In the column Straight Nonsense, columnist Moises Mendez II takes a queer eye to the insanity of straight culture.
Sometimes I get upset with my two favorite artists, Rihanna and Beyoncé, for not doing press or interacting with fans on social media anymore. But then the general public is inundated with what can only be described as bullshit from celebrities like Drake and Chris Brown, trying to promote their new albums, which makes me grateful they go about their business and don’t bother anybody.
This week, these two men, who were once at the top of their games years ago, are forcing their faces onto everyone’s algorithms. Drake, someone who is no stranger to attempting over-the-top stunts, just put out three full albums on Spotify that I will not be listening to. Whereas Brown tried to save face after Pitchfork gave his most recent album, BROWN, a devastatingly low review score of 1.3 out of 10 (one of the lowest scores they’ve dished out this decade). Although most of the internet agreed with the publication, Brown got on his Instagram story and said, “We kickin’ they ass, god damn it,” which raised my eyebrow considering his long history of violence allegations and public incidents.
Let’s start with Drake, the internet’s favorite sad boy and, more recently, the loser of one of the most significant rap battles in the genre’s history with Kendrick Lamar. On Friday, this man decided to drop not one, but three albums — the long-teased ICEMAN (with 18 songs), MAID OF HONOR (which has 14), and HABIBTI (with 11), bringing the grand total to 43 new songs to listen to. The biggest issue is: I don’t care.
I don’t want new music from Drake — not least because he got absolutely bodied by Lamar, who had the Super Bowl AND The Grammys singing “A MINORRRRRR!”, or because he regularly hangs out with right-wing grifters like Adin Ross, a Twitch streamer that “interviewed” President Donald Trump and hangs out with the white supremacist Nick Fuentes. It’s because Drake has nothing interesting left to say.
He’s been deeply corny for the past few years now and every clip of someone reacting to Drake’s lyrics on my social media timelines is them just laughing at him. Like this one, where he says, “Ironic because the Ice Man was a nice man, now I’m ice cold.”
As I’m writing this column, the official White House X account posted a new version of the ICEMAN album cover and included a “MAGA” chain.
We know Drake isn’t going to publicly distance himself from controversial figures the way artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, Adele, SZA, and Kesha have taken public stances on issues they care about. We know that the one thing Drake cares about the most is getting the most amount of streams possible and chart positions, which is why many people are theorizing that he released three albums at once to game the algorithm and flood the Billboard songs and albums charts as his fanboys eat up whatever sort of slop he serves up.
Speaking of slop, Brown, a former R&B wunderkind, has lived in a delusional world of his own making where he believes that he’s never done anything wrong and that everyone else is the issue. I’ll never forget this past Thanksgiving when an older family member of mine excitedly brought up wanting to see Brown on tour and when I asked why (admittedly with a stank attitude), she tried to defend herself and said, “Oh yeah, I forgot you’re a Rihanna fan,” which is crazy to say because you’re admitting that you can excuse the horrific abuse she faced because of him. But the larger issue is, she hasn’t been the only one and everyone seems to forget that — he has a long rap sheet of accusations and proven misdeeds against him.
The writer of the scathing Pitchfork review, Alphonse Pierre, wrote about why we should stop ignoring Brown’s music and start calling him out. “For years, traditional media has been tiptoeing around the popularity of Chris Brown, and in reality, that benefits nobody but him,” he wrote. “The lack of critical engagement with his music has allowed him to contextualize his own redemption with statistics and sob stories.”
If we don’t start vocalizing our disdain for a man who refuses to do any meaningful internal work—evidenced by multiple allegations of sexual assault, including one reported as recently as 2023, and accusations of physical violence toward people around him—then the cycle simply continues. In a response video to the viral article, Brown put out a statement on Instagram Stories as the online world discussed the article and said, “If you not my fan, I don’t want you to listen to my shit. Go listen to motherfucking Zara Larsson or somebody.”
Larsson went viral back in April after she appeared in a Cosmopolitan video where she said that she doesn’t listen to abusers like Brown. So for him to pointedly make a jab at her means that he saw the video, and it’s definitely getting under his skin, and I love that for Larsson.
It makes sense that Drake and Brown are blind to the reality that’s in front of them. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it until I turn blue in the face: You only get canceled if you let yourself get canceled. Why do you think we still have people like James Charles running around the internet yelling at poor people? Or Jeffree Star saying that it’s “stupid” to be nonbinary? Or even our President, who forced his way back into office and gets to terrorize every minority on God’s green Earth? If you just drown out all the noise and speak to the niche that supports bigots and losers, it’ll be impossible to fail — just look at Kanye West.
Moises Mendez II is a freelance culture writer based in Brooklyn, New York. Follow him on Instagram @moisesfenty.
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