Ultimate Ms Marvel

When they walk in, Aamir looks around the convenience store like there’s gold wedged in every crack, and perfume in the vague stench of rat poison. Kamala is once again reminded the severity of this city’s pest problem, longing once again to walk the sidewalk after five without mistaking a rat for a stray lapdog.

She ends up letting Aamir set the pace, despite her discomfort. As they approach the quant cereal aisle, she notices some of the provisions have a layer of dust lining the top.

“I don’t get it,” she says frankly. “What’s so great about this?”

“What, the bodega? It’s…it’s a bodega,”

“This is a drugstore.”

“With a deli counter.”

“…We had delis in Jersey, Aamir.”

“Yeah, but not in the little corner stores, it’s kinda neat, right?”

“Ah yes, New York. Where else can you get a sandwich?” she asks, caustically taking the lead.

“Have you even tried one of them?”

“For what they’re charging? No way. I’m not paying eight bucks for a sandwich.”

With that, Kamala grabs a hold of the bran flakes their mother asked for, wrinkling her nose at the state of the box and the date on the front. Back home this would’ve been five dollars. In the sparkly hovel of audacity that is New York City, it’s seven. Their dad has to work harder than he ever has because people here would give up a whole loaf for one slice of bread.

“…You want me to get you the sandwich?” Aamir suddenly asks behind her.

“No.”

He waits a beat. “I’m getting you the sandwich.”

“Aamir…”

I think they saved his legacy. It’s a contextually poetic series of albums, the most significant piece being that after all that big 3 talk, he’s become the first musician to literally occupy the top 3 album chart with individual debuts. As of right now the big 3 in mainstream music is literally Drake, Drake, and Drake.

Iceman in particular is like, his best rapping performance ever. Better than Her Loss, than NWTS, especially IYRTITL. I’m still catching these legitimate quadruple entendres after the fact, and when you really sit and listen you note that he’s casually dropping these S tier bars rappers would normally build an entire verse around. The album is so good that the ongoing criticism doesn’t even pertain to the album itself but contrived infractions against Drake as a public figure. I just saw like eight separate youtubers drop actual maga allegations at the same time.

And something about all three albums that no one’s really talked about is that it’s mixed sublimely. My main critique when it came to the Drake music of today is that it isn’t usually mixed as well as it had before. There’s a lot of songs on CLB, Her Loss, and For All The Dogs that don’t hit as hard in my earbuds as they do out of a speaker. Rappers in general only mix for the car test rather than the headphone test, but 40 seems to have taken over for Noel full time as the engineer so I could not be happier. Shit like Plot Twist hits hard as fuck no matter what I’m playing it on.

There’s also less than a handful of features on all three and that’s what makes Drake’s performance stand out more strongly. Unlike pre beef albums, he isn’t contending for space with guys Lil Baby or Lil Durk or Ty Dolla Sign or Rick Ross or some other random ass feature to drag down the music. I remember hearing that in like, the early 2010s he used to get criticism for collabing with whoever on the road but being ultra selective with who he actually let on the albums. If anything else, the rap beef has once again revived that selectiveness.

Iceman in particular strikes me as a decisive reckoning. He didn’t let anything ago (and why would he?), and the hype demonstrates that he doesn’t have to. The whole album being a series of elaborate disses, things that his contemporaries will be made to hear before the next album cycle because they’re simply that catchy sums up why so many people tune in—he can fit these complex feelings and actions into something you wanna just play over and over and over. The album is one big stylish fuck you to his label, to the rap game, to everyone that got ready to see him fall the last two years.

When I opened twitter and saw that it dethroned Not Like Us’ spotify record on arrival, it was like in Endgame where everyone came back from the blip. Everything was once again back to normal because what seemed lost was never gone to begin with.

My favorite songs off the album is either Janice STFU, Plot Twist, or Ran To Atlanta. But B’s on the Table and Shabang are always catching me off guard. Make Them Cry is probably Drake’s best intro thus far, and the same goes for Make Them Know as an outro. I didn’t expect him to get so poignant on the latter.

My one criticism is that I don’t think Conductor is an interesting producer, and I couldn’t get into Make Them Pay or Firm Friends. The kicks, the bass, even the snares are all too soft, and my impression of Conductor as a producer is that he’s a lo fi producer that opened the wrong door and ended up in a rap session.

Now, Habibti and Maid of Honor are like If Youre Reading This Its Too Late in the sense that they’re side projects very plainly meant to fulfill his contractual obligations as quickly as possible. Iceman’s been the one I spent two years waiting on, so while I enjoy both albums, they haven’t made the impression that the main one has. Imagine if all of Destiny’s Child released individual projects at the same time—that’s what it’s like.