Can Drake Bounce Back?

It’s been 13 weeks since Kendrick Lamar dropped “Not Like Us,” the devastating Drake diss that’s now sat near the top of the charts for the majority of the summer. While he’s been relatively quiet since then, it looks like Drake is plotting a return to the public eye. On Friday, he surprised fans at PartyNextDoor’s tour stop in Toronto, hopping on stage to perform a handful of songs to the sold-out hometown crowd and to announce an upcoming collaborative project set to drop in the fall. By now, every crumb of new Drake music — from his less than memorable appearance on Camilla Cabello’s C,XOXO, to his only slightly more impactful verse on Sexyy Red’s “U My Everything,” to his most recent return to dance music on Gordo’s “Healing” and “Sideways” — arrives loaded with expectations. But more than any snippet or feature, an official project from Drake alongside his OVO cohort is certain to be a real test of how much damage the disses on “Not Like Us,” and the feud in general, will have on Drake’s career in the long run. 

Kendrick went further than just turning allegations about younger women into an infectious nursery rhyme on “Not Like Us”; he makes a cogent argument that much of Drizzy’s rap career is inauthentic. It’s a particularly thorny position for Drake, whose every move could now easily appear to confirm the claims that he’s a culture vulture. It’s why the Toronto-centric “Wah Gwan Delilah,” released in June by Snowd4y — which Drake performed for the crowd at Party’s show — makes a decent amount of strategic sense. While there’s certainly an argument for Drake trying on various regional sounds throughout his career, he’s consistently repped Toronto, and leaning into that now is a sensible way to counter the notion that he relies on taking from others. 

Still, having the hottest song of the summer being a diss about you — one where you get called a pedophile and colonizer over a DJ Mustard beat, no less — is a hard position to come back from, even for Drake, who has proven throughout his career that he’s a different kind of superstar, with more range and resilience than most. Public opinion in the streaming era is fleeting, though, and Drake has so far played it cool enough to have a feasible shot at a comeback.

For one, he hasn’t tried positioning himself any more defensively than on the disastrous “The Heart Part 6.” Instead, as the rap world effectively danced on his grave, Drake has mostly leaned into having a sense of humor about it. On “U My Everything,” he strikes a self-deprecating tone, more or less admitting to having plastic surgery while rapping over Metro Boomin’s “BBL Drizzy” diss-beat — a rap invention created with the express purpose of defeating Drake. Similarly, “Wah Gwan Delilah” is a light-hearted cover of the Plain White T’s song, where Drake offers up the rarer, more cacophonous, delicacies of Toronto dialect: “I’m so cheeesed,” he coos, with all the slanted vocal affect of a mischievous Toronto youth.

There are, however, unconfirmed reports that Drake is blocking TDE artists from performing in Toronto, as Schoolboy Q and more recently SiR have alluded to on social media. A petty move, though, how one feels about that seems largely contingent upon how they feel about Drake in the first place, which is about where things appear to have netted out since “Not Like Us.” For die-hard rap fans who have never taken Drake particularly seriously, it’s hard to imagine there’s anything he can do for them to reconsider their greatest of all-time ballots, but absent a genuine crash out, Drake’s position as a hitmaker could well be left intact.

He’ll still need to successfully shift public perception. The great rap civil war of 2024 painted a gigantic target on Drake’s back, and as much as he might relish in the role of the anti-hero, he runs the risk of coming off as generally unlikeable. Last month, after Lil Yachty called up Kai Cenat during one of his live streams and sent him a track purportedly titled “Supersoak,” featuring Drake, there was a quick backlash over Yachty revealing on a podcast that he leaked the song after failing to clear the original sample from the creator Mr. Hotspot, who had religious objections being involved with secular music. Many saw Yachty’s decision to leak the song anyway as evidence that he, and by conduit Drake, was untrustworthy. 

Today’s audiences have proven to take stock in the finer details of their favorite artist’s work. For better or worse, a rapper’s personal ethics are now equally as important as their music. It’s why Kendrick’s attacks on “Not Like Us” proved to be so effective. The more people in the rap world express their distrust of Drake, the harder it’ll be for listeners to keep supporting him. That’s why a project with PartyNextDoor is a strong look. Party’s most recent album P4, is quietly making a mark, and his current tour spans 12 countries and 32 dates with many already sold out in a climate where it seems hard for even bigger names to fill venues. Sonically, too, Party has as close to what you might define as a sound distinct to Toronto. The ethereal production style he thrives over feels like a sound native to the six. It was the cultural specificity of “Not Like Us” that added to its impact, and in linking with Party, Drake makes his strongest claim to any cultural specificity of his own. Plus, having a well-liked musician in your corner, who is your artist from your city, helps rebuff some of the claims of cultural colonizing while providing a needed boost in public sentiment.

All of Drake’s efforts still might not be enough to make the world forget about “Not Like Us,” but it doesn’t mean his career is over, either. Even as he tactfully makes his return, Drake remains one of the top streamed artists in the world. As the dust settles from the beef, he’s probably not going anywhere, but he surely won’t be the same, either.  

From Rolling Stone US.