Why Tuscan Leather is the best Drake song ever
By: Lexie Ernst
Tags: Drake, Rap, Music, Hip Hop, Thoughts

Part I:

In this intro track on Nothing Was The Same, Drake doesn’t ease us into this album; he starts off running. With a unique mixed, high pitched engineered sound, you almost feel like you were sitting in the studio with 40 and Drake when they mutually agreed, ‘this is it’. The beat is intermittent, coming quickly in and out of focus, and Drake effortlessly and eloquently raps over it as he propels you into his most anticipated album yet. From the first time I listened to this track (and to this day), this portion of Tuscan Leather is clearly one of Drake’s most solid opening verses. But, in classic Drake style, the listener knows that a substantial pivot awaits.

Part II (1:45):

When Drake raps, “Yeah, Tom Ford Tuscan Leather smellin’ like a brick / Degenerates, but even Ellen love our shit / Rich enough that I don’t have to tell ’em that I’m rich / Self explanatory, you just here to spread the story, wassup”, the listener is still attuned to the original beat, but there’s a noticeable shift in the undertow of the sound. The instrumental picks up, stops for a nearly imperceivable instant, and then, this is where words fail: it simply drops. The beat that takes over is ethereal. One would have to imagine that Drake and his team had curated this sound slowly over time, and kept it in their pocket, ready to inject it once the perfect track came around. This is that track, and in my opinion, it’s one of the most artfully crafted drops in music as a whole, indicative of how aggressively Drake plans to come after the rap game — and everyone in it.

Part 3 (3:07):

After jumping into the first two verses for three and a half minutes, and barely taking a breath, Drake slows it down. He asks the rhetorical question, “how much time is this nigga spendin’ on the intro?”. It suddenly dawns upon the listener that what they’ve just experienced––the rollercoaster of witty one liners, contrasting beats, and range of tempos––that seemed to last an entire EP, have only spanned the beginning parts of an unfinished ballad. With this ending verse, Drake brings the anthem back to his core, and raps both calmly and confidently about his childhood in Forest Hills, weaving those brief thoughts with rightful feelings of superiority, and a sporadic emotional counsel to his women. This triad is Drake’s eternal bread and butter. In what seems to be one of Drake’s most stark juxtapositions from beginning of track to end, he ties it up with a bow by re-introducing the initial beat, and closes with the line, “how much time is this nigga spendin’ on the intro?”. Once again, one is reminded that this introductory ballad to kickoff Drake’s most anticipated album ever — at over 6 minutes — is anything but conventional.

The outro consists of an off-the-cuff quote from soul legend Curtis Mayfield, giving the user ample space to reflect on the past 6 minutes. One’s left with the question, is Drake just a rapper, or is Drake poised to follow in footsteps akin to Curtis’s, proving to be one of the most influential musicians of all time? With a scintillating and laid-back instrumental backdrop, the outro acts as a palette cleanser to prepare the listener for the next track.

It cannot be disputed that Take Care Drake and NWTS Drake are two completely different animals. Take Care represents a more skeptical basement artist, someone who is still finding their identity footing, and walking the fine line between an independent and mainstream voice. With the release of NWTS, Drake shatters these expectations, and creates an entirely new genre for himself, and himself only. There are countless remarkable Drake songs, but Tuscan Leather demonstrably proves that Drake is willing to go to any length to be crowned the king of rap. With no chorus, and as he effortlessly dances over the three unique beats, Drake proves himself to be fiercely competitive and unprecedentedly dynamic. At the tail end of Tuscan Leather, it becomes exceedingly clear that Drake can outdo anyone in this space, and that NWTS will prove to be the inflection point that lays the foundation of Drake’s dynasty, and that seals his spot as one of the greatest music legends ever.

What’s your favorite Drake song, and why?