Welcome to five hundred Greatest Songs, a podcast based on Rolling Stones, hugely popular, influential and sometimes controversialist. I'm Britney Spanis and.
I'm Rob Sheffield. We're here to shed light on the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so special and what makes them matter throughout history.
And today's song is none other than Hotline Blank, right, Drake, a true classic and I mean obviously of course to my twenty one list. This was Drake's debut on the list. He came in strong with three songs. Hotline Blink comes in at number three seventy three. The other songs are hold On, We're Going Home and take Care, both great, both perfect songs. But today we're going to talk about Hotline Blink because that was like an earth shattering song
in twenty fifteen. Do you remember a little bit of that of that summer and Drake and kind of hearing that song for the first time.
It was such a great song. Hearing here for the first time. It was so different from what you would have expected from Drake at the time, since he was being challenged so much at the time on his rap credentials, on his seriousness, and this is how he chooses to respond. Is such an incredibly bold, audacious Drake move.
Yeah, we should talk a little bit about the history of Drake leading up to this, because he is his careers truly. I mean it's obviously such like a part of everything. It was beyond De Grossi as a teen actor, then releasing mixtapes and gained signed to Young Money and working with Lil Wayne and like being a part of that whole crew, which of course was dominating twenty tons rap.
I remember, best I ever had was mind blowing to see the kid from De Grossi on you know, hearing him on the radio and being like he's rapping now, Jimmy from De Grossi is rapping now, And I mean he just like I mean out the gate, like he
was already so popular. He had such an impact on younger audiences almost immediately, I feel like, and also because I grew up watching De Grossi, like that was a show that's like especially for millennials, like it was on TV constantly, Like there was no Sadder Morning where De Grassei wasn't playing in sort of marathon form on PBS or something.
Yeah, he was amazing. What was your first Drake experience because you were Drake fan really early.
Yeah, I think it was best I ever had. But also like that song, I feel like set such like a precedent for what would come next because it is such a such a boy band pop song, you know, like so pants, like chilling with your hair tide like you know, like no makeup on all that stuff is like such like a you know, one direction, like little things type of song moment. So I feel like it was such a good precedent for kind of him catering to the women who love him and love his music.
A lifelong passion for him.
Yeah, but that was that was the first introduction, and I feel like he was already kind of straddling that, like trying to be a tough rapper, but also like having this kind of you know, pop sensitivity to him where he really did want to be a pop star and did want to like make and still you know, this is still a big part of him, like he wants to be someone who makes like pop music for everyone and looks up to a lot of big pop stars and sees himself in competition with like the Beyonces
and Taylor Swifts of the world, like He's always like his competition is not just jay Z or Kanye, even though he also is competing with them too. He didn't invent sort of being a rapper who sings too right. It's like, you know, we heard it like jot Role and like Nelly in the early two thousands, and that was such a part of them.
Drake just had his unique personality there. He was really unstressed about things that you would think that other people would be stressed about artistically, but he was so confident about doing so many things at the same time that you really wondered how he got away with doing all these, in some ways contradictory things at the same time. There's so many Drake songs you'd hear them for the first time think I just can't believe somebody's.
Doing this, and like nothing was the same. Of course, headhold on We're Going Home, which I know is your vote for the five hundred Great of Songs list, But that song, I feel like, really set the precedent of how people would kind of have a new understanding an image of Drake in their heads.
Absolutely, and it was such a massive song. I remember really fun October afternoon that year, I was walking and I had my headphones on. I was listening to the radio in New York and I thought, you know, every station is playing this Drake song. I wonder if I can spend the entire afternoon just listening to this one song from station to station, And it was absurdly easy. Every moment I had to spin the dial, it was starting on another station. It was a continuous flow of
that on New York radio. And that was very typical for that whole fall.
Yeah, I mean his like, his voice sounds great on it. I mean it's just him singing like it's so it was so unlike anything for a rapper to do at that time, especially a male rapper to test out at that time, and I mean nothing was the same, and that song really dominated things for a couple of years, and then twenty fifteen is sort of a whole new peek.
