ALL CAPS Weekly 004: Drake drops book and Little Simz rocks Melbourne
New tracks to get you through the cold
It’s funny what music can do outside the context of streaming. Take those familiar 808s, bass and vocals out of the earbuds and into a tangible, live context, and pwoah — whole new experience.
We saw Little Simz at the unfortunately named Margaret Court arena on Wednesday — which is to say we saw one of the best gigs of our life. It was uplifting, inspiring, elevated, diverse-enough-to-have-me-think-posing-while-dancing, and above all, it was top-tier hip hop.
A lot of familiar faces in the audience; from Noah daCosta to Miss Kannina and a bunch of locals from Brunswick and the wider Melbourne hip hop scene. The crowd had a solidaritous air to it, permeating beyond Lenny’s hermitism and into the realm of mutual appreciation for poetry and rhythm.
More info on the gig in our latest pod, but I’d like to share a little moment we didn’t touch on in ALL CAPS.
For the longest time at CBCB, a particular group of fellow young’ns have come in for their daily coffee around the same time I (Lenny) am typically perched in the corner with a routine batch brew and fruit toast.
In spite of these folk appearing friendly and interesting, an introduction never really happened between us — very uncharacteristic of CBCB, but I dunno, they had their lane and I had mine, y’know?
Anyhow, I was approached by two people from this group the other day at CBCB — they let me know they saw Chad and I in the bleachers at the Little Simz gig. Conversation ensued.
We shared our admiration for Simz and her performance, and finally introduced ourselves to one another. A subtle victory over the mundanity of social barriers, all thanks to live music.
Anyway! Onto the news:
The News
Drake Drops Dogsh*t Book
I think my relationship with Drake plateaued in 2012 — I was going through (or rather crumbling apart under) a breakup with my high-school gf, when a couple of goading and ultimately well-meaning buddies hacked into my Facebook account, updated my banner image to a greyscale Drake portrait with the quote “People Change…. Memories Don’t”, then posted a range of statuses to the forlorn effect of “moving on…..“ and “What life gives you lemons, well sometimes you just gotta make a lemonade 😉”
I’ve always felt Drake’s quotables ranged from mildly witty to Ikea/Eat-Pray-Love idioms, so when I heard the man who once described himself as a lesbian on account of his attraction towards women was dropping a poetry book — well, I was schaudenfredue-ily excited to check it out.
Titles Ruin Everything is a collection of “poetry” in the form of one-liners and what publications are essentially describing as repurposed Instagram captions. As expected, they mostly serve to raise reader eyebrows and explore the endlessly provocative question of whether Drake should ever do things outside of music. Case in point:
I can’t read the signs hun
I left my glasses at home— an entire page out of Titles Ruin Everything
You’re not thuggin you’re kidding…
one sided beef is not beef… it’s chicken— an entire TWO pages out of Titles Ruin Everything
Drake has this uncanny way of getting me to ponder meaningless statements for much longer than I ought to. Reading some of this felt like digging into an empty Pringles can until you realise your blood circulation is waning and your arm is covered in chip residue.
Similar to his discography, much of the book is co-authored by longtime collaborator Kenza Samir.
While I appreciate new endeavors by rappers and artists, Drake’s book is utterly perplexing. In the best-case scenario it serves as a tongue-in-cheek piece for the coffee table, aware of its vibey explorations and pseudo-emo bravado. In the worst case, it’s a low-effort, headlining cash-grab using Drake’s brand to bring in some buzz and pocket cash — one that routinely dedicates whole sheets of paper to ten-or-less words at that.
Tracks of the Week
So 👏 much 👏 new 👏 music! 👏👏👏
(And a weird amount of tracks with a parenthesis alt-title 👏).
This week’s Weekly Wrap sees a long-anticipated comeback from A$AP Rocky ft Pharrell Williams on the trippy, spacey, escalating cut ‘RIOT (Rowdy Pipe’n)’.
Meanwhile Jay Rock continues his own comeback single-run with the uncharacteristic ‘Too Fast (Pull Over)’ ft Anderson .Paak and Latto. A very interesting mix of trap and West Coast bass over a tropical aesthetic with Mexican horns. Latto and Paak’s verses are energetic as always, and Jay Rock surprisingly switches it up to match their pop-leaning contributions.
Bas brings a breezy dancehall cut in his team-up with J. Cole on ‘Passport Bros’, Joell Ortiz’s ‘OG’ ft L’Orange explores aging, maturation and survival through the lens of the culture, and Nas drops an homage to fellow New Yorker on Hit-Boy produced Bokeem Woodbine, the sixth cut from his new album ‘Magic 2’.
Finally, Jourden’s ‘Flow’ and Black Milk’s ‘The Black Surf (Everybody Good?)’ ft Quelle Chris both bring slow, jazzier cuts that will slot nicely into anyone’s chillout playlists.
ALL CAPS 013 - We Saw A Goat
Look, I’ll keep it brief — we reviewed our experience of the amazing Little Simz gig from Wednesday. Genuinely great convo, Chad bought awesome insights and Lenny bought some high-quality editing with snippets of the Simz show to compliment our chat.
We also took a look at Spotify’s most-streamed rap songs of all time and ran a cruisy blind bracket of five current rappers.
Thanks for tuning in Cappers! Enjoy your Sunday and keep out of the cold ❤️
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