The writer Ernest Baker published an essay at the website Four Pins last month describing a drug-addled week he spent orbiting Drake, the hip-hop superstar. Baker is a smart, funny young writer whose work often features himself as the main character. He has attracted a robust and vocal set of online admirers, the ranks of which include, it happens, Drake, who once made cryptically flattering reference to Baker in an Instagram caption. Baker’s best writing is crisp and colorful. In the Drake piece, joints are smoked in hot tubs and celebrities drift in and out of the author’s narcotized field of vision. Flashes of depression complicate the prevailing atmosphere of hedonism. Mostly, a whole lot of nothing happens. Here’s Baker, adrift at Coachella: “I take a bunch of shrooms before noon and hop in an Uber. There aren't many acts that I want to or need to see until later, so I post up on a couch in the artist lounge area. I mooch weed from 50-year-old rock dads. I trip balls. I charge my phone.” It is no mean feat, describing such mundanities, to build a narrative so lively. Continue reading at 'Slate'
[ Slate | 2015-04-30 00:00:00 UTC ]