If you're reading this, it's too late. Surprise dropped in the beginning of the year, which was like post Beyonce and also like a lot of artists were attempting to do the surprise drops at that time, and very few
were doing it effectively. But it was a big moment for Drake to be able to surprise drop something and then actually it kind of becomes a conversation for longer than forty eight hours and really like made people realize, oh, yes, this is like the biggest artist of this generation right now. Like he's like really like in charge of everything. Yeah, that's like I love that mixtape.
I love it so much, And it's so funny that it was not just the surprise that he's surprise released an album, but that it was such a surprise move for him that he was so tough on it and so street on it and going for one style of what he did, yeah, and just focusing on that.
Yeah. I mean, those are some of my probably my favorite Drake songs still, Like I love Madonna on There, such a great song. I love that album, yeah Energy.
I love the one where he's complaining about driving his girlfriend to her law school exams through the snow, and I'm just like, that is so perfectly on brand Drake. I mean, aside from the whole thing he's complaining about the snow and he's driving to her law board examinations in Toronto, it's just a very strange sort of complaint to make, and yet he is he's so on brand Drake, even when he's adopting this really street running through the six with my woes sort of persona.
Yeah, and then he headline Cortello that year and brought out Madonna as a guest, which again big deal for sort of a kind of someone who is slid bying themselves as like the pop star version of themselves while also slovilling themselves as like a great rapper and has the beef with Meek Mill this year. He starts off the summer with back to Back, which was like a great diss song. I feel like that song immediately just became such a massive hit and was all over the
clubs and like everywhere. And then just a couple months later he comes back with complete polar opposite of back to Back with Hotline, which is a perfect song.
It's a perfect song, It's a perfect song. I know that you, like me, are obsessed with the connection between Drake and Paul McCartney. Yes, who are the same person in so many ways. They have very similar sort of
mixes of contradictory personality traits. But I think of Hotline, bling is such a Paul McCartney song, the one it really reminds me of is the Beatles classic for No One Yes, And it's a breakup song where Paul McCartney is sitting alone in his room thinking about this girl who left and he's trying to figure out what went wrong, and he's having this conversation with her where he talks her out of it and explains why it was such a bad idea, was a love that should have lasted years.
And he's having this argument with her in his head and she's totally forgotten him. Someone mentions his name to her and she just says, yet he was someone I knew, but you know I don't need him. You know it's over for her. It's so not over for him. It's such a McCartney song for him in the best ways. Yeah.
I remember, like years ago, I think, on the Music Now podcast we were talking about it and I always liked the song Drive My Car by the Beatles is one of my favorite songs in he re mind. It's like such like a Drake song in so many ways.
It really is. My God, it's a total Drake song.
Like just like completely obsessed with this girl who like really doesn't want him that much, and like it's just like you could drive my car. You know you could do this and this song, I mean, just the the girl in the song is like I want to be this girl just generally, like she's all over the world. She's like, you know, hanging out with a bunch of new friends. She's living a fabulous life. She's I mean, everything he's describing is perfect. It's a great it's a great existence.
It's an aspirational breakup song. Yeah, he and he totally knows. He's got so much fomo about all the fun that she's having without him, And he's totally right. She's having the best time of her life. Absolutely nobody on earth is having a better time than this girl who got away from Drake and is finally wearing less and going out more. And he's convinced that somewhere in it there's some sort of inner sadness and she still yearns for him on some level. And yeah, she so obviously doesn't.
She's got champagne out on the dance floor, like she's not thinking about Drake at all. Aubrey Graham, who.
What's the status of her passport?
Pridgin, She's running out of pages, running out of pages, Like who doesn't want to be this girl. I mean, only Drake can release a hit breakup song where he's the loser in the song, yes, and.
It's so perfect and also it makes women in the audience this is what they want to be. They want to be the girl who has left Drake and he's so miserable and he keeps telling them how much fun they're having without him. Yeah, it's kind of perfectly perfectly designed that way.
I feel like that's like such a marker of Drake during this period or this like chunk of his career, right like from I guess like nothing was the same ish era like twenty thirteen, but I mean obviously really kind of hits its stride with Hotline Blank and kind of goes into the next couple of years with Views and Scorpion, where he has these songs that are so much for the girls and for his like female audience who like need these kind of like great sort of
anthemic club bangers that he makes where it's still him complaining. It's it's like so like only Drake can do this where he's the one complaining on the song, and yet everything he's complaining about is just like absolutely what I would like my life to look like like everything that's making him so angry, it's just kind of like, yeah, I would like to live like that. I would like
to have this life. Of all of Drake's exes, they seem to have a nice life, they seem to have they seem to go to greener pastures in their own existence.
