Lover boy comeback after Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us

“Gimme a hug, Gimme a hug!,” pleads Drake on one observe from his new album, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U.

After the month and yr he is had, maybe it is no shock.

As rap battle humiliations go, the rapper’s defeat by hip-hop’s lyrical supremo Kendrick Lamar has turn out to be a cultural phenomenon, and noticed Drake sue Universal Music Group.

Lamar’s diss observe, Not Like Us, a viral hit since last summer, accuses the Canadian star of inappropriate relationships with underage women – claims Drake denies.

First the track swept up at the Grammys, with Taylor Swift and Beyoncé dancing alongside. Then got here Lamar’s Super Bowl half-time show, with a document 133.5 million folks estimated to have tuned in to look at the entire stadium sing the lyrics accusing Drake of being a paedophile.

And on Friday the only finally topped the UK charts 9 months after launch, matching its stateside success.

However quite than lay low, Drake, the dominant chart-topper of the previous 15 years, is popping out preventing with an “intriguing” technique after being put in a “cultural chokehold”, says disaster PR skilled Mark Borkowski.

As Lamar grins by means of the intense lights of his victory lap, Drake’s chosen to sidestep the meat – bar one embittered freestyle denouncing faux buddies – and as an alternative targeted on repositioning himself.

At present on tour in Australia, he is been loosening up, gently leaning into the softer picture he is spent current years making an attempt to toughen, even performing an intimate karaoke bar set of early sultry hits.

Then on Valentine’s Day, virtually per week after the Tremendous Bowl, he returned with $ome $exy $ongs 4 U, a full-length collaboration with PartyNextDoor that harks again to his R&B-tinged rise.

Stuffed with trap-soul beats teasing romantic escapades, Borkowski calls it a “calculated retreat into the acquainted, snug territory” of the extra delicate “licensed lover boy” persona that dominated Drake’s preliminary breakthrough albums like Thank Me Later and 2011’s Take Care.

Within the 2010s, Drake was the most-listened to Spotify artist, racking up greater than 28 billion streams, along with his hottest track, One Dance, performed 1.7 billion occasions alone.

Even when Not Like Us noticed the crown slip, he remained the fourth most-streamed artist on the platform final yr.

“His repute may be in tatters inside sure circles, however commercially, he stays bulletproof,” says Borkowski.

It helps that Drake harnessed mass attraction by sampling a myriad of genres in his pomp of pop-rap dominance.

His catalogue – boasting 45 UK top 10 singles, (together with six quantity ones), and over 300 hits within the US Sizzling 100 – inhaled fumes of grime, dancehall and afrobeat.

The camouflage from his standing as a industrial chameleon implies that “regardless of the clear L and Not Like Us turning into a defining second in rap historical past, Drake retains shifting”, says Borkowski.

On $ome $exy $ongs 4 U’s observe Gimme A Hug, Drake appears to wave the white flag in his Kendrick battle saying: “[Expletive] a rap beef, I am tryna get the get together lit.”

It is labored, too, a minimum of commercially. According to Billboard, Apple Music confirmed $ome $exy $ongs 4 U’s launch broke first-day R&B streaming data on the platform.

In Friday’s official UK charts, the album got here in at quantity three.

Three of its songs additionally made up the highest 40 – together with Gimme A Hug.

Essential reception, in the meantime, has been blended. Vulture described it as “craving pre-beef star discovering his footing”, with a sound “carefully re-establishing” his earlier aesthetic.

Rolling Stone’s Jeff Ihaza, in a three-and-a-half-star review, spoke of a “return to type from an artist whose again was really towards the wall”.

Pitchfork’s Alphonse Pierre, nonetheless, was scathing, lambasting “a determined album from one in every of rap’s most infamous narcissists”.

Regardless, Borkowski is obvious on the technique – Gimme A Hug, just like the album, is not a response observe, it is an abdication from the struggle. A recognition that Drake can nonetheless win, simply on a special rap turf.

So, the place is Drake headed if he is conceding the rap battlefield? The reply is the nostalgia play.

Weeks earlier than the discharge of this new album, Drake opened his Australian tour by popping out on stage in a vest with smoking bullet holes. He closed the present by declaring: “My title is Drake, I began in 2008, I got here all the way in which from Toronto, Canada. The yr is now 2025, and Drizzy Drake could be very a lot nonetheless alive.”

For music and tradition journalist Manu Ekanayake, the brand new album revisiting his early 2010s period, when he “sounded assured in what he was making an attempt to do”, mirrors this.

However, he warns, “after three current albums of being the least convincing robust man on the town, can he actually return to being the singing get together boy?”.

He is actually going to strive. Days after the album drop, Drake introduced an unprecedented three-night takeover of London’s Wi-fi Competition this summer time, with every evening’s set specializing in a special a part of his profession.

Organisers confirmed the dates offered out in document time. For Borkowski, this can be a “masterclass in reframing”.

“Drake is curating his personal legacy, reminding folks of his longevity, and shifting the dialog away from defeat and again to dominance.”

Ekanayake is much less certain of the long-term potential: “Now at 38, all of it sounds very totally different from when he was within the first flush of success in his 20s.

“What appeared earlier than like a younger artist giving hip-hop a brand new strategy for a brand new era, now sounds prefer it’s the top of one thing.”

However, in the end, Borkowski goes again to the underside line. “His followers aren’t music purists, they’re Drake followers – right here for the life-style, the vibes, and the model. And so long as he delivers that, nothing really sticks.”

The true energy transfer? Securing Stay Nation for his rebrand, says Borkowski.

“It is about staying related, making certain the hits do not cease and preserving the machine working. In as we speak’s music business, notion is foreign money, and regardless of the setbacks, Drake remains to be cashing in.”

Good factor too, as Lamar’s Not Like Us reveals no indicators of slowing down on either side of the Atlantic.

The Compton star’s already made US historical past by turning into the primary rapper to have three albums within the Billboard high 10 – along with his newest launch GNX additionally primary.

The battle could also be over, however the chart struggle has simply begun.