This past weekend Drake dropped an album that some less experienced fans might have mistaken to be new material. This album, Care Package, was actually a compilation of previously released songs that resided on platforms like YouTube, SoundCloud, and even DatPiff that for one reason or another never made their way to Spotify or Apple Music. It never ceases to amuse me that many fans will simply never hear music if it isn’t spoon-fed to them on the playlists of the two titans of streaming. It is unsurprising that many casual rap listeners and younger fans are hearing the songs on Care Package for the first time but little do they know that this isn’t even a comprehensive collection of all his non-streaming tracks. When we are talking Drake loosies “WE MADE IT” is the creme de la creme, the peak, his magnum opus. It serves as an ode to victory that would sound just as good at the Raptors Championship Parade as it does for your average joe clocking out on Friday night going to drown their sorrows at the club. It doesn’t matter if you just beat the Warriors or just snuck out of the office without your boss catching you, either way you fucking made it.
The track also would have served as the only real banger on this album, seeing as the rest of the tracks on the project go the classic Drake route of pitched down 90’s sample, faint piano, and croon. While the brooding Batman hovering above Gotham vibe songs like “Days in the East” give off are stellar, they are the Yin searching for their banger Yang. The songs do hit that much harder now that the 8-10% of the population that was twelve when first hearing these songs now possess the emotional depth to relate to them, but they just feel whiny by themselves. The closest we get to a banger on this project is “Draft Day”, and that’s for a beach day or rolling up not championship worthy, especially given the fact that the song was the high point of both Johnny Manziel and Andrew Wiggins’ careers. So I have done the deep net research and gathered my most convincing theories on why for the love of god We Made It was left off this project.
- Drake still has beef with Soulja Boy.
I figured I’d start with the obvious here. Drake and Soulja boy did have a falling out this year but it was exclusively one-sided, as with all beef in modern rap was meme-driven. The sporadic radio-interviews and music videos almost made it appear as if Soulja was gearing up for a comeback but months later we’ve been left with nothing. Still, Drake has been shown to take even light offenses seriously so it wouldn’t be surprising if Drake refused to give Soulja the satisfaction of asking him to sign off on a song after his disparaging comments. Even though Drake allegedly squashed the beef it is still possible that Drake was one of the thousands that never received their SoujaGame console, leading to a re-ignition of said beef. It wouldn’t be the first time pride has killed good music.
2. Drake knew “We Made It” would be too powerful extending city boy summer into into autumn and winter.
Most songs on Care Package are more suited for a smoke sesh then a party. “We Made It” lives for the function and maybe that’s not Drakes intention with this project. Summers almost over, cuffing season is on the horizon, city boys up 5,000 tweets are getting less funny by the hour. Maybe the man wants us to settle. The general public certainly won’t do that hearing lyrics like:
“And she gotta come through the hotel and pop it off for me // Then she gon’ text her best friend like “Girl he got some good dick and money” // Her friend hit her back like “I know that already, that nigga’s amazin”.
3. Danny McBride didn’t cast Drake in The Righteous Gemstones.
One of the funniest parts of “We Made It” are a sample lifted from Eastbound and Down that parallels the extreme flexing taking place in the chorus and verses, and its possible Drake didn’t like how they were the showstoppers on this track. You may ask yourself if Drake is anti-Eastbound and Down how did the song get released like that in the first place? Well what if I told you he was a fan until Danny McBride didn’t secure the bag for Drake on his upcoming show? Drake has been pushing into TV, executive producing this year’s horniest show Euphoria and working on bringing BBC success Top Boy to North American audiences. Is it possible there is bad blood behind the scenes that we aren’t privy too? Did maybe Drake pitch himself as a rival pastor only to have McBride turn him down? People also forget “We Made It” first appeared on a Soulja mixtape before Drake gave it the remix treatment. If Soulja ends up on The Righteous Gemstones we can basically confirm this theory.
4. Drake was distraught Jay Electronica and Jay Z washed him on their remix and decided to bury any evidence of the song ever existing.
Simply starting a verse with “hopped off the slave ship” immediately places it within the top 25% off all verses ever written. And we all know how Twitter works, one viral screed about how it’s a shame the remix isn’t the one on Spotify and suddenly Drake is pilling on the L’s like Manziel with the Browns. The second that those words came out of Jay Z’s mouth I am surprised that Drake didn’t do everything in his power to have the track scrubbed from the internet.
5. Drake, racked with existential dread, wonders if he ever did truly “make it”.
Drake has been rapping like a paranoid mob boss for the last 5 years and it is both comical and cutting. Does the 6 God toss and turn wondering is it enough? Was the peak reached? Does Pusha ever think of me? Does Adonis remember me? Did Drake think that by making “We Made It” that he would finally feel like he made it, only to find out that there is nothing we can do to fill the pit in our stomach’s that we’re a fraud? Does that song serve as a reminder to him that no matter how successful he is it will never feel like enough, and that imposter syndrome will haunt him till the day he dies? Or is it just because they couldn’t get the sample cleared? The world may never know…
