Letter from the Editor Re: Drake v. the City of Miami

by Stefanie Fernández

If there’s one particularly glossy nugget of music journalism that has been written to death, it’s the Drake Thinkpiece. In the Year of Our Lord 2017 it is not cool to like Drake. After the Views flop of 2016, there’s something hollow in “Hotline Bling” winning Best Rap Song at the Grammys this year, two years after it was released (a “clerical error” last year, his label claims). Every girl with an Instagram has made a reference to @champagnepapi or has thought about it (I’m not being petty, follow me @matervamami). But nowhere in the US—not a single city across the amber plains—has a more complicated relationship with papi than Miami: the Mecca of Drake’s get-you-a-Latina-mami-and-cry-about-her-at-E11EVEN aesthetic revolution. So bear with me for just one more Drake Thinkpiece.

Let’s return for a moment to 2007, when most of us knew Drake as Jimmy; to Degrassi: The Next Generation (a full month of which is my only memory during that year’s Every Degrassi Ever Marathon on TeenNick). That year, Jimmy released his second mixtape, Comeback Season, on which he raps adorably in “Do What U Do (Remix)”: “I ain't bluffin', cop jewels off the Russian / Diamonds in the Jesus, look like he's blushin' / Miami breezes, we cross seasons.” These are slant rhymes, my ingénue. Just two years later, on 2009’s breakthrough So Far Gone, he recants much of that brazen brag on “The Calm”: “tryin' to enjoy myself with Tez in Miami at the game / I just wish he knew how much it really weighed like Dwyane.” Drake sits courtside at the Miami Heat game astral-projecting like he’s on a first-name basis with Dwyane Wade while Tez remains none the wiser. What do you know of pressure yet, 2009 Drake?

Obviously, Miami = luxury/fun, by way of its beaches, its clubs, and its culture of semi-legal debauchery and excess. Far be it from this criticism to pretend toward nobler escapes from everyday anxieties (Will Smith’s “Miami” remains this Miami’s best homage). But I grew up in a different Miami, drinking fresh orange juice and eating black beans, speak-yelling Spanglish, always bronze in a sweaty way. Simultaneous to Drake’s ascent to True Sadboy circa 2011 with the release of his major-label debut, Take Care, was his growing hold on not only South-Beach-springbreak-Miami, but on Hialeah-Kendall Miami—on our language, on our islands. On “The Motto”: “Them Spanish girls love me like I'm Aventura” (a great mall,) “…I'm out in Miami, too / Clubbing hard, fucking women, there ain't much to do.” And from that very club on “Club Paradise”: “No wonder why I keep fucking up the double-cheek kiss” (the common greeting among Caribbean folk, which I still forget to not do outside of the 305) “And long for that ignorant Young Money Miami Beach shit.” Yeah, you’re from Toronto. Okayyyyy.

Drake’s hyperfocus on the Latina women of Miami—most of them Cuban (hey), Colombian, Venezuelan, Mexican, or mixed—becomes a problem when Drake’s Mami archetype blends all the qualities that differentiate Latina women from each other. Instead of personality, we get a vaguely ethnic aestheticized Mami with long nails, killer eyebrows, and an ass; all of which are great. But together they form a woman whose intelligence is only superficial. On Take Care’s “Make Me Proud” (featuring the actual sun, Nicki Minaj): “Sound so smart like you graduated college / Like you went to Yale but you probably went to Howard / Knowing you, weekend in Miami trying to study by the pool / Couple things due but you always get it done.” Drake delivers these lines with a faux-praise that at this point in his career has grown over the young-money-Miami-Beach shit like a mold. In a track that ostensibly praises women for hustling, Drake condescends to his object in racialized terms that reduce black feminine intelligence to smarts. The Howard reference is hostile (and little does Drake know the incredible strength and labor of black women on Yale’s campus, #FKACalhoun). The Miami lyric paints her as a spring break bimbo, erasing the many black women in Miami that deal with guys like Drake daily. Nicki would never.

This brings me to the peak of the coolness-in-liking-Drake parabola in 2013 with Nothing Was the Same. Nothing was, and Drake here reaches Full Sadboy. On “The Language,” Drake complains about missing the “whole summer” to record the album, and suggests a remedy in the refrain: “I just might bring in some girls from Miami / To heat up the city…Now you’re talking my language.” If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being away from Miami, it’s that you don’t ever leave Miami. The Miami girls I know move with an intense heat for life, too eager to live to stay busy with loneliness. I am always on the causeway watching the sky purple over warm water. Hearing the city speak its own murmur from all over the Caribbean. I carry its rhythm and disperse its heat osmotically.

On my authority and Genius.com’s, there are at least fifteen documented mentions of Miami across the Drake oeuvre; some glowing, others blistering. There is not a single mention of Miami on Views as Drake returns to a metaphysical Toronto, and thank god. Not even the stars above can tell us if the fickle pendulum of pop culture will swing back in Drake’s favor. In the meantime, I give you nine gems of incisive criticism that examine all manner of complicated kinships. I’ll be busy squeezing oranges and getting busy graduating. Writing and editing for this zine has meant more to me than I can tell you, and I thank our designers Bryce & Matt, our editors Emma and Benjy, and you for all the realness you’ve given me in return. Thanks always for talking my language.

Yrs,

Stefanie