Track Review: Drake & SZA, ‘Slime You Out’
“Slime You Out,” the lead single from Drake’s forthcoming For All the Dogs album, eschews any attempts at intentionally crafting the hit crossover single that both artists are clearly capable of. Gone are the earworm hooks of “Kill Bill” or the catchy one-liners of “Jimmy Cooks,” and gone are the pristine beats that held together Drake’s last few records. On their new duet, the two stars opt for sparse barely-there production that gives them ample room to call each other out for their childish ways on several long-winded stream-of-consciousness verses.
It’s a fine track. We get some solid Drake-isms (“Got me wiggin' on you like I'm Arrogant Tae / You got my mind in a terrible place”) and SZA effortlessly eviscerates the male species (“How you niggas get so carried away? / Trippin' when that dick is barely third place / Fucked out of pity, it's cute that you lame”), but most of the song’s success banks on us buying into the behind-the-scenes back-and-forth between the two artists — otherwise it’s more of the same nondescript “toxic” jumble that we’ve been inundated with (from both them and mainstream music at large) for what feels like several centuries at this point. The songwriting here is simply alright; we don’t really go anywhere new with either Drake or SZA on this track, and that redundancy cuts through the rest of the song even with the brilliance of a line like “I’m slimin’ you for them kid choices you made.”
On the production side, “Slime You Out” feels like Drake & Co. took Certified Lover Boy’s “Get Along Better” to a more atmospheric place. It’s R&B Drake in full effect, from slightly behind-the-beat singing to his trademark half-assed ad-libs. In fact, on his second verse, Drake slyly flips the calendar to analyze the ebb and flow of people’s relationships with the concept of romance over the course of the year. It’s a verse that directly recalls Take Care-era Drake, which, in turn, recalls Drake’s promise to “bring back the Old Drake” on For All the Dogs.
Given that “Slime You Out” finds both Drake and SZA clocking the bullshit of toxicity instead of praising and participating in it — the new song could be a clue that Drake is actually flipping what the “Old Drake” means on this upcoming album. Or we could be giving him a bit too much credit. After all, it’s kind of hard to take someone who earnestly sang the line “whipped and chained you like American slaves” seriously.
Score: 60
SZA does the impossible and delivers another remarkable album with ‘SOS.’