Drake and Sufjan Stevens have come together to form the mash-up album of the century, and they aren’t even aware of it.
“Six Swans,” a clever mixture of Drake’s Six God nickname and Sufjan’s “Seven Swans” album, is a compilation of remixes and covers tossing together two artists who may have otherwise never collaborated.
A Tumblr user by the name Riveyoncé Cuoknowles collaged varying mash-ups of Drake and Sufjan Stevens tracks from across the Internet to form a beautiful and vivacious album.
Tracks on the album include mash-up titles like “Death Over Dignity,” “GRGFR (Get Real Get F—in’ Right),” and my personal favorite “Go! Toronto! Go! Yeah!” which is really just an acoustic fan cover of Stevens’ hit “Chicago” with Drake lyrics.
Folk and rap fit together surprisingly better than you might have thought.
While Stevens’ iconic strings and electronic orchestrations strike up the back track, Drake throws down bars to tie together the ensemble. Stevens’ delicate vocals form the hooks between verses.
Although the two artists share no common ground musically, their first canonical crossover happened last year when Stevens covered Drake’s “Hotline Bling” at a string of shows.
Now, that spark has avalanched into something far more elaborate.
However, this isn’t Stevens’ first foray in bringing his music together with rap. Along with rapper Serengeti and music producer Son Lux, he released a hip-hop album under the name Sisyphus.
Along with the album, the Tumblr user also wrote a 20-part fan fiction series featuring the two artists’ budding romance and has also made a fan video of Stevens and Drake getting married at the Canadian border with Beyoncé and Rihanna in attendance.
It’s a match made in the swirling abyss that is the music industry, and they both deserve happiness.
The several tracks that close out the album aren’t nearly as catchy, only consisting of lo-fi covers and one really long personal story recorded at one of Stevens’ shows. But they capture the diverse crowd of contributors to this tape.
You can stream the album for free on bandcamp.com.