After this, the entire city of Toronto is a Drake X who's having the best time ever. Without him, Toronto turns into one big party zone as soon as Drake leaves down.
I mean, I think he just he makes such great pop records, like he really and it's one of those
things where he's never shied away from it. I think there's a lot of this idea of like hardness and rap and kind of being sort of like leaning into that for male rappers specifically, and like I feel like he did something where I think he's influenced so much of what rap sounds like now, which is like unafraid of making really dancy music and unafraid of making things that are you know, straddling that line between like Meg and The Stallion, where she has like really kind of
like hard bars on songs that are kind of super clubby and meant to be super clubby and are like unapologetically pop. He like worked with city girls around this time, and they are like queens of that. They're so good at doing that where they have these like incredibly really really hard songs that are just like excellent rapping from them and then just like the best beat you've ever heard in your entire life, you know. And he's and obviously with him singing on a lot of those songs too,
like he's doing his own hooks. He's like having these like really excellent kind of like pop R and B hooks. I mean it came from like, like I think, like Trey songs dissed him once and was like, Drake can't sing, and he was like, I'll show him, which is like, is such a Drake thing? Which is like, well, I mean like building the entire like branding of himself for years was just like kind of like to piss off Trey songs, what.
A quest unbelievable. Something I love about how hotline bling works like that for him is that, like you said, this was after his Meek Mill beef and he'd just been accused of not being serious enough about hip hop and not taking his rap hardness seriously enough, and this is how he chooses to respond. Yeah, it's just kind of brilliant. It's funny that beef with Meek Mill was such an amazing iconic night of hip hop radio, for sure in New York. I remember, I was listening to
funk Maxter Flex. I was in a cab on the way to a party, and it actually was so obsessed with what was going on in the radio that it got to the party and didn't even go in. I just walked around in Brooklyn just like listening to this rap beef unfold in real time on funk Master Flex, And it was just an incredibly exciting, action packed pop moment of hip hop as a sort of ongoing real
time thing. Yeah, And it was so wild that having responded from basically responding to something like that, that he would go to a song as pop as R and B, as Slow Jammy and as forlorn as Hotline Bling is something that just really bold move.
Yeah, And it also is such a big thing of showing off just how much he understands hip hop, you know, like it really does show off how much he understands kind of that history and kind of you know, a lot of what's made hip hop work and successful is like it's dance music, you know, like it's meant to be, you know, great dance music, and so you know, I think that is just like such a great coup for him to kind of come back off of already a hit diss record like that song was also having back
to back and Hotline Bling simultaneously blowing up over the course of that year. Like it was. I remember going to like clubs and they would play them, like both the songs at the same time, you know, like just to kind of highlight this like massive year that Drake was having. But yeah, I mean just they were kind of coexisting as like the two sides of Drake his Juckle and Hyde music.
Well, I mean, Holling Bling is so special because it's also it's got its own sort of musical personality with the sort of seventies Miami soul sound of it.
Oh, there's been a lot of covers of it, but yeah, I mean there's been like, like I love the Rikabadoo remix of it. Billie Eilish did like a version of it. Justin Bieber did a version which I actually really liked. His version of the song I thought that was kind of a fun one, and I kind of always always liked that they always played with beans sort of each other's kind of Toronto pop mirrors in a lot of ways over the.
Years, interestingly linked spiritual twins. Yeah, in some interesting ways.
Yeah.
I thought one of the smartest things Drake has ever done is have Justin Bieber Starr and his pop Star video. I thought that was the most brilliant casting he's ever done. I was like, this is perfect for a song called pop Star, Justin Bieber, you know, lip syncing to it. Like, I'm like, this is like an actually like perfect little little moment from.
I'm intrigued by the Beyonce Drake combination that because it is interesting that, like you said about the ego and the self seriousness, whereas I mean, it's just very different for her. He is willing to seem silly in a way that she wouldn't or you.
Know, yeah, and I feel like she's just starting to be sillier.
But I also feel like for he and Beyonce, there's so much, so much symbiosis that they have yet to explore fully.
