5. Travis Scott
Songs (5): “Company,” “Portland,” “Sicko Mode,” “Fair Trade,” “Bubbly”
Best Song: “Sicko Mode”
Notes: Travis unlocks something special with Drake, who makes his weirdest and most experimental music with the weirdo from Houston. The beat changes, the unexpected left turns, the dropping out and popping back up without warning—every time these two get together it’s the musical equivalent of Lost Highway. But somehow Travis made at least one of them into what is arguably the most miraculous and impossible hit of the last 20 years: “Sicko Mode.” That these gonzo compositions are being smuggled onto daytime terrestrial radio—hell, into the halftime show at the *fucking Super Bowl—*is incredible, and will only become harder to understand as its reign gets further away.
Their best songs together find Drake willingly entering Travis’ screwed, gothic world, complete with ominous beats and a disregard for structured songwriting conventions. In Drake he found the perfect Frankenstein, a freak singer and rapper who can project all of Travis’ bridges and phrases with beautiful clarity, while Travis would have rendered them into fuzzy mud.
4. Partynextdoor
Songs (9): “Over Here,” “Recognize,” “Preach,” “With You,” “Come and See Me,” “More Ready” “Since Way Back,” “Loyal,” “Twist & Turn,”
Best Song: “Over Here”
Notes: PND increasingly influenced Drake’s music and eventually served as his lodestar in the middle/late 2010s, filling the role Drake envisioned for Weeknd as his right-hand songwriter and vibe influencer after Nothing Was the Same. Drake’s overall story is as much about curation as it is about talent.. While this partnership didn’t involve much blended rap, PND contributed quite a bit of balladic, hard R&B, and together they made some jittery, sweet, bizarre boot knockers, both with direct collaborations and brilliant PND writing jobs like “Come Thru” and “Ratchet Happy Birthday.”
3. Lil Wayne
Songs (46): “Man of the Year,” “Stuntin,” “Brand New (Remix),” “I Can Take Your Girl,” “Successful,” “Ignant Shit,” “Unstoppable,” “Bedrock,” “Forever,” “I Want This Forever,” “Money to Blow,” “I’m Goin In,” “My Darling,” “Pass the Dutch,” “Fuck Da Bullshit,” “Every Girl in the World,” “Stunt Hard,” “4 My Town,” “Finale,” “Miss Me,” “Uptown,” “Gonorrhea,” “With You,” “Right Above It,” “Light Up (Remix),” “I’m On One,” “It’s Good,” “HYFR,” “The Motto,” “The Real Her,” “She Will,” “All of the Lights (Remix),” “Love Me,” “I Do It,” “Ransom,” “No New Friends,” “So Good,” “Only,” “Believe Me,” “Used To,” “Truffle Butter,” “Grindin,” “Family Feud Freestyle,” “BB King Freestyle,” “You Only Live Twice,” “Seeing Green”
Best Song: Nearly impossible to choose one, but for the purposes of this exercise, why not go with “Believe Me”?
Notes: Theirs is perhaps the most prolific pairing of rap solo artists ever, with the exception of Ghost and Rae. And it’s all the more incredible for their astronomical hit rate across different eras of their respective careers. Granted, considering their complete catalog means you have to answer for Kidd Kidd verses and the entire Young Money compilation and I Am Not a Human Being, not to mention Wayne’s most lazy and incoherent verses in the grips of lean, and the early Drake mixtape shit when he was still finding his voice and his flow. But that all diminishes nothing from their iconic peak run, and fingers crossed there will be another to add to this list come Friday.
Abe Beame
Source link
