“Legend” stood as the undisputed greatest Drake album intro (all respect to “Free Smoke”) until 2021’s Certified Lover Boy and its opener: “Champagne Poetry.” Now, “Legend” is still the greatest in my opinion, but “Champagne” gave it a run for its money. More importantly it serves as a good enough segue to talk more directly about this new book, which, yes, is titled Titles Ruin Everything. To me, that means it’s untitled, therefore I personally will be referring to it as Champagne Poetry.
Reading through the sparse 168 pages of Champa—I mean, Titles—with Bun and the French woman’s lessons in mind, I wondered, is Drake modeling his poetry after someone? Mos Def himself was the host of Def Poetry Jam, but these poems don’t really seem to be angling towards “Umi Says.” They mostly alter between bitter, jaded, and braggadocious, and yet they seem to be… funny?
Take this one for example: I’m not four you / really starting to put two and two together.
If that isn’t a dad joke, I don’t know what is. It’s silly! Right?!
There is one poem where he seems to be actually profound: Oh, how smooth life would go / if you knew what you pretend to know.
The way they’re presented—not to spend too much time comparing—feel a little like Rupi Kaur ruminations for straight men who learned about therapy from Instagram memes. Speaking of, in the book, we learn he’s trying to work on processing his emotions.
One entry reads:
My therapist told me I need to stop listening to what people tell me / but if I take her advice wouldn’t I be listening to what people tell me?
None of the poems are specifically attributed to Drake or Kenza, but that one feels like Drake. This next one has to be him, too.
No one is gaslighting you / You’re just so toxic that you’re flammable.
Part of what makes Drake great is that he has, for the most part, done a masterful job of making songs that can either be interpreted as superficial or profound, depending on who the listener is. And even the superficial stuff is often fun because it’s campy. Mos Def has never made music like that.
I mean, who else could get away with rapping, “Got my Spanish ting convinced that I know Spanish / Really when she get to talkin’ I don’t understand it” on a very serious song?
If he’s simply teasing lyrics from his upcoming album, then this book will serve as a cool novelty item for fans to collect, and there’s a good chance that hearing him sing or rap some of these will change the way we feel about them, but if he’s really trying to be taken seriously as a poet with no melody to lean on? Well for that I need to talk with a few experts to better understand how to view the book through that lens.