Yeah, I mean, even like the song Mine on Beyonce self titled Deeply Underrated Tracks for an album, And I think they just work really well as duet partners because they both kind of straddle that like the hardness and the softness very well of both hip hop and R and B, and like that's something that they both lean into at the same time. I'm kind of surprised that they haven't done more over the years, because I think they would. They really kind of, like I don't know,
sort of flourish together in that way. And I really kind of I've always really liked their like innership.
It seems so perfect. Also, what you said about him being the ultimate risk taker is so true of her. That they're both fearless in a way that you can't really imagine anybody else being that fearless together at the same time.
Yeah, I feel like the one sort of downfall for Drake,
and that is like Beyonce's a very good editor. Beyonce is very she's very strict with how she puts things out, and Drake is not Drake, And I mean, I mean, I guess like it's two different kinds of risk takers, right, Like Beyonce is like very like virgo calculated of like I'm going to be thinking about exactly the risk that I'm going to take, and we're going to put in all of her effort and we're going to make the best house album you've ever heard in your entire life,
and it's going to be so referential to everything in the history of house music. And Drake's like, what if I just called up this artist from the scene that I like and I try out an accent and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, And that's okay.
Absolutely yes. She is like the concept of quality control does not have the same weight for him that it does for her. She is so determined to keep her flawless track record. She's like, there will never be a bad track ever under this brand name. She's absolutely committed to that quality control. And he does not worry about the hits to Missus Ratio Yeah at all.
That is just math.
He does not do.
Yeah, He's like, if you if you want to hear British accent, let me try it real quick. Yes, Like let's just see how it works. Like if you're not cool with it, we'll move on. Yes, And I'm okay with that, Like I think it's it's been for the best that He's willing to like try and do that because I think that's like made him who he is, you know, that's made him so popular, and it's made him such like a person who people you know, kind of laugh with most of the time most of the time,
not all the time, but most of the time. And he leans into that. He doesn't mind that. I'm wondering if there's gonna be more of I feel like the heated semi collab I'm Connie as a clap in my head because I mean, also, some of those lines are so peak peak Drake, but like, but yeah, I feel like there has to be there has to be happening in the future.
Absolutely well. They both have the undeniable ear for a classic, yeah no, and the hotline bling is I mean, that's a song that people will be singing forever, yeah.
Ear for a classic, and also a great knowledge of history, like of music history, Like they both. Drake is so good at picking samples, so good at like really you know, finding like really great R and B songs to sort of integrate into his music and to use and to sing along with and you know, make a part of it. Obviously, this episode, as probably our listeners can tell much of it was recorded prior to the Great Drake Kendrick lamarbef of twenty twenty four that involves future and Metro Boomin
and Jack Antonov randomly and everyone else. I want us to kind of revisit a conversation that we had in this episode and the conversation that we will be having with Jeff in the next segment. I'm curious how you think this particular moment between Drake and Kendrick Lamar will affect the future of Drake. Will this lower Hotline Bling and other Drake songs on the list and future incarnations?
Will we forget about him altogether? What will happen now that all of these diss songs have come out and Drake has ostensibly kind of lost in the war between Kendrick Lamar.
We've been talking about Hotline Bling as a moment in Drake's long, complex career, an ongoing career, and an ongoing moment. We've been talking about him and his rap career and what this pop moment means in his rap career. And of course, you know, while we're talking about this now in twenty twenty four, obviously a lot is going on with Drake and his participation in an old school rap beef, except none of the old school rap beefs were actually like this.
No rap beef has ever happened this quickly. Yeah, No one's ever dropped a song fifteen minutes after someone dropped theirs.
Yes, I mean, this makes the old like you know, South Bronx, Queen's Bad be like you know mc shan, that kind of back and forth seem like snail mail in comparison. Also, I mean a very strange beef. Honestly, I can't think of any hip hop beef that compares to this in terms of one very artistic, serious, for lack of a better word, rapper who is like very much a poet, a complex artist, a winner of a Pulitzer Prize versus one who has always been a pop
entertainer in addition to everything else he is. And we've got a Pulitzer Prize winner versus someone who is onto grassy Junior High. It's very strange for them to be competing on any level, but to have this kind of beef is without precedent.
