Review
Genre and Mood
Drake and The Throne, Kanye West and Jay-Z, meet on Pop Style, a hip-hop track that is all cool understatement. It is rap at its most minimal and most self-assured: confident, bold and almost hypnotic, a flex delivered in a murmur rather than a shout.
Song Summary
“Pop Style” is about success, fame and the critics that come with them, and it never sounds excited about any of it. The title is Jamaican slang for showing off, used famously in Althea and Donna’s 1978 hit “Uptown Top Ranking”. The beat is dark and sparse, leaving huge pockets of space for the voices, and it samples the announcer’s “Perfect” from the video game Street Fighter II. Drake slides through his lines in a half-sung, half-rapped drawl, and the hook is less a chorus than a mantra. On the single, Jay-Z adds two lines and Kanye West a full verse, the first time all three appeared on one track.
Musical Breakdown
The structure is a relay between the voices over a beat that barely changes, and the tension comes from that stillness.
Intro
The beat sets a low, ominous mood with a lot of empty space before Drake begins.
Verse 1
Drake opens in an easy, conversational flow, trading boasts with a detached cool that makes them sound like simple facts.
Chorus
The hook repeats a few clipped phrases about showing off, catchy precisely because it refuses to rise.
Main Section
Jay-Z enters with just two lines. Drake later said Jay-Z never really wrote a verse for the song, and the brevity is audible: a cameo rather than a contribution.
Bridge
Kanye West takes the last verse, his delivery more animated and playful against the deadpan beat, with a spoken aside referring to his 2009 interruption at the MTV Video Music Awards.
Outro
The beat runs on briefly and the track stops, an ending some critics, Anthony Fantano among them, found abrupt.
Concepts in Focus
Pop Style is a case study in the alternate version. The single credited to Drake featuring The Throne has Jay-Z’s two lines and Kanye’s verse; an extended version turns Jay-Z’s lines into the opening of a new verse; and the album version on Views has only Drake, with a new verse replacing both guests. Drake told Zane Lowe that the collaboration did not turn out as he had hoped. The same beat and hook carry three different songs.
The beat also shows that sampling is not only about music. The “Perfect” announcement from Street Fighter II, which Kanye West also used on The Life of Pablo the same year, becomes part of the texture. A sound effect from a 1990s arcade game, placed in a beat, works as both rhythm and reference.
The hook carries the title phrase. Its meaning, showing off in front of the people who doubt you, is the theme of every verse, so the hook is the song’s argument in a few words.
Artistic Context
“Pop Style” was released on 5 April 2016 together with “One Dance” as the first singles from Drake’s fourth album, Views, issued by Young Money and Cash Money. Its production is credited to Frank Dukes, Sevn Thomas, Boi-1da and Noah “40” Shebib, and all of them share the writing credit with Drake, Kanye West and Jay-Z. The guest credit may answer Drake’s own “6PM in New York”, where he suggested that the throne had room for a third rapper; this was the first time West and Jay-Z performed under the name The Throne.
Impact and Reception
The single debuted and peaked at number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100, at number 4 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and at number 1 on Digital Songs, with 128,000 copies sold in two days; it reached number 33 in the UK and is certified double platinum in the US. The single version was nominated for Best Rap Performance at the 59th Grammy Awards. It is here for its mood, the menace of a song that wins by holding back. Play it loud enough to feel the bass.
