Drake has long had a love-hate relationship with the internet. On the one hand, his Instagram is one of the more entertaining feeds the service has to offer—he wielded it especially well while giving out "#HoodGrammys" last October—but he's also proven himself a bit of a technophobe, too. Recall this quote from a 2011 Billboard interview about Tumblr:
"I'm really scared for my generation, you know. The thing that scares me most is Tumblr. I hate what Tumblr has become. Because it like, it reminds me of those clique-y girls in high school that used to make fun of everyone and define what was cool, but in five years, when you all graduate, that shit doesn't matter. No one gives a fuck about that shit. Instead of kids going out and making their own moments, they're just taking these images and living vicariously through other people's moments. It just kills me. Then you'll meet them and they're just the biggest turkey in the world. They don't actually embody any of those things. They just emulate. It's scary man, simulation life that we're living. It scares me."
So Drake kind of hates the internet, sometimes—and on his new mixtape, If You're Reading This It's Too Late, he talks about hating the internet pretty frequently! (There's also talk of him shutting off his phone, ignoring text messages, and worrying about his phones being tapped, but that's more "Drake being Drake" than "Drake hating the internet.") Below, we've rounded up all the times Drake mentions the internet negatively on If You're Reading This It's Too Late.
Fuck goin' online, that ain't part of my day - "Energy"
Pretty self-explanatory here—although, Drake updates his Instagram almost daily! Maybe here he means "literally sitting down in front of a computer and using the internet," and I have to imagine he doesn't really have much time for that.
I had a yellow TechnoMarine/ Then Kanye dropped, it was polos and backpacks/ That's when Ethan was pushing a Subaru hatchback/ Man I'm talkin' way before hashtags - "Know Yourself"
Pretty loaded lyrics here, so let's walk through it: Drake's calling back to when Kanye referenced TechnoMarine watches on College Dropout's "Last Call" while flipping it up and introducing new styles—which was when his friend Ethan drove a Subaru Hatchback. College Dropout dropped in 2004, a full two years before Twitter was even invented.
I got bitches askin' me about the code for the WiFi/ So they can talk about they timeline/ And show me pictures of they friends/ Just to tell me they ain't really friends - "Energy"
Another possible allusion to Twitter (which Drake uses but sparingly) and not the only time on If You're Reading This It's Too Late that he bemoans "the timeline" getting in the way of quality time with women (more on that later).
I am in the Matrix and I just took the blue pill - "6 Man"
This is a weird one—typically, when The Matrix is referenced in popular culture, it's to exhort the virtues of "unplugging" and becoming an individual. Which, considering Drake's mindset on this tape, seems like something he'd be down with! His referencing the "blue pill" here, though, signals something darker in his mind: in The Matrix, Neo takes the "red pill" to awaken his consciousness and "unplug," but the "blue pill" is the one that returns you to a state of ignorance about how the world really is, essentially getting back in line and once more becoming part of the technological rat race. Is Drake saying that he takes the "blue pill" to cope with the overwhelming noise and chatter that technology creates? Possibly!
Having conversations with mama/ Man my life is a mess/ Ain't been returning the texts, so she be reading the press/ She got Google alerts, them shits go straight to her phone - "You & The 6"
Even when Drake might be avoiding conversations with his mother because, as he puts it, my life is a mess, technology keeps her updated on what he's been doing, whether he likes it or not—and that's not always good news for someone who was considered the low-key bad boy of 2014.
Fuck what they talkin' about on your timeline/ That's cuttin' all into my time with you - "Jungle"
Again with the timeline! Again with Drake being frustrated with women for being distracted at looking at their timeline! It's a weird, specific thing to harp over—and it also glosses over how often dudes are distracted with their own timelines (guilty as charged)—so clearly this is coming from some specific experience.
Maybe we should try and help somebody or be somebody/ Instead of bein' somebody that makes the news/ So everybody can tweet about it/ And then they start to RIP about it - "6 P.M. in New York"
Tucked inside If You're Reading This It's Too Late's closer—the one where he titanically burns Tyga, once and for all—is this call into the technological void, a castigation against a generation that, as Drake presumably sees it, would rather sit on the sidelines and offer commentary than get off their asses, close their laptops, shut off their phones, and go out and do something, anything, else than chatting shit online. Ironically, this song was the #4 most mentioned track from the tape on Twitter after it went live. We're all part of the problem, I suppose.
