Girls Love Beyoncé
Notes on Beyoncé‘s “HEATED” & Mutual Admiration
I’m writing this essay while flying to Los Angeles. My wife is sleeping to my right. And the girl on my left is synchronously watching Mamma Mia! with her friend across the aisle. Last time I was in L.A., Drake filled the dark void as I drove down La Cienega Boulevard towards LAX at 3 A.M. with the surprise release of his seventh studio album, Honestly, Nevermind. Entering the world without warning, its release called back to Beyoncé’s Lemonade drop, which also left folks dismayed, scrambling to find the play button.
Akin to the shock of Honestly, Nevermind’s release, the album’s lead track “Falling Back” bursts through the speakers in my rental car with tech-house production different from what I’ve heard on other Drake projects, made even more pronounced by a 36-second intro mostly filled with silence and ambient noise. During the half-hour drive to the airport, I listen to a version of Drake I’ve only witnessed glimpses of on songs like “Signs” and “Get It Together,” which features production from Black Coffee who’s credited on Honestly, Nevermind’s “Texts Go Green,” “Currents,” and “Overdrive.”
Song after song, I quickly realize Honestly, Nevermind is mostly comprised of Drake singing over tech-house beats — ‘oontz oontz’ music if you will (and I will). Singing Drake is my favorite Drake. My top five Drake songs include “Jungle,” “Marvin’s Room,” and “Feel No Ways.” My body levitates to a new dimension during Drake’s outro on “Diamonds Dancing.”
While Drake’s singing voice isn’t the strongest, it is accessible. Drake is also malleable, which is to say he can configure himself to fit on vastly different production styles and sound like he’s been there before. Drake knows where, when, and how to show up on a track in order to make the song work and complement whoever he’s working with.
In one playlist, you can have Drake sing-rapping with Bad Bunny on “MIA,” positioning himself directly with another one of music’s biggest stars. Then, on “Mine” from Beyoncé’s surprise self-titled album, Drake is the ultimate role player. He brings in the best pieces of himself throughout the song. He chants the refrain in a way that carves itself into your memory. During the chorus, he provides a soft vocal bed for Beyoncé’s voice to snuggle into before she rolls out the red carpet for him to rap a classic Drake verse, which he even punctuates with a vocal burst that lobs Beyoncé up for the finish.
Three days after Drake released Honestly, Nevermind, my Twitter timeline began lighting up with reactions to “BREAK MY SOUL,” Beyoncé’s lead single for RENAISSANCE, her first solo album since Lemonade. Following the song’s release, fans started speculating that RENAISSANCE would be a dance album, specifically paying homage to queer-pioneered house and club styles. “BREAK MY SOUL” ended up being the perfect primer. RENAISSANCE is house music. Club music. Dance music.
And of course, the takes came flooding in:
With every passing tweet, headline, podcast title, my eyes glazed over as I whispered to myself, “Why we gotta pit two bad bitches against each other?”
I finally listened to RENAISSANCE on a flight home exhausted from seeing family and quickly discovered how easy of an album it is to get lost in because I wanted to live inside of it. All the sounds. The playfulness. Every song felt like a new club.
When I got to track two, “HEATED,” I couldn’t quite put my finger on where I was but I knew they had Casamigos. The vocal cadence, the inflections, felt familiar like I’d heard them somewhere before. It all made sense when I looked at the song credits on Genius and saw Drake listed as a writer.
Later, I learned about a reference track floating around with Drake reciting an early version of the hook. Then, because there’s always going to be one of these in the age of Garageband and FL Studio, I found a “HEATED” mashup on YouTube where someone edited together Beyoncé’s vocals with Drake’s reference track vocals.
At one point during the edit, Drake’s vocals are laid beneath Beyoncé’s to create a harmony effect, bringing me back to “Mine,” the only collaboration between Beyoncé and Drake where they are featured together as artists.
In both “HEATED” and “Mine,” Beyoncé submits herself to a sound that is inherently Drake. With production and writing credits from some of Drake’s main collaborators — Omen, Majid Jordan, KeY Wane and 40 — “Mine” is in many ways a Drake song that Beyoncé made her own.
Similarly, although Drake’s vocals aren’t featured on the album recording and beyond the hook I don’t know what pieces of the song Drake touched, “HEATED” feels like a love letter to Drake’s musical contributions, especially with a line like: “Only a real one can tame me / Only the radio could play me / Oh, now you wish I was complacent.” I’m actually surprised I didn’t hear those bars on Honestly, Nevermind.
Through both collaborations, it is clear Beyoncé and Drake have a mutual admiration for each other’s music, and as artists, that can easily get overlooked when they’re thought of as only being in competition with one another.
Beyond “HEATED” and “Mine,” in addition to having a portrait of Beyoncé hanging on the wall in his old studio, Drake featured Beyoncé’s vocals on his song “Can I” from his 2019 compilation of loosies, Care Package. This project also includes “Girls Love Beyoncé,” Drake’s collaboration with James Fauntleroy on which they interpolate Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name.”
Beyoncé and Drake occupy a place in popular music, and music at large, that few do and few ever have. With as long as they’ve been making music, it’s remarkable that, in 2022, the world still stops and the timeline is set ablaze when Beyoncé and Drake drop their albums. Even as newer, younger artists have captured people’s attention, Beyoncé and Drake have remained front of mind for music lovers and passive listeners alike while playing major roles in shaping the current music landscape.
I don’t want to think about Beyoncé and Drake as rivals. I don’t want to have to choose between RENAISSANCE and Honestly, Nevermind. Wherever I’m listening to “HEATED,” tequila soda in hand, I want to hear “Massive” right after and dance myself into a sweaty mess before winding down with “Mine.”
Because we get to live in a time and place on this side of the stars where Drake and Beyoncé are making music.
Because for nearly as long as I’ve loved music, I’ve had Drake and Beyoncé.
Because look, I know girls love Beyoncé.
Drake does too.
And Beyoncé loves Drake.
