Meaning of “On The Radar Freestyle” by Drake & Central Cee
It appears as if slowly but surely, British rap is getting more recognition stateside. And in that regard Drake has actually been ahead of the game, being known for acknowledging the UK and its brand of hip-hip since the early 2010s.
In that latter regard, he has for instance collaborated with Dave as far back as 2016 (on “Wanna Know”) and featured Jorja Smith on a couple of tracks from his 2017 mixtape “More Life”, a project that also features long-standing British grime artist Skepta.
How the “On the Radar Freestyle” came about was by both Drake and Central Cee visiting a NYC-based hip-hop radio station called Power 105.1 which airs a rap music program called On the Radar Radio.
It’s not abundantly clear if the two of them attended the radio station together. But it is known that Drake was concurrently in NYC as part of the It’s All a Blur Tour, a primarily US-based initiative that Aubrey’s is headlining alongside a regular collaborator of his in 21 Savage. So since this is a freestyle, it is he and Cench who are credited with writing “On The Radar Freestyle”, with its producers being Harley Arsenault and Kid Masterpiece.
Note:
Of note is the fact that the two emcees already had an established business relationship prior to the dropping of this track on 21 July 2023. More specifically, when Drake collaborated with Nike in launching the NOCTA clothing collection in 2021, Central Cee was enlisted to model the brand.
Moreover they once performed on stage together, and Cench appeared on the music video to Drake’s 2022 track “Jumbotron Sh*t Poppin”.
The Lyrics of “On The Radar Freestyle”
This is braggadocious rap, and considering that it is a freestyle it isn’t designed to stick to a particular topic per se, with the overall goal of course being the vocalists’ referencing their success and formidability.
Rap freestyles tend to be such that you never really know how much is coming off the head and how much was already written, as even when emcees improvise they tend to automatically include some already-penned material.
And the reason we’re pointing that out is because honestly, Drake’s verse reads more like a genuine freestyle than Cench’s. You can tell because true rap freestyles for instance usually feature lyrical redundancies.
And in Drizzy’s verse, we can see that he rhymes “guys” with “guys” and “inside” with “inside” instead of engaging in more complex wordplay. Or let’s say that given his talent and usual style, it isn’t likely he would resort to such measures if this were a studio song. It’s Cee’s verse that rather reads more like, to some extent though not entirely, it was already written.
But either way, we’re not trying to take anything away from either of these rappers. At the end of the day, it can be argued that Cench’s verse is better or in the very least more concise. There are some people out there who really do possess the talent to just spit rhymes like this out of nowhere, and those types of rap are often quite lengthy, as with the verses at hand.
At the end of the day, going through these lyrics makes you wonder what the two rappers could accomplish if they actually sat down and dropped a studio track together.
