An Ode to ‘Summer Games,’ The Best Track on Drake’s ‘Scorpion’

Drake tucked away the finest song he’s made this summer on “Side B” of Scorpion. In an album full of drama, emotion and answers to burning tabloid questions, “Summer Games” is the surprise highlight: an elegant sigh of resignation from an artist whose bravado-fueled bachelor lifestyle has helped make him an unbeatable musical force for the past decade.

“Summer Games” enters loudly, opening with a thick synth riff that boomerangs off itself. The sound is distinctly mid-Aughts: It wouldn’t sound out of place over scenes of a pastel-clad Kirsten Dunst running around Versailles, or in the  credits of a particularly devastating indie romance where the guy most definitely does not get the girl.

“Summer Games” is more than a little out of place in an album that’s otherwise dominated by “Tuscan Leather”-rich soliloquies over lush beats and expensive samples. It’s almost tooinnocent for the New Drake, the one whose long-brewing paranoia has come to a head following a particularly rough month in the public eye. He spends much of Scorpionreflecting on all that – but for one brief moment, he shifts instead to a sullen summer fantasia where his biggest concern is Instagram politics between himself and his beloved, the person breaking his heart and his art during the best time of the year.

It’s Scorpion‘s “Find Your Love” or “Teenage Fever,” a gorgeous, midtempo heartbreaker that lets Drake reinvent his own wheel and take his rightful spot on the sad boy throne. Summer’s just started, and this song’s potential reign has only just begun.