I mean, and also Kendrick Lamar beating Drake at his own game, I mean his song debut at number one. I mean all is like all of his songs charted and did much better than Drake. And of course the thing that Drake has had is incredible chart success. I mean,
this is someone who's like beating Beatles records. You know, He's the person who's like finally kind of broke through and beat a lot of those you know, big kind of sales and chart records that had not yet been broken just in terms of the volume of hits that he's had and kind of in that way got beat
in his own game. I mean again, the timing of Hotline Bling was coming after a beef with Meek Mill that Drake was having and you know, back to back being Drake's diss song which ended up becoming like a massive hit, and therefore he won that battle, and Hotline Bling sort of further solidifying that by becoming an even bigger song. Like I'm wondering, like, is he going to
try to do that again? Like is he going to try to drop in twenty twenty four his new version of Hotline Bling that sort of like overtakes the beef and kind of goes beyond the dis songs as just like a pop hit like could that be his way of sort of like kind of secretly side stuffing the dissongs by just Drafia, another big pop hit banger. I don't know.
I don't know, Honestly, it's hard to tell because I mean, a rap beef is Kendrick's home turf. Yeah, Drake is the out of town team and this like he's never been the artist that you go to for that. He's got more slaps than the Beatles, but like you know, the Beatles wouldn't have won a rap beef war with
Kendrink either, nobody would. But it's not I mean not even like Boogey Down Productions versus like Queensbridge so much as like Boogeann Productions versus pm DON, which is a rap beef that nobody remembered because it was a very serious street artistic philosopher king of hip hop versus a pop act with the number one hit, and it just didn't make any cultural impact because there was you know, there was really no common ground. Neither of them had
something that the other one wanted. It's obviously too early to tell this is ongoing thing, but I had to picture this doing long term damage to either of them, but it's hard just because that isn't the standard that people generally measured Drake.
But maybe why it's been such like a shocking development, and like this is the most damage it's done to Drake, you know, this is like probably the most kind of like public image, and Drake usually pretty unbreakable just because he is like such a meme in and of himself, Like that is something he's lead into. He's like leaned into a lot of the joke of the Drake of it all right, But like this is just because it's very clear that there's like someone from his own team
kind of leaking stuff to Kendrick. Like there's like kind of levels to a lot of what's going on like behind the scenes for Drake, levels to a lot of what Kendrick alleges in the songs. And it's very fascinating because I mean, even when we spoke, you know, a while ago about the song for this episode, like it almost seemed like there was nothing that could kind of break that Drake success bubble. And this is maybe the
closest is gotten. But I'm also not in that same way sure this is like the end in any way for Drake, Like I do kind of genuinely think that he probably has a hotline bling in my feelings nice for what level type of like summer smash in him. Still that like immediately people move on from He's.
Taken l's like this before. That's the essence of Drake, right, he takes l's. That's what he does.
Drake thesis of everything.
Yes, likee yes.
The constant themes with Drake are girls love Drake and Drake loses, like you know.
Hot line Blink.
Yeah, people thought people thought pusha and ended Drake. Ye, Like they seriously thought that, and it seemed like he could never come back from this, and of course it went down in history. Is one of the great l's that Drake takes because that's what Drake does.
So what's that?
Yes, exactly, So to me it fits in with hotline Blink because hotline Bling is like, Drake is not the winner of that battle with the girl. She's wearing lesson going out more. You know, Kendrick could be you know, like the one in Hotline Blaying who's like, you know, leaving Drake behind charity Moore, Yeah, exactly. But you know, part of what people love about Drake is, you know that he gets beat down, like in his songs. Yeah, and that's just something about him that people relate to.
And so I think he comes out of this. I could be wrong, but I think this fits into a long tradition of Drake taking l's and people like, ah, that Drake. He sure got beat this time, he said, the Drake of it all.
Next up, we will be joined by Rolling Stone Senior editor Jeffy Hasa. And now we're joined by senior Editor Rolling Stone, Jeffy Haza. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Thanks for having me, guys.
So tell us a little bit about your your relationship with Drake over the years.
Oh my goodness, it's funny actually. So I'm from Houston, Texas originally, and when Drake was first really popping off, this has to have been in two thousand and nine, maybe two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine. A lot of his early shows were at in Houston. I think he wraps about like nine at Warehouse, like his
buncoming or whatever. And I'll never forget I worked at Kroger grocery store and I was like a bag boy, and I had a crush on the girl who was the cashier that I was bagging for, and that was the beginning of me knowing who Drake was and listening to Drake.
