Lonely at the Top: 6 Sad Stoic Drake Songs

Nothing stirs emotions quite like thinking of home. On this cut from “Views,” Drake writes a love letter to the street he grew up on. The rapper remembers back when he and his childhood friend Renny “couldn’t buy pizzas ‘cause we were down to pennies,” and ends at where he is today: “the most successful rapper 35 and under.”

Listening to this song from his 2010 debut “Thank Me Later,” we see an extremely Drake blueprint. This Kanye-influenced song has all the tropes that surface on a lot of Drake’s music to come: the trappings of fame, comparisons with ball players, the above-it-all vantage point. While the gravitas of his later works was not quite there yet, “Thank Me Now” lays a strong, convincing foundation.

This ice cold track is from 2018’s “Scorpion,” which went platinum in one day. But for Drake, even that is nothing to show emotion over. On “Emotionless,” the rapper drifts over a soulful reworking of Mariah Carey’s 12” mix of “Emotions” to talk about the challenges of being at the top of the rap game in 2019: surpassing his heroes (“the people I look up to are goin’ from bad to worse”), the superficiality of social media (“I know a girl whose one goal was to visit Rome / then she finally got to Rome / and all she did was post pictures for people at home”) and succumbing to that superficiality himself (“scrollin’ through life and fishin’ for praise / opinions from total strangers take me out of my ways”).

There’s a reason producer and engineer Noah “40” Shebib has been Drake’s partner throughout the rapper’s entire career. Shebib has a knack for flipping samples, and creating open, hazy, pared-down sonic canvases for Drake to spill his thoughts on. On “Dreams Money Can Buy,” Shebib samples British songwriter Jai Paul’s “BTSTU,” opening the path for Drake to tout his accomplishments, and his aloofness at the wonders of his own life (“Dreams money can buy / Everybody was surprised, I wasn’t surprised”).

This song from 2011’s “Take Care” is a candid 6-minute meditation on his rise to the top full of gripes about fame. For such a sad reflective song -- aided by loops of guest artist The Weeknd’s soulful crooning -- the track is opulent and complex, with Drake standing firm and centered amid the chaos of doing “dinners at French Laundry,” having the girl he’s seeing “f***ing hate” him, and “everybody say[ing] they love you but it’s not love.”