Less than a year ago, fans of Drake were fawning over his admission that he had been collecting Birkin bags to give to the woman he settles down with. It was another one of these very “Drake things” that Drake does from time to time. Other examples include: making songs like “Nice For What,” which encourage women to live their best lives without any consideration for a man’s feelings, and then putting a bunch of cool-ass women like Yara Shahidi and Issa Rae in the video for it; wearing really nice sweaters; and constantly providing the best Instagram captions for his fans. One time he even called out a male concert-goer for groping women during his show. He has happily accepted his reputation as hip-hop’s “good guy.” He’s not afraid to admit the complex range of feelings he has for the women in his life, and once upon a time he was an unassuming, racially ambiguous actor on Degrassi.
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With the release of his latest album, Scorpion, on Thursday night, 6 God returned in all of his Drake-ish glory. “Nice For What” is one of the singles, and on the album art he is indeed wearing a sweater (a hoodie, but still). But for anyone willing to face the reality of the situation, Drake is not actually the nice guy we think he is. Scorpion has the definitive proof.
Rumours that Drake secretly fathered a son have been swirling around for a long time. Every year, there's new gossip fodder that Drake has gotten a woman pregnant. It’s the guy version of the pregnancy rumours that plague female entertainers. But when Pusha T blasted Drake for allegedly hiding his son, and not claiming his paternal responsibility, in his dis track "Story of Adidon," our ears perked up. Pusha name-dropped Drizzy’s alleged baby mama (Sophie Brussaux) and blasted her former profession as a porn star. Brussaux had been photographed with Drake in Amsterdam in January of 2017, just a few days before she alleges they conceived their child. Photos of her baby shower also made it to TMZ. Now, it appears that Drake is confirming more details about his love child.
His lyrics on "March 14" seem to imply that he and Brussaux only met in person two times, one of which resulted in his son, Adonis. Drake claims on "Emotionless" that he wasn’t hiding his kid from the world: he was hiding the world from his kid. Drake also addresses his son directly on "March 14," going over details about finding out via DNA test that the child was his and then celebrating with his friends. He also laments that he is a single father who doesn’t get to see his son a lot and doesn’t get along with the mom.
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This is another thing Drake likes to do in his songs: assume victimhood when his romantic relationships aren't going how he wants them to (see: "Hotline Bling"). The circumstances surrounding his son's paternity sound unfortunate, but they're a bed Drake made in which he must now lie. To recap: Drake hooked up with an adult film actress — a woman he had only met in person twice — got her pregnant, denied the child was his, didn’t admit it publicly until a rival rapper blew his cover, and is now complaining about the whole thing. This is the gentlemanly heartthrob of everyone's dreams?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Drake’s baby mama drama makes him a bad guy. Shit happens. Unplanned pregnancies are simply a risk of having unprotected sex. It doesn't make him a bad person, but at the very least, we can say that he is at least a little irresponsible. This myth that Drake is less reckless and more chivalrous than rappers like, say, Future, needs to be debunked.
When Issa, the character on HBO’s Insecure played by Issa Rae, said, “Every Black girl that went to college loves Drake” because “he gets us,” she was inadvertently saying something about the dating standards of a certain class of educated women who see themselves in staunch opposition to the woman Drake likely got pregnant. They are women with “good heads” on their shoulders. They like to party, but not too much. They’re beautiful, but not vain, and wouldn’t be caught dead in a porno. And they want the guy that every other woman wants to want them – and only them. Handsome Drake, with his thick eyebrows and crooning, has unapologetically branded himself as that guy: a rich and famous man with his own good head on his shoulders — able to spot a good woman when he sees one and tether her to him, via a baby or a Birkin bag.
The reality, if everything we’ve heard over the past month or so is true, is a little different and far less romantic. Women with college degrees are no more or less his type than anyone else. The mother of his child isn’t a trophy wife. She isn't his wife at all. And at the very least, we know that Drake, too, is a just another sucker for a big butt and a smile.
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