whinge-boast

hugovk commented on the word whinge-boast

whinge-boast, v.

The Guardian, 28 April 2016:

It is a tribute to his powers of invention, his strange and grotesque genius, that Drake has so far managed to find so many compelling variations on such a restricted set of themes: the dream that turns out not to be as dreamy as you had expected; feeling alone even in the midst of an entourage and a wild party; complaints, already fairly familiar in rap, about how money changes everything and creates more problems than its absence. Haters and gold-diggers were long established in rap as inevitable accoutrements of fame about which you could whinge-boast (hip-hop’s equivalent of the humble-brag). But Drake went the next step and talked about the hollow-inside feeling that came with conquering the throne and acquiring all the trophies. As he croons in All Me, “Got everything, I got everything / I cannot complain, I cannot” – but still, still, he complains: about feeing empty, feeling numb. Picking up on pointers left by Kanye West on 808s & Heartbreak, but pushing further ahead, Drake made having a spiritual void into rap’s new status symbol. Morose and maudlin, not Maybach and Margiela, became the mark of megastardom.

May 5, 2016