRAKE FOLLOWS 40 STRIPPERS ON TWITTER

How do I know this? I'll admit that the concept of "Stripper" is pretty nebulous in this day and age, but I looked at the list of people that Drake was following on Twitter and counted how many women he followed who claimed to either be a model in their profile, or were wearing lingerie in their profile pictures. This took roughly ten minutes. In the process, I also discovered that, among the various other rappers and music industry people you'd expect him to follow, Drake's "Following" list on Twitter includes:

• John Calipari
• T. Boone Pickens
• David Copperfield
• Two Lil Mouse Accounts (One Verified)
• Richard Branson
• Cindy Crawford
• Both Vinnie and Snooki from Jersey Shore
• Chelsea Handler
• Barack Obama
• Jon Caramanica (Pop Music Critic for the New York Times)
• Lindsay Lohan
• Kevin Smith
• Ustream
• Taylor Swift
• Kosher Beef Jerky
• Brian Wilson (Not the Beach Boy)
• Lil B
• Gayle King (Oprah's BFF)
• A Fake The-Dream Account

Is this performative? Does Drake actually give a shit about what Kosher Beef Jerky could possibly have to say? Did he run into Kevin Smith at an Illuminati-level social gathering and despite Smith double-dipping a Tostito feel obligated to follow him because he was really into Mallrats as a teenager? How would he feel if he woke one day and Gayle King had unfollowed him? Is he casually exchanging DM's with David Copperfield about grabbing brunch while they're both in Vegas? I suppose none of this stuff actually matters, but part of the point of Drake is that all of this actually matters.

Drew Millard Featuring Drake can be found on Twitter - @drewmillard