Drake has just one-upped himself by releasing two new tracks, one of which features both Kanye West AND Jay-Z, cleverly referenced as The Throne.
Pop Style and One Dance are both taken from his long, long-anticipated upcoming album Views From The 6, which is still reportedly set to drop some time this month. They follow on from Summer Sixteen, which he released earlier in January, and Controlla, These Days and Faithful, featuring Pimp C, which have all recently leaked. With a total of at least six (or seven if you consider Hotline Bling) tracks from Views already having surfaced, it’ll be interesting to see how many more we’ll hear on the album. For all we know, he may well pull a Kanye/Rihanna and leave half of these off the final cut – either way, it looks like we only have a couple weeks to go until we find out.
Pop Style features The Throne, in one of the first appearances that Hov and Yeezy have made together since Watch The Throne came out back in 2011. Dark and deep, with a low, sleazy drawl, it certainly shows a shadowy side to Drake that we don’t hear all that often. Ye uses most of his slow, and truthfully unimpressive verse to talk about TLOP and his related personal issues, basically continuing on the extended monologue he’s weaved throughout his 2015 singles, TLOP and the recent new one Saint Pablo ft. Sampha, including a hyper-self-aware “Imma let you finish” reference. As for Jay-Z, well, he contributes one single, lonely bar to the entire track.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that I really did expect more from these three megastars. Then again, Hov hasn’t released a good song in years (I HATED Magna Carta, for context,) and Kanye seems to be so extremely hell bent on talking about his own ego that it’s no longer funny or interesting, but boring and repetitive.
One Dance, meanwhile, is brighter and softer than the trap-heavy Pop Style, featuring Wizkid and Kyla, from Nigeria and the Philippines respectively. It’s bouncy and melodic and perfectly catchy, but to be honest it’s not overly memorable.
If nothing else, the diversity in these two singles indicates that Drake fans have an exciting release ahead of them this month!
Listen to Pop Style and purchase it here:
And One Dance and purchase it here:
Both tracks are currently available on Apple Music, and Pop Style is also available on Tidal, of course, but we’ll update you when they are released on other services.
Views From The 6 will be out soon. We think.
Image: RWDMag