And do you remember where you were or kind of like how you heard Hotline Blane when it first came out.
Yeah, So fast forward all those years later, I think I just moved to New York or i'd been here for like a year or so, and I was working at a different music magazine and I had the graveyard shift editor job, so it was like he announced that it was dropping, and then it was my job that night to like write up the premiere. So I was very much like refreshing the page waiting to see it.
And then you know, when the video came out, all those memes came along with it of like him in the room and the dancing and everything, and then one of the first like blog post that ever and was like all of the funny memes to come out of the Hotline playing music video. Very impactful moment in my music journalism career.
I'd say, yeah, I feel like the that summer it was like the first summer, like the first true summer of Drake.
It felt like, yeah, that whole year honestly, Yeah, he kind of ran twenty fifteen to a point where, you know, the haters came out.
Of the woodwork as we saw.
I feel like that same year Kanye was doing like I forget what release Kanye was doing or what was going on, but he had this big concert in Madison Square Park and like Push a T, Travis Scott, all these people were there, and then all these videos came out the next day of like Drake in the crowd, like trying to get up front, and it was like the beginning of people like hating on Drake in this where it's like Kanye didn't even let you into the
show type of big. But yeah, that summer, like Drake was so hot that I feel like there were just all these arrows coming at him because everyone wanted to take him off like the perch.
You know, were you both immediate fans of this song when he first heard it.
Yeah, it didn't take it long because it's got that like I don't know what the classic thing is called, but it kind of the rhythm of it feels very reminiscent of like a like a Honolulu like vacation song or something, or like something you'd played a wedding like it just immediately kind of catches you as like, oh, this is a very almost wholesome song, even though it's very not wholesome yea what he's talking.
About on it.
I feel like everyone was taken by Hotline Playing immediately, Like it was there's no corner of music that was untouched by loving Hotline Playing.
And it was such a weird sound that really retro Miami sound really transposed to a really different sort of emotional story, and it definitely it got your attention, and that was even before anybody saw the video, which was different kind of attention getting.
Yeah, it reminds me a lot of hold on, We're going Home, where it's like it's Drake in this like retro pop vibe, which is so outside of the norm from what you see from rappers or even pop stars. And I think like he kind of does that really well. It's one of the many like little like that he can put on where it's like okay, dude, you're Bobby called, Well, we'll take it.
Yeah.
I feel like he was so good at catering to like his female audience because he realized very early on how much like like girls just loved his music and like he kind of catered to it in a way that was so specific and so like you said, like so outside of what so many rappers were doing at that time and singing and like really making a point to show off that he can sing and you know, hold on, we're going home with such a big moment for him in that way, and I think obviously sets
the tone for this. And then he'd have a hit with like One Dance Later and Passion Food and you know, like obviously like in my feelings and nice for what kind of also have this kind of like you know, lightness to them and sort of like party kind of club vibe to them. That's like so much different than a lot of other stuff he had been doing prior.
Yeah, I feel like this is pop star drink.
Yeah, this is where he's like kind of you know, I think when he came onto the scene, it was like I can rap and I can sing, And then into this era he starts to get into like I can also do Taylor Swift number with these major hits.
Yeah, this is the year that they had the Apple Music.
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, she was in your feelings.
Like Drake, you know, even just that summer of having back to back and hotline blank, which are such like disparate sides of who Drake is. Like this like really hard to song at another rapper and that he like really owned, and then this like really great sort of like sung Miami ish like R and B song, which is perfect.
Well, that's a really fun way to like end a rap beef. It's like to now, I'm just gonna come out with like the softest song ever.
But only Drake.
I feel like, Oh, that's like kind of Drake's specialty where it's he doesn't he doesn't like fulfill any expectations, especially when it comes to hip hop. It's like he does his own thing genuinely. And I think his fans and people who really love him they respond to that because it's like he's willing to be vulnerable. He's willing to be you know, self deprecating. Even though Drake is probably two in his head about.
It these days.
Yeah, I feel like he really had fun with being a meme when it came up, Like it was something where he didn't take it too seriously. And I think a lot of artists can and feel so like self conscious about it and like in their head about it and like take it very, very personally, Whereas I think like Drake really owned it and kind of loved it because he knew that was like the power of the audience and like what kept him in the conversation.
