Drake – The Calm

So Far Gone, Track 15 : The Calm

I love Drake’s spoken monologue midway through the song where he apologises for venting, but then explains, ‘40 Mom always say, don’t ask permission, just ask forgiveness you know. So, forgive me.’

I don’t know why it’s so cool, it’s not like I hadn’t heard that saying before, but it just is. Perhaps it gives the song even more of a human, personal touch. It’s as if Drake is in a kind of trance of stream of consciousness raps, but he breaks out of that for a second, just to let us know that he knows he’s venting, but it’s something he needs to do.

There are a few great lines that I think really sum up what it must be like to deal with the strain of a growing fame. Like, ‘feeling so distant from everyone I’ve known, to make everybody happy I think I would need a clone,’ or, ‘They love it when you smile, unaware that it’s a strain.’

I’ve said this before, but at the time of writing So Far Gone, Drake was still pretty unknown, so it’s crazy to me how he can be so insightful with moments that I’m pretty sure he was yet to actually experience.

One of the lines that made my jaw drop though, was a line about his Father. “He say he love me, I just hope he doesn’t say that shit in vain.” The whole part about his Dad is pretty emotionally raw, the stuff about his Dad guilt tripping him into sending money, it’s all so intimately detailed. But it was that one line that really got me. It’s a powerful line. In ‘Successful’ we learn of his close relationship with his Mother, in ‘The Calm’ we learn of his distant relationship with his Father. Sheahan mentioned in the last post that Drake says shit most guys wouldn’t dare say out loud. And that seems to apply to family members, as well as women. No one is safe from ‘Heartbreak Drake.’

And talk about speaking things into reality, how are these for a few prophetic lines : ‘Everything will be OK, and it won’t even take that long…leader of the new school, it’s proven and it’s known, I’m sitting in a chair but in the future it’s a throne.’