#62

#62. Drake - Nice For What (#40, 2018)

5th of 2018

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"The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" is so good. It's propped up by a handful of noteworthy hits, but really it's easy to like all the way through. If there's any more evidence to its potency, then we can take things back to 2018 when there were simultaneously two hit songs that sampled the same Lauryn Hill song. I don't mean just the increasingly easy chance of sharing chart space, I mean that the two songs came out one week after the other, and peaked at the same time. The first one was "Be Careful" by Cardi B, which if you haven't heard, is one of her most chilled out songs she's ever released (despite the threatening hook). It would have become a top 10 hit on its second week out but it was leapfrogged by Drake's "Nice For What" which debuted at the top spot. Cardi B also debuted in the top 10 with "I Like It" so it's partly her fault as well.

Both of these songs sample "Ex-Factor" by Lauryn Hill. For Cardi B, it's just a slight interpolation and one you might not even notice if you aren't looking for it, whereas Drake goes all out on it, running it either in the foreground or the background for the entire song in such a way that you couldn't possibly think it wasn't a sample. It was a failing on my part recently that goes against my desire not to spoil things in the slightest here that I was doing a Sporcle quiz with friends and came up to "Ex-Factor" which I couldn't recall by name in the moment, just that it's the one Drake sampled. It's quite easy to intuit from this that I obviously hadn't recently researched "Nice For What" and draw some conclusions about its pending ranking. I'm only now drawing attention to this gaffe now that it no longer matters, but the reality is that it's easier to feign ignorance than to mask it.

In any case, "Nice For What" was another huge success for Drake. It's something of an awkward middle child though, wedged between "God's Plan" (#507) and "In My Feelings". They were all #1 hits, but this was clearly the one that got the least attention at the time. triple j listeners felt differently though, as this one actually ranked the highest of the three. It might seem strange but it also lands pretty well with my experience both at the time and since, which is that this is one of the Drake songs that people who otherwise have no interest in Drake tend to like. Or even if you do, because a couple of years ago Billboard ranked all of Drake's 300+ Hot 100 entries, complete with blurbs for each of them, and "Nice For What" landed in the top spot. Again, it's the power of Lauryn Hill. I actually feel a bit boring by doing this, especially since "Passionfruit" (#86) is another of those. I can only play the cards I've been dealt though, and playing across the aisle has tended to be Drake's best way to find polling positions.

This song is Drake's tribute to women of the world. The title mantra sums the frustration up pretty succinctly. The video was also directed by Karena Evans and features a huge array of guest appearances from female celebrities. I'd say that's a big part of the appeal (just ignore that one lyric about high school pics), but I suspect the big driving factor has always been the song's vivacious launch into bounce music. The two go hand in hand though, really. If you're gonna make something into a self-affirming anthem, it has to sound like an anthem. This is just an endlessly fresh and fun hit song, and one of those times where Drake's haphazard approach of rushing out endless supplies of music actually lands on something particularly potent.