Drake is the proud author of a new poetry collection, but he isn’t oblivious to the critical reviews he’s been receiving.
Last week, the Canadian rapper released his first poetry book with writer Kenza Samir, Titles Ruin Everything, a 168-page collection of “meditations on fame, romance and relationships.”
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Complex recently published an article that saw award-winning poets reacting to Drake’s new book, and many of them weren’t exactly impressed by what they read.
Hanif Abdurraqib, the New York Times best-selling author behind Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, called the poems “silly lil’ jokes.”
“Some of these are so absurd that they’re actually funny,” he said. “But it’s hard to tell if he also understands that they’re bending into absurdist humor, and understands that there will be people who find it profound? Or if he’s convinced himself of the profundity. Really, it’s kind of just a book of puns. Silly lil’ jokes.”
He continued: “It is a struggle for me to tell how in on the joke he is… I’m not personally offended by anything that masquerades as poetry, because it happens so often in every possible arena of entertainment and consumption, but this is essentially a coffee table book of one-line jokes.”
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Houston poet Aris Kian also criticized the book for its “petty abstractions.”
“Where he could push himself to indulge in the silliness and sentimentality that even the purest of poets would forgive, he disintegrates into petty abstractions and instead gives us lines like, ‘You were in my dream last night/ They call that a nightmare, right?’” she said.
“Drake’s poems operate within an excess of white space, a reduced set of images and limited punctuation. The tools of tension, breath and play are only explored through the typical two-line set up/punchline format.”
Drizzy appeared to catch wind of the comments and addressed the criticism on his Instagram Stories on Thursday (June 29).
“Randomly angry poets: blahagaggagesvachjsksyavsvvehevehebwgabvqvqqvwww[.] Me:,” he wrote alongside a photo of the late nurse and sex educator Sue Johanson — who appeared in a handful of episodes of Drizzy’s former TV show Degrassi — shrugging and looking distinctly unbothered.
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Drake is set to release a new album called For All the Dogs to accompany his poetry book, but no release date has been announced yet.
“I made an album to go with the book,” he wrote in a full-page ad that appeared in publications like the New York Post and Houston Chronicle. “They say they miss the old Drake girl don’t tempt me. FOR ALL THE DOGS.”
