{"id":429118,"date":"2026-05-15T15:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T15:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/429118\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T15:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T15:08:08","slug":"drake-rusty-intro-track-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/429118\/","title":{"rendered":"Drake: \u201cRusty Intro\u201d Track Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Drake<\/a> isn\u2019t making six-leg parlays or DMing Kick streamers, I like to think he just spends his time in his Canadian mansion digging through YouTube\u2019s hip-hop archives and passing around SoundCloud links with Chubbs and OB Obrien. (Sidenote: I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve seen proof of OB Obrien\u2019s existence in at least three years, I\u2019m gonna head up to the 6 and go on a frantic search for him like Jack Lemmon looking for his son in Missing<\/a>.) There\u2019s a lot to comb through and discuss on his new Parker-style<\/a> revenge trilogy\u2014Iceman, Habibti, Maid of Honour\u2014but one of my takeaways is that he\u2019s still an untraditional sort of rap nerd, willing to engage with sounds that don\u2019t get a ton of respect.<\/p>\n

For instance, \u201cRusty Intro,\u201d off Habibti, is an Auto-Tuned acoustic guitar ballad that on the surface might seem like it was born out of Drake\u2019s beer-swigging hangouts with Morgan Wallen<\/a>, though it actually feels like his take on the heartbroken blues of stripped-down pain rap ballads like NoCap<\/a>\u2019s \u201cDrown in My Styrofoam<\/a>\u201d and Rod Wave<\/a>\u2019s \u201cChip on My Shoulder<\/a>.\u201d (To be fair, Morgan basically makes pain rap himself<\/a>, just with Nashville marketing.) I like the idea of it more than the way it actually sounds. Drake\u2019s writing is too vague to match the urgency of either of those sadboy classics, though it does get at the central idea of his modern music: \u201cHow would they describe me as a man?\u201d His obsession with the way his masculinity is framed is what seems to drive him the most these days\u2014especially the way he moved in his beef with Kendrick<\/a>\u2014and also why he\u2019s turned into the least compelling version of himself. Coming to his rescue on \u201cRusty Intro,\u201d though, is Florida fast music specialist DJ Frisco954<\/a>, who straps a rocket to the second half of the track. It\u2019s a trip to see such a hyperregional sound arrive in the mainstream consciousness. Only a true head would know that the best way to listen to pain rap is fast, but making a good song is more than just knowing ball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Drake isn\u2019t making six-leg parlays or DMing Kick streamers, I like to think he just spends his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69,9202,1251],"class_list":["post-429118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tracks","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}