Headlines

One of the key features of the orthodox carpsi diem jam is a critical distance between the now of enunciation and the then of drug trafficking activity.  While it’s true that Biggie and Jay-Z in particular stress the conflation of these two genres, they both emphasize that drug dealing is an activity that took place in the past.  Jay, for instance, is obsessed with historicity and the numerology of his narrative remains insistent in his work.  1996, the year that Reasonable Doubt was released, marks the material evidence of his transformation from drug dealer to rapper, a transformation he takes pains to minimize even while he aggressively narrates it.  The Black Album (2003), especially given its frame as a retirement piece, is perhaps the canonical “looking back” document, and features some of the finest word groups ever fashioned to express the paradoxical shift, saturated with continuity, that marks his narrative (“from bricks to Billboards / grams to Grammys.”) 

The 7 years that elapse between 1996 and 2003, of course, parallel the extremely rapid emergence of the internet for daily American life, and the concomitant hypertrophic affective dilation of lived time.  Thus, like some deified dog, the technological innovations of one year appear as semi-knowablerelics the following, and lived encounters with the machine rapidly move from the “cutting edge” to “feeling like (they emerged) a million years ago.”  This era of hyperdilated progress provides a background for what would otherwise, perhaps, sound like a hyperbolic obsession on Drake’s part with a story of an artist who has to return from an sunken social position.

The song’s initial set of imagery expresses this renaissance in miniature, from being “strung out” and “overdosed” to “drinking every night / because we drink to my accomplishments.”  And the rest of the jam is oriented towards one central claim, that despite the rumors you might have heard to the contrary, Drake has not fallen off, but is in fact “back.”  Moreover, other people are certain about this (and the facts which ensue from the state of being back.)

In a world whose collective sense of time had not seen a drastic increase in speed, the 13 months that elapsed between Drake’s first LP, Thank Me Later, and the release of “Headlines” would not seem sufficient time for both enjoying a recent resurge to the top and a sinking to the necessary depths requisite for a bona fide rebound.  And yet that’s precisely what Drake achieves, or attempts to achieve, in “Headlines.” The description of a life in which the depths Drake experienced during a span of 13 calendar months is meant to correspond to the young Chris Wallace suffering the ignominy of several consecutive impoverished birthdays. 

Of course, part of this results from the facts of the life being expressed.  The Rick Ross syndrome, by which documents from the administration of everyday life are discovered and interrupt the suspended-disbelief monologue of much contemporary coke rap, can’t apply to Drake because those very documents are widely available.  A quick search for Degrassi High will show any viewer exactly what Drake was doing at the age at which Shawn Carter supposedly hustled cocaine, that is, co-starring in a situation comedy produced for a mainstream teenage and largely white Canadian audience.  Drake’s real life orientation relates to “Headlines” specifically in that it’s one of the few times on Take Care that he indulges in threats on his adversary’s life (“don’t make me catch a body like that”): a patently ridiculous claim that teeters so far from authenticity that it’s literally laughable. 

And yet for the most part “Headlines” appears as a sincere affirmation of imminent victory, which is why, like other critical jams of 2011 (specifically cf. Wayne’s “6’’7’” and Kanye West and Jay Z’s “H.A.M.”) it might best be understood as a manifesto.  And after all, a close listening suggests that perhaps Drake is fully aware of the paucity of time he supposedly languished in obscurity and powerlessness: true, he’s “strung out” but it is after all on “compliments.”  He’s experienced an “overdose,” but it is finally an excess display of “confidence” that he’s overconsumed.  In other words, the affective richness of the victory makes a claim to be the same as one in the more traditional rags-to-riches tale, even if the obstacles and labors have been far less vicious (Degrassi High vs. Marcy projects) and far more rapid (the drug-dealing era of Shawn Carter vs. the music-making era of Jay-Z.)

A final note about certainty.  While it’s status quo on Take Care as a whole to recite a catalogue of the tokens belying Drake’s wealth and success, “Headlines” is markedly empty of them.  Arguably the only material possession besides “money” which Drake boasts to own is the napkin in his shirt.  Even the money only makes one stable appearance (“Drizzy’s got the money / so Drizzy’s gonna pay it.”)  Elsewise, money merely occupies Drake’s mental space.  Even “the real,” a substantive brag concerning Drake’s authenticity as an artist, is merely “on the rise,” which could be read as “unestablished.” 

This conspicuous absence of luxury items is foregrounded too by the dislocation of affirmative knowledge concerning Drake’s wealth, success, and authenticity.  Whereas, in “Juicy,” the chorus seems to address the childhood Biggie in the 2^nd person (“you know very well what you are”), “Headlines” transfers gnosis to those who surround Drake.  In the first place, his entourage, who he pledges financial fealty to, fealty which he won’t have to express because “they know, they know, they know.” 

 I think finally this gesture can be read two ways.  One, that the necessity for Drake to make boasts about his talent and wealth has dissipated, concomitant with the rise of a fixed certainty in the minds of others about the splendor of that talent and the depth of the wealth. But on the other hand, the “they know” could be read as a shortcoming in narrative reliability, i.e. “I could tell you that I’m talented and wealthy, but if you need to be further convinced, I have witnesses.”