These arguments became the subject of much of Drakeo's music, which is not surprising. But it also provided him with a new, delightfully slippery internal logic—or illogicality, an incentive to obscure his meaning and challenge listeners to believe or disbelieve what they wished. This started in earnest Thank you for using GTLthe album he recorded, with producer JoogSzn, over the phone from Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles In addition to being a stunning display of technique—Drakeo nails the timing and oblique interjections of each verse in a series of unbroken takes—GTL ends with a song whose hook goes, “It might sound real, but it's imaginary/I love that my imagination reaches you.”
When he was out, he began taunting the cops and detectives who, he'd learned during the trial, racked up overtime while endlessly scrolling through the rappers' Instagram feeds. The indisputable truth opens with an eerily poised song called “Perfect Eulogy” in which he brags that he could kill someone in exchange for “a promo post.” If rap music, Instagram, and Instagram posts about rap music are to be read as terrorist threats, the argument seems implausible, we might as well use them as such.
Throughout the album, Drakeo sketches this increasingly porous line between the real and the imaginary with gorgeous solemn visuals. The clarity and brevity of his language in the first six bars of “Bop Bop Bleed Em” makes it all the more chilling when he breaks form. Every line in Icewear Vezzo's duet 'Rerock the Hook' could actually be repeated four times as a chorus, and yet each one seems to have come off the top of his head. On “Vince McMahon,” Drakeo goes into one of his most original modes, seeming to be amused and surprised by himself in real time. His asides, as always, are unique – a long line of bragging about the excellent 03 Greedo collaboration “Not The 1” is interrupted by concerns about the paint color of a certain SUV that seems to shake Drakeo to his core.
The indisputable truth can be vertigo-inducing, both for its sheer technical wizardry and for the aforementioned ways it raises those First Amendment questions about its intent. But then, immediately, that attitude falls away. “Lately, all I can think about is violence,” he raps at the start of the penultimate track, “I'm the Reason.” Placed elsewhere—earlier on the album, at a sunnier beat—that same line could play as yet another taunt for the detectives. But there you go it is an admission—an admission that takes on much greater weight after his death. “Reason” is followed by an outro where Drakeo expresses his dismay at the poor work ethic and lack of business savvy displayed by his peers. Rappers have to drop music often these days, he says. “If I decide to stop making music, I'll be 50,” he says. To hear his pervasive influence on modern rap, he's right. But these are copies of copies, with reduced returns. the genuine article is impossible to reproduce.
