So Drake wrote his own poetry book and it’s exactly what you’d expect a poetry book written by Drake to be. It’s not quite the T.S. Eliot level of poetry one could have hoped for, but it’s definitely Drake just being Drake, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.
Think of literally any Drake song, and now imagine the lyrics printed onto white, crisp paper, one sentence broken down over facing pages over 168 pages – that’s what the book is. Even the title, which is “Titles Ruin Everything”, is so Drake. The book was published by Phaidon and to be fair, it’s a sleek-looking book. If we could judge a book by its cover and only its cover, this would be the one.
But we’re going to judge the inside too, because how could you not when Drake says sh*t like “No one is gaslighting you / you’re just so toxic that you’re flammable”. He might be onto something there. Here are some more for your enjoyment: “I’m not four you / really starting to put two and two together”, “Swimming in regret / is not cardio” and our own personal favourite “You’re not thugging, you’re kidding / One sided beef is not beef… it’s chicken”. Rupi Kaur, you’ve got competition.
The Drake die hard fans pulled through though, with the book already sold out on publisher Phaidon’s website. Listen, we all love a bit of Drake (who doesn’t f*ck with Passionfruit in summer, every summer), but there’s something about his words that just sounds so much better behind a 40 prod. Printed on paper, it’s giving unserious.
But hey, we might actually be hearing some of those lines behind a beat very soon. “Titles Ruin Everything” isn’t just a standalone project, but rather a prequel and an extension to an upcoming album. We might have found the next viral TikTok sound if Drake is going to be spitting out how one-sided beef is chicken.
We’re not trying to gatekeep poetry in any way. It’s such an open-ended art form that no one is really entitled to define what is or isn’t poetry, but in Drake’s case, let’s just say we’re not expecting him to win a Pulitzer Prize anytime soon. Handing it over to an actual award-winning poet, essayist and critic Hanif Abdurraqib, he said that the poems were actually “so absurd that they’re actually funny” but “It is a struggle for me to tell how in on the joke he is”.
Drake has always been and will continue to be corny, but that’s part of the reason why we love him. We’re actually kind of glad Drake did Drake in that poetry book, because anything else would have been insufferable. And hey, the book is already sold out on Phaidon’s website, so Drake must be doing something right. If that ‘something’ is actually poetry or just banking on his own name because he knows anything he does will instantly sell is something we’ll let you decide (there’s only one right answer).
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