Drake is showing love to Bay Area rap, as well as a late friend.
The 39-year-old rapper pays tribute to hyphy culture on his ICEMAN song, “2 Hard 4 the Radio,” released on Friday (May 15).
Hyphy culture is a high-energy hip-hop movement that came out of Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area in the late ’90s and early ’00s.
“Woah, woah, livin’ large, yeah / And I put that on citas and the boul?vard / When I lost big Nadia, I took it hard / Need to call up a Stark for some Chrome H?arts / If you my new girl, girl, you gotta look the part / Ayy, it’s Mr. Make Her Pipe Down, there he go / Yeah, it’s Mr. Popstar, that’s the way it go / Now I’m too hard for the f–kin’ radio / Too hard for the f–kin’ radio Yeah, too hard for the f–kin’ radio,” he declares.
The Nadia reference presumably is a nod to longtime friend Nadia Ntuli, who died in an ATV accident in 2021, and to whom he dedicated Certified Lover Boy.
He also references Mac Dre‘s Bay Area classic “2 Hard 4 the F–kin’ Radio” on the song.
“Got an Oakland show tonight, baby / My young boys from the Yoc goin’ crazy / I’m on the bridge with a tank of unleaded / I pull up early to that bitch, that bitch was yankin’ already,” he goes on.
“The Yoc” is slang for a city east of Oakland in Contra Costa County, called Antioch, Calif.
He also delivers a shot at producer Mustard directly, who produced Kendrick Lamar‘s “Not Like Us”: “Mustard heard about us, gotta catch up to the slaps / You ain’t had one since me and YG rapped / Facts, nine hundred million for the tracks / ‘Rack City,’ bitch, we remember that / Damn, you should try and get back to that / This new s–t, you could’ve kept it on the Laugh Fact,” he says, referring to his 2014 song with YG, “Who Do You Love?” and implying Mustard hasn’t had a hit since. (Mustard also produced Tyga‘s “Rack City” in 2011.)
Listen to “2 Hard 4 the Radio”…
Read the lyrics to “2 Hard 4 the Radio”…
See the meaning behind more Drake songs from his new albums, and find out how they all rank.
Posted To:Drake Lyrics Music Mustard Nadia Ntuli
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