Drake
“Marvin’s Room” / “Buried Alive (Interlude)”

Marc Hogan already did a great job with the first part of the song on Pitchfork:

So, OK: “Are you drunk right now?” That’s the voice on the other end of the phone, and it belongs to one woman Drake can’t have. The answer, of course, is yes— and how. Producer Noah “40” Shebib keeps the accompaniment low-key and otherworldly, with woozy tones and minimal beats better suited for late-night headphones listens than club blast-offs. Not that you’d want to go shouting these lyrics anyway, as Drake’s confessional come-ons grow increasingly explicit and pathetic (“I hope no one heard that”). That it all ends with the sort of delicately pretty piano playing you used to be able to hear in fancy department stores is ridiculous, yet strangely appropriate. Though Kanye West was the first pop star to toast himself as a “douchebag” in song, Drake luxuriates in the role here— and somehow makes it seem attractive. Self-loathing has rarely sounded so sublime.

And I know people have talked about the uhhhhhhh-mazing Kendrick verse. So, well, what? I don’t know! I’m just sitting here at my kitchen table listening to music and writing, and, well, what would be more naturally than simply stopping what I’m working on and writing about the music I’m listening to?

I have not bought Take Care. (I know, jesus, but I had to buy groceries yesterday, so I hope Mr. Six Figures Tax Bill can take the hit. [I know the littler-downs at the record labels are probably scrimping like I am; the first to get axed, the last to get hired. I am really sorry and apologize to them!]) So I haven’t bought it, and I’ve downloaded like four versions of it. I couldn’t get it to sync with my iPhone last I checked (I know!). Before, “Buried Alive” and “Marvin’s Room” were separate. Now they’re together. Together, I think they’re the best song of last year. Hah, I say that all the time. That’s literally the only form of sentence that issues from my mouth. Oh, such-and-such was the best [whatever] of last year. I am a boring person!

Anyway, so it’s nice having them apart because sometimes you just want to hear that Kendrick song. But they’re so fucking good taken together. Why are they together? I will tell you why: Drake is the modern day Hegel, and the listener is just an idea he’s thinking.

“Marvin’s Room” has its history on lock. It recalls that Commodores song, “Nightshift”. The title of the song further reaches back to Marvin Gaye’s Here My Dear Drake is no Marvin Gaye, nor even a Commodore. He knows this. His is a small genius that requires a grand sweep and sonic luxuriousness to even approach being palatable. He’s pathetic, as Hogan notes. He’s sublime, as Hogan notes.

Drake’s moments of transcendence come so few and far. The “I think I’m addicted to naked pictures and sitting bout talking bitches that we almost had / I don’t think I’m conscious of making monsters of the women I sponsor till it all goes bad” is one of those moments. It’s so small and stupid and pathetic, yet its unexpected friction, the way the verse digs its toes in and pushes into this otherwise plush beat: it’s just perfect. It is, of course, perfectly pathetic.

Which is where Kendrick Lamar comes in. Damn, Kendrick Lamar is my second favorite rapper’s favorite rapper. He’s so awesome. But why is “Marvin’s Room” all b/w “Buried Alive”? It’s a dialectical thing.

The same day we say were in the area cruisin’ in Toronto, hit me on the cellular
Thought he was gonna sell me a false word like the rappers I know
Sat down with a few drinks, located where you can’t see us
A white waitress on standby when we need her
A black Maybach, 40 pulled up Jeep
No doors all that ni//a was missing was Aaliyah
Felt like the initiation, a reality living in the matrix
We talk casually about the industry
And how the women be the taste makers for the shit we making
Then he said that he was the same age as myself
And it didn’t help cause it made me even more rude an impatient
So blame it on Mr. OVOXO, the reason why I’m breathing all the vanity I know

Lamar ends up being the moon to Drake’s sun, but in an entirely weird way. Drake comes off as terrible and possessive and abusive in “Marvin’s Room” — fully intentionally. And then he has Lamar tell this palindromic rise-and-fall yarn about getting corrupted by Drake, which is just a backwards way of talking about how great Drake is. Yet, being a sort of inside-out bildungsroman, it presents in a way that sort of denigrates Drake. Yet, the net effect is that the listener thinks, “Damn, Kendrick killed it, and Drake is really complicated.”

Like all of his best songs, Drake induces the listener’s emotional reaction. You can tell he’s, you know, probably really good at getting people to do things for him. And isn’t that a major strength for an artist to have? Isn’t a big part of how we ‘get mad at’ some performers due to their inability to sell us on something, their ignorance of having, like, a thesis (or synthesis)? Or for utterly failing to sell that thesis? You can, I suppose, choose to hate Drake’s thesis, but either way he did a good job of conveying it and making you buy into it.