I'm certainly not the only person who fell asleep last night with a fairly confident hunch that I'd be waking up to word that Kanye West had contributed to Drake's double-album Scorpion. After all, despite that whole Pusha-T thing, a new Drake and Kanye West collab still didn't feel like it was entirely out of the question, especially considering Drake's recently confirmed Ye writing credit. Not even amid West's perplexing post-Trump prolificness. But as we all know now, there's exactly zero West on Scorpion.
Well, at least not literally. With all that's come to pass in the 6 God multiverse recently, it's not hard to find lines on the new album that may be indirect references to Drake's current thoughts on the guy who once graciously gifted him with "Find Your Love."
Over on the A Side of the 25-track experience, Drake uses the second verse of "Emotionless" to confirm—as King Push alleged in "Story of Adidon"—that he does indeed have a child. Earlier in the track, he speaks of meeting his heroes, only to later watch them go from "bad to worse" with uncharacteristic behavior. Given West's embrace of the MAGA puke lifestyle, it's not hard to imagine this being about him:
I can't even capture the feeling I had at first
Meetin' all my heroes, like seein' how magic works
The people I look up to are going from bad to worse
Their actions out of character, even when they rehearse
Later, Drake—possibly in a nod to West's fraught relationship with former "Big Brother" JAY-Z—laments the break-up of "iconic duos":
Can't even keep track of who plays for the other team
Iconic duos rip and split at the seams
Goodhearted people are taking it to extremes
"8 Out of 10" sees Drake going a bit more vague with the possible West criticism. The "Too rich for who?" may allude to the Ye cut "No Mistakes," which includes lines from West about someone he was "too rich" to fight. Furthermore, Drake is mayyyybe also referencing Ye's "I Thought About Killing You," though that admittedly could be a stretch:
Too rich for who? Y'all just got rich again
Who grips the mic and likes to kill they friends?
I've never been the type to make amends
Finally, on Side A closer "Is There More," Drake possibly revisits that aforementioned wealth talk with mention of reality checks coming up noticeably short. All of this could also be seen as Drake's way of addressing West's public claims back in 2016 of being millions of dollars in personal debt:
My peers are a talented group
But even if you take their statistics and carry the two
Even if you rounded up the numbers and rounded the troops
There's still nothin' they could really do
It's too bad reality checks don't cover the balances due
Of course, I didn't write these songs, so what do I know? Interpret Scorpion as you see fit.
