A downfall is one thing.
But as for its bringer – they may be more than just that in the eyes of the ones they’ve all but vanquished with the vigor that one would naturally reserve for a villain.
And as for whether or not that’s what Drake was can still be questioned. To a rap purist of many years, he is simply young, with his ambition outrunning that of his actual ability at times when such things as lyricism and production are of the utmost importance. To composers and sound engineers, he is a clear tenor, but after a while, perhaps a drone.
To his young fans, and even those who may have some years on them as well, he is at one point a beacon, and then in the next a track that they swear they return to when the occasion should merit. And yet that time, expanding farther and wider with new artists and sounds, becomes more and more and more infrequent.
Then, there comes the looming visage of death… That is Kendrick Lamar.
Who is he to Drake?
Formerly, a companion and a friend in an industry that intended from the very beginning to pit them against each other. Yet they both flourished.
Then age makes them brothers. Then just family. Then artists.
Soldiers. Then veterans.
Then, finally, contenders on opposing sides.
That is, it certainly made one of them so.
And that one – being Kendrick – proved the adequacy of such a statement of title when he proved his prowess not in the first track, ‘Like That’. And not even in ‘Not Like Us’.
But rather, in the one that creeps up the column of one’s spine like the theme of a horror movie, sauntering towards the scene wherein the one revealed to be the most lethal of killers is about to claim his place by way of making a fitting sacrifice of one who dared to kill in his stead.
In no better words – ‘Meet the Grahams’.
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Before the fat meat of the lyrics, there is the glistening trim of the production that wraps around it like something delicious and dangerous.
The count-in is somewhat innocent; vintage and sampled. Both infamously and expertly so by the likes of The Alchemist. To an avid listener of both him and even Kendrick, it is just enough to keep the ear trained for what will no doubt be something they’ll immediately like within the first few minutes.
Seconds, even.
Then those first few seconds barely come to pass, before there is not so much a shift, as there is actually a falling out of the floor from beneath your feet; rug and all. A sort of headiness and disorienting daze fill the dome through the ears, and keeps you aloft as this absolutely sickly little piano trill scores your falling further and further down; slow and agonizingly enraptured as Kendrick establishes his flow.
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‘Lotta superstars that’s real, but your daddy ain’t one of them,
And you’re nothing like him, you’ll carry yourself as a king,
Can’t understand me right now? Just play this when you’re eighteen…”
–
He is not rapping, and this is not Kendrick.
Nor is it any of his other accumulated personas that he often goes back and forth between with his quintessential vocals, which in the end always sound like him.
This does not sound like him.
And that is in no way a bad thing, if we are to follow along with the narrative that this shall instill.
In fact, it is a choice being made on his part.
Instead of just merely addressing Drake and his transgressions through the medium and verse that makes Kendrick Lamar… Well, Kendrick Lamar decides that it is better to just let the stream of consciousness run freely, and without any offending semblance of restraint.
No muzzle, in plainer words. No holding back of any kind.
This allows the likes of what whispers of one’s darkest and most intrusive thoughts to come spewing out, right onto the impressionable ears of children who don’t yet know who their father is. All while that piano and that continuously falling beat drag us further down to a stifling depth, one line at a time.
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‘Dear Baby girl,
I’m sorry that your father not active inside your world
He don’t commit to much but his music, yeah that’s for sure…”
–
To be prophetic in words, but almost eerily nonchalant in delivering them, is one of the more quietly ambitious decisions that Kendrick makes in both writing this track and giving voice to it. He almost sounds like he couldn’t care less how it sounds coming out, and how it shall be perceived from then on – the fact that he knows so much about not just Drake (or Aubrey), but his son, Adonis, and his mother and father.
Even in mentioning the idea of a little girl, unnamed and unknown to all who listen, as the template of a neglected daughter, being talked to in such a manner, as if being tempted away by a monster with a kind voice, off to somewhere far from the safety of one’s own warm bed.
A nightmare of a scenario to envision. For an adult, especially, who must confront in both song and in full consciousness, that there is no escaping this new, infinitely more terrifying persona that wears Kendrick’s voice and flow like a fleshy mask atop a face that is all muscle and veins, and chattering skull underneath.
And yet, that might not even be the most terrifying thing of all. Not to Drake, whose desire to be the biggest and most amassed is being swallowed whole, just as he himself is.
To a rapper like himself – an attempt of an icon as himself, rather – what is more feared than the downfall is the one who plays about, and even sings its praises, all while it happens.