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“I made a decision last night that I would die for it,” Drake raps on “9.” “Just to show the city what it takes to be alive for it.” Drake’s presence eclipsed Toronto just about as soon as So Far Gone dropped, but the city-and what it thinks of him-was never far from his mind. Views, which followed two wildly successful projects in 2015 that he’d branded as mixtapes- If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late and the Future collab What a Time to Be Alive-would confirm him as both, his penchant for immaculate songwriting still fully intact and the pressures of existing as the most popular voice in rap, as well as his hometown’s most successful export, weighing heavy on his mind. He looks less like the superhero he’d made himself into over the course of a roughly six-year rise as singer-songwriter extraordinaire and more like a troubled monarch.
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Or, in other words, if he can stay true to the person that he used to be.On the cover of his fourth studio album Views, Drake looks down from atop Toronto’s CN Tower, paying homage to the city’s notoriously frigid winter temperatures in a heavyweight shearling coat and high-cut boots. It will always be home, but his life is so different now that it must really make him wonder if that relationship - with Weston Road and his childhood home in general - will stand the test of time.
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So, they have a history of working together, and this particular sample from "Mary's Joint" is the perfect fit to highlight Drake's complicated relationship with the place he's from now that he's made it big. Blige have actually collaborated before Drake did a verse on Blige's "The One" in 2005, and Drake also brought Blige onstage for a performance of his song "Fancy" at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2010. Not only is that a song that Drake would have grown up listening to during his formative years, but Drake and Mary J. Blige singing the outro from her 1994 hit "Mary's Joint," off the album My Life, which makes perfect sense. The woman sings alone for a moment before Drake begins rapping over the top about the road in Toronto that he grew up on, and repeats on loop throughout the song with the following lyrics: Why can't we work it outWhy baby? Can't we try (why, why, why, why, why)You said our love would always stand the test of time And on one of my rotations through this audio playground (see what I did there?), my ear got caught on Track 6, and I started wondering - what song does "Weston Road Flows" sample?Īs I mentioned, it's the sixth song on the album, and it comes in with a kind of a hazy female voice. Except "all winter" is the amount of time we waited for the album to come out, and "running around outside" means listening to Views on repeat.
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We are going balls to the wall over here, as if we've all been cooped up all winter and finally just got released outside to run around and stretch our legs.