Yeah, I mean, Drake is so Internet savvy, and I feel like this hotline and bling moment is kind of the beginning of us really seeing how savvy.
He is with the Internet.
I know we were talking earlier about how that song was ten years ago, and it's like for the past ten years, Drake has dominated the conversation primarily because he's so good at being like the subject of the internet's you know, ire or love one day or the other, and he kind of knows how to just own it and not like flame out. Like we've seen a lot of artists flame out. There's one flaming out today.
And I mean, let's talk about the video a little bit, because the video is so good and like, even just like rewatching it, I'm like, I don't even know what it was about this, Like it's such a great video obviously, but like I'm like, I cannot believe how much this video overtook culture for like as long as it did, Like it's like so simple. It's just like Drake dancing and just Neon like rooms, and it works so well because he's just like kind of it's just funny to watch him dance, and it's.
Just Drake, right, if I'm remembering correctly. It's like there's not like a whole background dancer.
There's like one dancer who shows up randomly, and then there's like the call center girls. At the beginning, I did a group costume for Hotlines playing that year. I was a call center girl, and then one of my friends was Drake and then another friend Why go Aground?
The video is like it's so minimal and it's so like I think the lighting of it and the way that Drake dances in it just became so immediately like this is what we're doing now. From twenty fifteen to like twenty sixty or seventeen, almost like Borat where it's like one of those things that happens and then everywhere you look it's like someone's making a joke about it.
Yeah. Yeah, I feel like there was, like I mean it was there were memes for like a year. There's references on like every show and it's even crazier that it's not even like I feel like Hotline Blink isn't even like the primary thing you think of when you think of Drake anymore. Like it's right how everywhere that song was like it it's not necessarily the thing people
even associate with Drake. Like there's so much other like really massive hits he's had since then, or like giant cultural moments that he's had since then.
Yeah, it's like, you know, that was the first of many of his like world smashing pop crossover hits, whereas you mentioned like One Dance, Passion Fruit, those all came I feel like right after actually because they're all on views. But I feel like the guy's got it, you know when he makes these big statement songs, like they take over and then it's he does so many of them
that you almost forget that he did that. Like when we were talking about doing this episode, I'm like, oh, yeah, Hotline Blink, that song is amazing, Like it's just one of those things about Drake.
Yeah, but I feel like everyone, especially with like you know, more of his more at the Twin One Savage album and all that, Like it seems like he's kind of moved towards just being like harder Drake again.
Yeah, what do you.
Think of that?
I think he's been so tested by his peers where you know, kind of like we're talking about, you know, twenty fifteen and onwards, he's been like the main target at the same time, and I think he's someone who seems to need to have the need to prove himself
or feel the need to prove himself. So instead of giving us full on house bangers for the past ten years, which I'm sure in his heart is what he wants to be doing, it's like someone tests him and he's like, you know what, I gotta rap again just to make sure they know that, like I still got it, I'm still.
Him or whatever.
Meanwhile, his real fans we want that, honestly, never mind Drake, we want the Abeza Drake. Like, I'm good with that. I'm good if he never wraps again. Just does hotline blinks.
I feel the exact same way.
What's gonna happen when Drake is like happy, like he gets merri or something and falls in love.
Oh no, I.
Feel like Drake is like the least satisfied man.
I think him in future of a song about that.
Yeah, yeah, he sort of built that into the system. I don't think we have to worry about that.
Yeah, that'll be the twist in pop culture though, Like Drake pulls up and he's like happily married. Say, guys, I love my wife.
I would I think a wife, guy Drake wife be really earth shattering.
Yeah, that's how you really change it up.
By for Drake his version of Man of the Woods. You know, like, yeah, well, thank you so much Jeff for joining us today. I really appreciate it.
Thank you guys, it's just fun.
Thanks so much for listening to Rolling Stone's five hundred Greatest songs. This podcast is brought to you by Rolling Stone and iHeartMedia. Written hosted by Me, Britney Spanos.
And Rob Sheffield, Executive.
Produced by Jason Fine, Alex Dale and Christian Horde, and produce by Jesse Cannon, with music supervision by Eric Zeiler. Thanks for watching, and thanks for listening.