On his new album, is Drake breaking up with the 6ix?

This year, Valentine's Day has fallen on a new music Friday — and there is so much to listen to this weekend.

If you're not pressing play on Sabrina Carpenter's deluxe version of Short n' Sweet or Alessia Cara's new album Love & Hyperbole, then chances are you're listening to another buzzy new record: Drake and PartyNextDoor's collab album, Some Sexy Songs 4 U (stylized as $ome $exy $ongs 4 U or $$$4U).

Today on Commotion, Toronto radio personality Mastermind and critics Jackson Weaver and Hanna Flint join guest host Rad Simonpillai to talk about how this album is landing for the 6 God, post-lawsuit and post-feud.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, including a conversation about Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Rad: Look, this is an interesting time for this new album to land, given what's been going on with Drake lately. We've been talking about this beef with Kendrick, Drake's defamation lawsuit against Universal Music, Kendrick's big Grammy wins for Not Like Us, and of course the Super Bowl performance. How does all that affect your experience listening to this album?

Mastermind: Listen, I take Drake's albums for what they are, and this is obviously a collab with him and PartyNextDoor. They've made a bunch of great records in the past. And so I think for fans of Drake and/or PartyNextDoor, they're going to be happy with it. Anybody who already has a pre-conceived judgment against Drake — they don't like him already, or maybe they don't like him any more because of what happened in the last 6 to 8 months — they're going to roll their eyes and then have their same opinion. 

What I realized with the whole beef is that there's a lack of impartial judgment when it comes to rappers. Like, if you don't like Kendrick, you can't really say honestly if he did something good or bad. And I think the same applies with Drake. So I think he went into his wheelhouse, and they concocted something that's for his fan base. But he also gives us some rappity-raps on this as well, so there's that.

Rad: Jackson, when I listen to this album, it sounds like a guy feeling betrayed by a girlfriend — but maybe that girlfriend is hip-hop. Or maybe that girlfriend is his friends. Or maybe the girlfriend is Toronto, even…. What did you think about this album?

Jackson: I don't know if Drake is breaking up with Toronto or not but, I mean, this is almost as sad as The Weeknd. I don't know what's gone wrong in Toronto these past couple weeks. All our musicians are, like, crying into their albums. We have already raised how you have to kind of interpret this album for better or worse, and I think "worse" in Drake's favor [is] as a response to Kendrick. For all of the rappity-rap, for all of the flow, for all of the double entendres, for all of the beat switch-ups, we're picking this apart to see, was this a reference to Kendrick? He says, "damn," here — was that a reference to Damn. by Kendrick?.... 

So everything is not necessarily the lyricism as it stands on its own; it is being swallowed up into this conversation, which is not necessarily very strange for rap or even music…. But this is really — and I think this is part of the defamation suit that Drake has — about how this is overshadowing everything about Drake. This beef has gotten to totemic levels, where we cannot even listen to a little Finding Nemo reference without thinking, "How does this fit into the Kendrick and Drake beef?"

Rad: Mastermind, I can't look at the album cover here without thinking, what's Drake doing out in Mississauga? For those who don't know, Mississauga is the neighboring city just outside of Toronto. We know it's Mississauga because in the back of the album cover is what we call the Marilyn Monroe Towers…. You know, on his earlier album Views, Drake is sitting at the top of the CN Tower. And this new album opens with a track called CN Tower, where he's very in his feelings…. What do you think he's trying to express with that?

Mastermind: Drake has always been about Toronto, right? So when you think about the different references — CN Tower, Marilyn Monroe Towers — it's never been him hiding or not celebrating where he's from. Every concert he's like, "I'm a kid from Toronto, the greatest city in the world."...

Take God's Plan for example, where he went outside of Canada to go give away all this money and stuff. He got a lot of flack for that because he is talking about Canada. So it's a no-win situation because on one hand, it's like you celebrate the things from here and then we have people criticising, "Why is he standing in front of these towers in Mississauga?" He rapped about Mississauga so many times before. And Party is from Mississauga, so it just makes sense, being a collab album. Those towers are kind of the Mississauga trademark, if you will, right? Like, it's either that or Square One. Pick one.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jean Kim.