Ten Years After So Far Gone, Drake Still Has a Lust for Life. We do too.

When former Degrassi actor Aubrey "Drake" Graham released his "So Far Gone" mixtape, it changed the trajectory of his career and quite possibly the trajectory of music as a whole. But the way it connected to a generation of people, maybe too deeply, will one day be the stuff of legend.

"Before Drake was known for providing the anthems to our summers each year, and before there was an Instagram to use his lyrics as captions for, the project spoke to young, Black kids in college as we tried to get the money we never had and the attention we always wanted, doing it all for the cities that made us—especially those of us from Texas.

Simpler times. The best kind of nostalgia."

“I’m tryna do it all tonight, I got plans.”

I was a freshman in college when Drake dropped So Far Gone, the mixtape that would take him from MySpace music hopeful and former actor to a household name. 

Before Drake was known for providing the anthems to our summers year after year, and before there was an Instagram to use his lyrics as captions for, So Far Gone spoke to young, Black college kids as we tried to get the money we never had and the attention we always wanted, doing it all for the cities that made us—especially those of us from Texas. It gave a new voice to our ambition and, for better or for worse, shaped our romantic conversations and encounters.

Simpler times. The best kind of nostalgia.

So Far Gone felt as young and out of control as our basest instincts would tempt us to be if we had the means, from the cash we wanted to spend to the lust we wanted to act on to the shit we wanted to talk. It reflected the growing pains that come with fumbling the good things we weren’t ready for and the sadness that came with losing things we’d later be thankful that we never quite had.

Drake gave us raps over classic samples on “November 18” and “Ignant Shit,” and verses and features from Bun B, Omarion, Lloyd, Trey Songz, and of course, Lil Wayne (an all-star lineup in 2009). We lived vicariously through him as he talked us through flexing with money, acknowledging that it isn’t everything, but damn if it didn’t feel better than not having it.

Perhaps the biggest draw was the balancing acts the project displayed. He alternated between brazen rap bars and R&B-style croons. Work with play as he told us how to move when you take a night off and finally get a moment to yourself, getting us all a little more acquainted with the things we could do with it. In his more braggadocious moments, Drake balanced the fact that the women of other men were obsessed with him with the reality that love isn’t easy and lust is more fickle than fame. And even more fickle when you actually have fame. 

But none of those conflicting ideals were given as much symmetry as the desire to be on top and the feeling of already being there. 

I’ve always treated music as a full sensory experience. It’s never just been about the way the music sounded, but the way I felt when I heard it first or listened to it the most, the way rooms smelled, the food I was eating, the things I saw, the lyrics that made me think or remember, even when I wanted to forget. So to me, So Far Gone still smells like a rug that never quite stopped smelling like a dropped bottle of passionfruit Skyy vodka in my friend’s dorm room and all the other liquor we drank that our stomachs and palettes wouldn’t tolerate now. 

It looks like trips to the tiny shopping mall in our small college town to find the right outfit for when the DJ played “A Night Off” or “Brand New” at the party later that night. It feels like tired arms as we blow dried and flat ironed hair and weaves to “Houstalantavegas,” “Uptown,” and “Best I Ever Had.” It sounds like every pre-game, every college party, every Black campus event, and every trip back home to Dallas for the weekend.

Since So Far Gone, we’ve seen some shifts in Drake. He’s fully transitioned from the kid from Degrassi into the 6 god. While he’s still willing to be more vulnerable than most are prepared for, his shit-talking stings a little more, and his jabs connect more directly. Though he said in “Successful” that we’d never hear replies to disses directed toward him, we’ve seen—and still quote—several.

I’d be remiss not to mention a questionable lyric about sleeping with dancers who are too “fucked up” in Houstalantavegas that wouldn’t go over well today or the diet misogyny we’ve sometimes gotten from him over the years. Or how romantic ne’er-do-wells have made him their patron saint with faux displays of vulnerability as a means to run game on people who really should know better at this point. But that’s a conversation for a different time.

For now, we’ll acknowledge that many of us were entering adulthood as he entered the spotlight, and we’ve all done a lot of growing. And we’ll celebrate a mixtape that could’ve been album of the year. 

One that might go down as having changed ... well, everything.

*Originally posted on GoodCulture.Life