After releasing a pair of high-gloss collaborations with DJ Khaled on Friday, Drake returned in a feistier mood on Monday, barely pausing for breath as he raps terse, tongue-twisting verses on the hookless “Only You Freestyle.”
“Only You Freestyle” is produced by M1onthebeat, and the track shares some U.K.-drill-like qualities with “War,” which Drake released on Christmas Eve and then used to end his Dark Lane Demo Tapes project. The star is joined on “Only You Freestyle” by the English rapper Headie One, who is already enjoying a breakthrough moment thanks to his verse on Young T and Bugsey’s “Don’t Rush,” which has become omnipresent on rap radio this summer.
Dark Lane Demo Tapes, which mixed new songs with old leaks and loosies, came out May 1st. Like most Drake releases, it has earned an inordinate amount of streams — more than 950 million to date, according to the analytics company Alpha Data. The single “Toosie Slide,” which briefly kicked off a TikTok dance craze, debuted at Number One on the Rolling Stone Top 100 Songs chart.
During quarantine, Drake has stayed busy by working on yet another album. “I remember the last time I had to sit down was when I tore my ACL,” the rapper told Diddy recently. “And I made a great album out of that. Obviously God has us all inside the house right now. Definitely, it’s the most excited I’ve been about an album in a long time.… The amount of focus that I’m able to put into this album is probably way different than it would have been.”
