Drake is the chilling logical extreme of the beta male’s triumph over the last decade: the ultimate evolution of the nerd turned jock, forever working every angle of his underdog status that may or may not have ever been merited but certainly isn’t anymore. At first, the rise of the Sensitive Bro felt like a corrective to the stifling macho-ness of traditional masculinity. But it has failed spectacularly, and we are left with Gamergate,
Ariel Pink, and the Voice of a Generation, who goes through women’s phones when they’re in the bathroom, firmly believes in the concept of the "friend zone" at almost 30 years old, and surrounds himself with powerful women to sniff their hair until they become a legitimate threat to his own ego.
(...)
Drake using ghostwriters isn’t as black and white a matter of "good" or "bad," and it doesn’t discredit the very strong body of work he’s built up. I don’t think anyone is naive enough to assume that great music, on this massive a scale, is possible though without some degree of collaboration. But the issue here isn’t authenticity: it’s more about authority. The dissonance between what Drake claims to represent—an honest, relatable, complicated auteur who has propelled himself from the bottom-ish into the pantheon of GOATs and implores us to
"know ourselves"—and who he seems to really be is at once surreal and frighteningly familiar.
