Certain Sips: The Weekend Brew—Drake, Deb Haaland, and Peggy Flanagan
Five Hot Minutes ☕ February 23, 2025
A weekly cultural and political brief—Certain Sips: the Weekend Brew
Drake is dead. Long live the Drake.
The eternal optimist in me hoped that the megaplatinum Canadian rapper/crooner would have felt so emotionally raw after being obliterated last year by Kendrick Lamar that he might channel his pain into a new era of moving, sad boy music. Alas, it would appear any such creative advance powered by emotional breakthrough remains elusive from the artist who once gave us such gems as November 18, Controlla, and Walk It Talk It.
Is anyone even aware that Drake released a collaborative album this week with PARTYNEXTDOOR? Does anyone care? I listened to $ome $exy $ongs 4 U so you don’t have to, and I regret to inform you that every one of its 21 songs is garbage. Striking out on such a level is akin to going seven innings of baseball without ever getting on base—a truly pathetic showing from a musician whose albums usually yield at least one or two memorable tracks.
Drake may never release another good song again, which would be most unfortunate for his genuine fans like me. In light of this week’s epic failure, I soothed myself by enjoying some of his old brilliance: Champagne Poetry, the ambitious 6-minute lead track off 2021’s Certified Lover Boy.
Good Listening
The song liberally samples Masego’s 2017 Najavo, which itself samples The Beatles’ Michelle from 1965’s Rubber Soul. Under any circumstance it takes chutzpah to sample the fab four, let alone one of their most beloved songs. But Masego pulls it off, and in turn Drake demonstrates his worthiness doing justice drawing on the classic in Champagne Poetry. Sampling Michelle here is a bold choice, considering that two years prior Drake got a tattoo of himself waving goodbye to The Beatles crossing Abbey Road after eclipsing their all-time Billboard Top 10 singles record. Love him or hate him, one has to respect Drizzy’s chart successes and historical audacity.
Consider by comparison Nas and Jay-Z, two of the genre’s greatest and most prolific musicians: Lead tracks of Jay and Nas albums almost always strike a chord, they tend to be shorter and more tightly produced, enduring as one of—if not the—record’s most standout songs. By contrast, Champagne Poetry is sprawling, reaching, demanding the listener come along for a journey as table stakes to enter the rest of the album. Two songs are bridged together, weaving the Navajo sample across distinct sections to achieve a greater, complete narrative.
Lyrically, Drake is in rare form on Champagne Poetry. In retrospect, it may be the highest point of his artistic output before steadily tumbling downhill ever since. The song exudes depth and excellence even amidst total immersion in the finest material luxuries. Navajo is just as good, lamenting a love interest’s lack of depth—a purely materialistic orientation falling well short of Masego’s expectations.
Deb Haaland may not be Navajo, but she would be the first prominently identified Native American Governor were she to succeed Michelle Lujan Grisham in New Mexico in 2026. This week Haaland, a former member of Congress, Interior Secretary, and Chair of the New Mexico Democratic Party, announced plans to run to lead New Mexico when the term-limited Grisham leaves office. In an alternate timeline where Vice President Harris had won the 2024 election, Minnesota Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan would have succeeded Tim Walz to become the first prominently identified Native American Governor.
In this timeline, she will have to settle for Senator. This week Flanagan announced her intent to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Tina Smith in 2026. An Albuquerque native, Smith herself served as Lt. Governor under Mark Dayton before being appointed to replace Al Franken in 2018 and winning reelection two years later. That’s right—a second female Native American candidate has hit the statewide campaign trail.
A tremendous amount of attention and energy will be rightly invested in Democrats’ retaking control of both bodies of Congress in the 2026 midterms. This is crucial not only to mitigating Trump’s wreckage, but to restoring the legislative branch’s right-sized historical role as an active coequal branch of the federal government. Yet on November 3, 2026, many individual electoral stories will warrant close attention as well. I look forward to celebrating Haaland’s and Flanagan’s historic victories in New Mexico and Minnesota.
I hope you had a wonderful weekend, old sport. See you next time.
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Daily Dose of Certainty: November 22, 2024
He did it again. Kendrick Lamar dropped a new album today, on the 61st anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Recall that King Kendrick’s post-scriptural affirmation of the death of Drake and the hip hop era he personified, Watch the Party Die, dropped on the anniversary of September 11.
Six Months of Certain Thoughts
It was all a dream. A dream to win the 2024 election, back in August when anything was possible. Against all expectation, President Joe Biden dropped from the race and Vice President Kamala Harris surged in popularity. Political junkies like me all wondered: who would become her Vice Presidential nominee? As a native Minnesotan, I have to admit I didn’t know all that much about Governor Tim Walz. He had been on my radar as an overperforming Democratic congressman from a purple district, and a decent but unremarkable governor. Then suddenly he was everywhere, calling Republicans weird and firing up the base with his proud record of progressive advances leading Minnesota.