Lately it seems that Drake has been ripping chapters out of Lil’ Wayne’s extensive tome. Of today’s rap megastars (Jay-Z, Kanye, Eminem), Drizzy is clearly the game’s most prolific and promising artist. Since releasing the multi-platinum and Grammy-nominated Nothing Was the Same, his most sophisticated release to this date, Aubrey Graham has shown that not even the sky is his limit. Countless guest verses, a world tour, and now his third track without an album release date in sight. “Fuck being on some chill shit / We go 0 to 100 nigga, real quick,” he barks on the opening verse. You may have thought “Started From the Bottom” was a complete farce, but Drake is spitting the absolute truth here.
Yet, the man screaming, “Oh Lord, I’m the rookie and the vet” never seems to shake his crushing self-confidence when it comes to superstardom. Noah “40” Shebib, the producer who’s sculpted each Drake album since his mixtape days, perfectly displays Graham’s dichotomy through his beats. Much like “Tuscan Leather” or “Marvin’s Room,” “0 to 100/The Catch Up” abruptly shifts focus at the song’s middle, neatly personifying Drake’s troubled conscious with nearly atonal synths. In an almost spoken-word type fashion, he uses this second half to ruminate on what actually being the greatest means rather than just saying insipid lines that every rapper has done twice over. “They say the shoe can always fit, no matter whose foot it’s on / These days feel like I’m squeezin’ in ‘em,” he says on attempting to move beyond rap legacies to make something of his own. With Drake feeling this inspired, it’s hard to imagine what ground his next studio effort will cover.