This spring, after Kendrick Lamar surfaced the long-subterranean ill will between himself and Drake on “ Like That ,” Drake responded with “Push Ups,” its title a clever play about Kendrick’s allegedly unfavorable deal with his original label, Top Dawg Entertainment. Only “Push Ups” wasn’t immediately issued to digital streaming platforms or pushed out on Drake’s social media channels — it was left to live as an unconfirmed leak, leaving the song dogged by speculation as to whether or not it was created with AI. A cynical observer can only assume that if the reaction to “Push Ups” had not been so positive, it would have been made to drift into the ether.
The 100 gigabyte dump of music, videos, and photos that Drake released yesterday — months after becoming the most unambiguous loser of a major rap beef in the genre’s history — similarly attempts to have it both ways: spontaneous but carefully considered, in line with the seemingly off-the-cuff 4 a.m. releases of songs that soon reveal themselves to be well-oiled album rollouts.
The most generous reading is that this flood from a .org domain harkens back to the blog era of the late 2000s and early 2010s, when Drake’s career nudged toward terminal velocity thanks to posts on Nah Right and 2DopeBoyz. But the point is not to center new music, no matter how much Drake might hope “Housekeeping Knows ” — one of three new songs available in the archive — pops at radio.
Rather, this haphazard a.