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Music

Drake's "Wu-Tang Forever" Proves He's the Best Troll in Rap

Drake is a maverick, like John McCain, or Maverick from the movie ‘Top Gun’.

Last night, the sky started pissing rain and shitting lightning over New York City. I have the tenacity of a pair of cheap sunglasses that people buy at the airport because they realized they left their Ray-Bans at home but only after they made it through airport security. People need to realize that thunderstorms suck and should be banned. Because New York is convinced that it is the center of the universe, we were convinced that Drake waited for this terrible, bullshitty rain to dump from the sky to drop his newest song “Wu-Tang Forever.”

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Probably the best thing about “Wu-Tang Forever” is that it interpolates Wu-Tang’s “It's Yourz,” a song that rests in the second of approximately 85 tiers of Wu-Tang nerdery in that it’s not from 36 Chambers and it’s not “Triumph,” but if you even pretend to be a Wu-Tang fan you should still probably know most of the words. If I had to guess, Drake is probably a Tier Four Wu-Tang Fan, which means that he’s into all of the canonically relevant solo albums and has a couple “kooky” Wu-related projects he flaunts as bona fides when pressed (Masta Killa’s No Said Date and Cappadonna’s The Pillage are common go-tos for people like this, real heads drop Remedy’s The Genuine Article or the Poppa Wu album or some shit).

The song begins with an echo of Raekwon’s opening verse, throughout the song a sample of RZA yelling “It’s yours!” crops up. Beyond Drake shouting out “Machine gun raps,” the similarities between this and anything vaguely Wu-Tang are pretty much nil. Drake raps about feelings, the Wu-Tang Clan raps about how you’re about to catch a sharp sword to the midsection. The Wu-Tang Clan is from Staten Island, is basically a bag of nails masquerading as a rap group, and is universally embraced by dudes in cargo shorts. Drake is from Canada, played a kid in a wheelchair on a teen soap opera, and dudes in cargo shorts hate him. There are nine members of the Wu-Tang Clan, not counting their one million affiliates. Drake is one guy. Etc.

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When I first read the Nothing Was the Same tracklist and saw that there would be a song called “Wu-Tang Forever” on it, I was like, “Oh, cool, Drake’s about to flip a beat from 36 Chambers and rap really hard over it and shut the haters up because he’s awesome at rapping." It turns out Wu-Tang Forever” is pretty much the opposite of that. It starts with plinky pianos and features a neverending tooth-rattler bassline that feels lifted from Skream’s remix of La Roux’s “In for the Kill,” and the first line is, “I just love when I’m with you.” The song is, essentially, this album's version of "Practice," where he took Juvenile's amazing "Back That Azz Up" and turned it into a song about being a simp. Nothing was the same, except when everything isn't different.

There is one thing that must be made clear here: there is no possible way that Drake could have thought this was a good idea. He might live in a champagne-soaked fantasyland where he can do whatever he wants, but it’s not like at least one dude in his camp wasn’t like, “Hey Drake, people are going to get really pissed off that you’re using the Wu-Tang Clan like this.” And yet he did it anyway, because he is Drake, and Drake is not a person who makes conventional decisions with positive consequences. He is a maverick, like John McCain or Maverick from Top Gun. By putting out the world’s softest song and calling it “Wu-Tang Forever,” Drake was purposely trolling the hip-hop community. In a weird way, however, this was probably the best thing he could have done given the circumstances. There was no possibility that he was going to be able to give people the sonic slap upside the head that a song titled “Wu-Tang Forever” deserves, so I admire his aesthetic temerity in goading the haters with a smile on his face and a sweater over his heart. It’s punk, just in the most overtly lame way possible.

And while it’s true that New Yorkers might be up their own asses by feeling like Drake waited until it was raining to drop a new track, “Wu-Tang Forever” is actually an amazing song to listen to in the rain. Last night I walked home in the downpour, playing to the track on loop and thinking about my feelings and life choices that led me to where I was, and it felt perfect. Cathartic, even. Drake makes feeling shitty feel awesome, and I guess that’s the point.

The entire thought process behind being so precociously solipsistic to think that Drake made a song for the very moment you found yourself in, however, speaks to a greater truth here. For all of his goofiness and unearned and ill-advised titling, Drake is in this Jordan-level zone where he can’t miss. Any time he drops a song, it automatically becomes the focal point of the hip-hop conversation. Any time he does anything, really, it is the most interesting thing currently happening in hip-hop. The dude is bulletproof right now. Even when he fucks up, it feels like it turns out for the best.

Drew Millard is the world's biggest Drake fan. He's on Twitter - @drewmillard