In his new album, If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late, Drake travels to complex and revelatory emotional depths. He honestly uncovers some of his innermost workings and makes them into artfully composed aural loveliness for us all to enjoy.
Assuming the publicly available birth date for him is correct, we can match what Drake puts out there about his personal experiences and his take on them to placements in his birth chart. I should note here that there are of course so many complexities in a human’s nature, and barring questioning Drake directly, in a situation where Drake really knows himself and is willing to share about the process of the creation of his art, there just is no conclusive way to know that a verse or line in a song is definitively correlative with a placement in his chart. But, Astrology is an art. And astrologizing is what I do here. So venture with me into interpretation-land.
When Drake says, “I haven’t felt the pressure in a little while, it’s gon take some getting used to”, we might reflect on his stellium in Scorpio and his Mars in Aquarius, and that Saturn has been making hard aspects to his Sun, Pluto, Mercury, and Venus from winter 2012 to winter 2013. Drake underwent a series of trials by definition during that timeframe. Pressure is an appropriate term. And as a Scorpio with a probable grand water trine, I’m willing to bet that the cut and sharp emotional clarity Saturn likely delivered, or, more aptly, urged Drake to become conscious of, was something that was majorly helpful for him. Emotional sorting is tonic medicine for people with water and air sensibilities.
A major theme throughout the 17 track album is authenticity in the rap game (my acting days are over, fuq them ni&&as for life), loyalty to long since established associates (I’m managed by my friends that I grew up with, I’d rather give that 15% to people I fuq with), and, of course, all the underpinning complexities of love, being an individual responsible for their approach to love, and relationships.
I’d like to propose something here. That is that Drake is a softie with a tender heart who actually loves — viscerally and primally gets off on — observing the behavior of fellow rap artists and, finding rampant inauthenticity, takes personal pride in being really, really real.
Drake finds the necessity to be cold and cutthroat toward other artists when all the while he’s sensitive, he’s sensitive, he’s different (all that Scorpio disposed of by ruler Mars in Aquarius). It’s his sensitivity about standing outside the consensus flow of the rap game that necessitates his being ice cold. Drake opts out of what he sees as the superficiality of social rituals and ceremonies (I am not tryna win awards, that shit look forced) For Drake, being an authentic musician is a matter of trust and survival, self protection and realness in the process of creating his art. Scorpio keeps a close circle. Scorpio is no bullsht. With such a pronounced attunement to water— a nearly certain Cancer Moon opposite Neptune in Capricorn, delivers the “personal brand of masculinity” that makes him so successful with his female demographic.
I’m personally very intrigued by the balls to the wall flow in 6pm in New York in which he makes references to economic downturn, police use of force, and trimming comrades and so much more of import. While Drake is celebrity, who has taken on the charge of being an artist and not necessarily a spokesperson for social change, I gotta say it’s really good to hear this from October’s Very Own.
To close, I leave you with his strange short film in promotion of the new album.
