Rihanna Cruz

So this is something that he's done before.

It's a really good sample.

One of the best Drake songs maybe ever.

So the classic sample is doing two separate things, both in the realm of kind of musically rehabilitating his image.

For one, he's directly connecting himself to vintage R&B.

There is an element to it where the band Just Cause, I gather, is pretty obscure.

So I wonder if he's trying to infuse his image with a little bit of curatorial taste to lend him a little bit more credibility.

But more than that, and this is going off of the teenage fever connection, I think he's trying to put himself in conversation with what we know to be old Drake.

We see it on High Fives.

We see it on Classic.

And we've been seeing this a lot from rappers of Drake's class as they enter the third decade of their career.

I'm thinking of Kanye West's I Love Kanye, I Miss the Old Kanye dialogue on Life of Pablo.

These rappers, as they age...

And they're going into an era where they're scared of losing their relevance.

It feels like the only thing that they know how to do is call back what they were doing 10 years ago and be like, remember that?

You love that shit.

But the thing is, Drake is a pop star.

As well as a hip hop star, as well as an R&B star.

And this leads me into the final record of the three.

What really excites me about Drake is when he pushes the boundaries, tries new stuff.