Listen to “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” [ft. Rick Ross] by Drake
Drake has returned a handful of times in the past year (is that an album rollout?) but this time it’s more serious, I suppose, because it’s packaged with a radio show. On last night’s OVO Sound, he debuted a three-pack of tracks under the Scary Hours umbrella, a phrase the Toronto rapper coined at the height of his beef with Meek Mill and for some reason has adopted into his permanent lexicon. The three songs cover all his bases: There’s one bound to dominate radio and playlists (“Wants and Needs”), one that puts a Drake spin on a trendy spacey sound popularized by Pi’erre Bourne (“What’s Next”), and one for those who still cry about ghostwriters (“Lemon Pepper Freestyle”).
On “Lemon Pepper Freestyle,” the best of the three, Drake once again joins forces with Rick Ross. It’s their usual formula of aspirational lifestyle lyrics for landlords, professional athletes, and people on vacation in Miami, delivered over a moody, vocal sample-based instrumental. They’ve done it so many times that you could probably get the gist without even listening, but Ross’ mythmaking still just sounds right when it’s followed by nearly five minutes of Drake explaining how cool it is to have a shitload of money: He calls the princes of Dubai his family, rides jet skis in the Florida Keys, and shouts out the groundskeepers who trim his hedges. It’s what I’ve come to expect, because by now familiarity is essential to the Drake brand. Like all dominant forces in pop culture, his music is a comfortable form of nostalgia.
