Maybe like you, I heard $ome $exy $ongs 4 U on Valentine’s Day en route to a weekend trip with my girlfriend. An admittedly less-than-optimal setting; much of Drake and PARTYNEXTDOOR’s new collab album traverses the lusty dejection, reversed samples, and bleeding pads of single-man R&B. But then, about 40 minutes into the album, and less than a third of a way into our long drive to Massachusetts, we got to “Nokia.” The title suggests a nostalgia play, but really, it exemplifies a line on the album’s hardened Kendrick reply “Gimme a Hug”: “Fuck a rap beef, I’m tryna get the party lit.” This is Drake asking you to put up your blinders and hit the dancefloor. If you’re so willing, you’re in for a treat.
Every Drake album has its requisite dance track, but this one immediately feels ready for a drunken karaoke night. Elkan, a young, sought-after London producer from the online sample pack community, laces Drake with a sweaty Atlanta bass beat peppered with flashy synths and the producer’s own delirious, sort of androgynous vocals. (I can imagine Elkan hearing Stankonia or The Love Below and thinking, Let’s restore this feeling.) In the second half, it gets even weirder: As the beat stutters and slows into a crunchy groove that’d fit snugly on Graduation, Drake breaks into what I can only describe as a Whodini-type flow: “I got drinks, jokes, sex, and cash/Those are four things I can guarantee, my love.” It’s a little like that scene in Degrassi: The Next Generation where Jimmy tries to rap with Spinner, channeling ’80s rappers as made-for-TV rap songs are wont to do—only this time, it’s actually good. Tucked inside an indulgent, fan-service record that we can all agree feels like a “break glass in case of emergency” moment, “Nokia” might come off as an obvious ploy to score a hit. Even if that’s true, I’ll admit: We ran it back at least 10 times on the ride home.
