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mike m - hotline bling and drake's subtle misogyny lyrics

male supremacism in the rap game is no new topic. it’s gone on since the earliest days of def jam and continues to this day. be it objectification, violence, or toxic masculinity (the latter usually being immensely homophobic), you have the usual suspects. you have your tygas, your eminems, your jason derulos, the whole squad. but misogyny is not an instantly identifiable thing. it can be subtle, while being just as cr-ss. in demonstration, today i’d like to talk to you about drake, and what may be his worst song ever, both sonically and morally: hotline bling

let’s get the easy part out of the way: whether or not drake stole the beat from d.r.a.m. is irrelevant to me, although it’s sc-mmy if he did. but this beat so clearly comes from a nintendo 64 sample and it’s extremely awkward for any kind of a song about love or love lost. some have told me it’s from super mario 64, i am insistent that it’s from smash bros., either way the flip is obvious and it feels cringeworthy because of it. because if it’s the former all i get is a misogynist cliché and if it’s the latter i just think about swearing and pounding an n64 controller while trying to whoop my friends around at a video game

also, on the subject of drake’s voice in this song, and in a lot of his recent work – it’s a tad murky. i know he spends quite some time in the south so perhaps the slow, sludgey chopped & screwed sounds of texas have rubbed off on him, but context makes no excuse for the finished product. unlike his early work where there was some kind of soul to it, some kind of p-ssion, this sounds distant and perhaps even arrogant. to the point where seeing a vine that combined the hook with soulja boy tell ’em is more interesting to me.

now, disparaging the sonic quality of this out of the way, let’s get down to the nitty gritty. i’m going to start with the hook:

you used to call me on my cell phone. late night when you need my love

so right off the bat we’re given drake reminiscing about a girl who used to call him around weeknd hours for hookup sex. which is a pretty tremendous detriment to the overall sentiment of the song. because while a loss of getting tail is unpleasant for anybody (excluding asexuals) – drake is at no shortage of sex. this man has bragged unrepentantly about how much tail he gets on the road – strippers, porn stars, singers, athletes, drake has banged them all. so off the bat drake – why should i care about your possessiveness?

further to the point, beyond drake’s own male chauvinism: i have an excessively hard time empathizing with “sad drake” these days and hotline bling is a pretty m-ssive example as to why. drake is at least three alb-ms deep into his career. during this period, he has am-ssed wealth and possessions that i will never have. he has bragged excessively about these things. so with all this wealth, all these ways to keep yourself busy, which i have to -ssume includes wi-fi and the knowledge of how to use incognito mode on chrome for lonely nights, the question begs again: why should i care?

but let’s get deeper into this track. skipping to verse 3, where by this point drake has established that since leaving toronto, the girl in question has made new friends (a cardinal sin for drake), enough money to get champagne at the club, started being more social, and wearing more revealing clothing. this saddens drake. mind you, nothing negative is mentioned before any of this, it’s just that this girl’s new attitude towards partying and going out is supposed to be sad. you’re supposed to sympathize with drake here

but even all that is not where drake’s misogyny comes bursting through like a busted dam. no no, it’s verse 3, and i’m going to break it down with subtitles:

these days, all i do is
wonder if you bendin’ over backwards for someone else
wonder if your rollin’ backwoods for someone else
doing things i taught you gettin’ nasty for someone else
you don’t need no one else
you don’t need nobody else, no
why you never alone
why you always touching road
used to always stay at home, be a good girl
you was in the zone
you should just be yourself
right now, you’re someone else

that’s the nastiness of this song. it’s not only a possessiveness of women, it’s literal patriarchy – it’s talking down to women. talking to women like they’re incapable of handling themselves, like drake knows himself what’s best for them. it’s in marvin’s room, it’s in hold on, we’re going home to a lesser extent, and the worst part… it was also the exact sentiment on the hook to miss me. which just goes to show you how far back these feelings go

i’m not saying drake is unlikeable at this point (although i personally haven’t cared for this muddier flow he’s had lately), nor am i saying that enjoying his work is a misogyny cosign. in fact, i find drake to be one of the best right now, i’d even go so far as to say he’s our generation’s ll cool j. but being one of the best, or even the best if you hold drake to that standard, does not mean infallible. it does not mean perfect. it does not mean that every single thing they touch is absolute gold and any detractor is merely a hater. it means they are human and as such are prone to human flaws. so maybe keep a sharper ear out for those is all

- mike m lyrics

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