The Number Ones: Drake’s “Jimmy Cooks” (Feat. 21 Savage)

In The Number Ones, I'm reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart's beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. The column is now biweekly, alternating with The Alternative Number Ones on Mondays. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.

I remember exactly where I was when Drake tried something. It was June 2022, and I was driving back home after a screamo show. I drove to that show through an absolute fucking squall of a thunderstorm, the type of thing where you find yourself dodging fallen branches on the highway. I probably should've just given up when the weather got bad —pulled over, parked under an overpass, and turned my car right back around when it let up. But no, I had to get to Richmond to see Infant Island, Gillian Carter, Amygdala, and Listless play in the back room of a bike shop. I was glad I went, too. That show fucking ruled.

I live in Charlottesville, and the trip back from Richmond isn't that long, but it feels long, especially when it's late at night and you've got work in the morning. I got into my car right around midnight, and when the clock ticked over to the next day, I hit play on the new album that Drake had just announced a few hours earlier, figuring that I might have to review it the next day. Between the initial drive feeling like a near-death experience and the life-affirming nature of the show itself, I was really primed to like a new Drake album, despite being massively underwhelmed by the few that preceded it. When I hit play and heard a sleek, thumping dance beat come out of my speakers, I got kind of excited. Drake was doing something new! This felt like an event!

Drake had been playing around with club music for years before the sudden release of Honestly, Nevermind, the full-on dance album that was clearly intended to soundtrack all kinds of get-togethers during the post-COVID summer when people were finally gathering in large numbers again. Some of Drake's best tracks had been the ones where he engaged with dance music on one level or another: "Take Care," "Passionfruit," "One Dance." Drake had been in a holding pattern for years before the Honestly, Nevermind moment, going back to the same musical modes and rotely airing his grievances. Maybe, I thought, he'd finally forced himself out of his stasis and taken an artistic left turn. After a song and a half, I realized that this hadn't really happened. He'd just tweaked his formula into something even more boring.

If you'd sat next to me on that drive back to Charlottesville, you probably could've watched my enthusiasm flag in real time. On the one hand, Honestly, Nevermind was a real-deal creative swing, an attempt at a full-album statement that pivoted sharply away from the music that we'd come to expect from Drake and his peers. Drake worked with some of the best collaborators he could find, like the South African amapiano producer Black Coffee and the Maryland-via-Guatemala dance sensation Gordo. With those guys, he knowingly called back to the lush, sleek deep house of past generations, reclaiming that stuff as Black music after so many EDM festivals had robbed the music of its context. His approach to that sound was low-energy greyscale. It was numb and surly and staid and hookless. It got me thinking the man had simply forgotten how to make music that sounds alive.

The funniest thing about Honestly, Nevermind is that another of Drake's A-list pop-megastar peers actually did make the album that he must've thought he was making. Someone else locked in on the glorious history of Black dance music and built a vast, sweeping blockbuster opus to honor it. The album didn't do Thriller numbers or anything, but it was one of the year's most critically acclaimed records, and we'll talk about it in a future column. Drake, meanwhile, thought he was actually doing something by mewling his usual romantic complaints over four-four kickdrums. He adjusted his style musically, but his outlook never changed. Instead, he devoted yet another album to being condescendingly annoyed with the women he's supposedly fucking. It wasn't even remotely compelling anymore. Worse yet, he basically made the whole record without rapping, the one thing that he's really good at doing when he's fully locked in.

So it was pretty funny when the biggest hit on Honestly, Nevermind, to the extent that the album had any big hits at all, was the one where Drake just kept doing what he'd previously been doing. He got together with 21 Savage, one of his many Atlanta buddies, and made a straightforward track where both of them flexed and preened and talked about killing you. The song was the red herring at the end of the album, the one that Drake seemingly threw on just to hedge his bets, and it easily overshadowed all the halfassed experiments that he attempted on the rest of the record. The Drake reset did not work. Instead, the only thing that worked was Drake doing Drake things.

"Jimmy Cooks" came on my car speakers when I was finally reaching the end of my drive back from Richmond, pulling off the highway in a bored and spaced-out haze after nearly an hour of hearing Drake in sleepwalking house-diva mode. With the last song, though, Drake finally got me. People love to hate on Drake, and I am frequently one of those people. But when Drake finds his zone, his music works. On "Jimmy Cooks," he found his zone. It's not a great song or anything, but when we're talking about late-period Drake, it's one of the moments where I think he figured his shit out. He'd tried something, and he'd fucked it all up. When he got back to not trying, he was so much better.

A couple of years after "Jimmy Cooks," another rapper of some repute had some disparaging things to say about Drake's habit of making music with people from Atlanta. This column will get to that whole story eventually, but the claim was always true. Atlanta became the center of the rap universe just before Drake took over as a dominant star, and this particular adversary had an easy time filling a verse with the names of Drake's ATLien collaborators. Drake's Atlanta collaborators mostly don't bring the best out of him, but 21 Savage usually does. At this point, there's a full catalog of Drake/Savage collabs, including but not limited to a full studio album. But "Jimmy Cooks" was only the fourth Drake/Savage track, or the fifth if we're counting the Drake-enhanced version of the Savage song "Issa" that was leaked but never released.

Savage was brand new on the scene when he showed up on Drake's song "Sneakin'" in 2016. Savage broke out of the Atlanta underground when he teamed up with future Number Ones artist Metro Boomin to release the Savage Mode EP in 2016, and he showed up on his first Drake song just a few weeks later. ("Sneakin'" peaked at #28.) That song showed that Drake's bluster got a little more punch when paired with Savage's spooky half-whispered threats. At that point, Savage's rap persona was so luridly, exaggeratedly violent that he didn't really seem like a mainstream star. Soon enough, though, Savage appeared on Post Malone's smash "Rockstar" and racked up more hits, both as a guest and lead artist. It was only a matter of time before Drake and Savage crossed paths again.

In 2020, 21 Savage and Metro Boomin released Savage Mode II, their second collaborative record, and they got Morgan Freeman to host it, giving gravitas-heavy monologues on the nature of snitching like he was DJ Drama. Drake appeared on "Mr. Right Now," which amounted to that album's version of a for-the-ladies track, and he talked about how he dated future Number Ones artist SZA when she was a teenager. The song, which was pretty fun, reached #10. (It's a 6.) A year later, Savage appeared on "Knife Talk," from Drake's otherwise hapless Certified Lover Boy album. The song was built on some eerie pianos and a Project Pat verse taken from an A$AP Rocky record. Drake and Savage had fun on that spooky beat, each doing their own versions of Pat's bloodthirsty flicker-flow, and the track peaked at #4. (It's a 9.)

I wonder if Drake agreed with me that "Knife Talk" was the one Certified Lover Boy song that really worked, since "Jimmy Cooks" definitely felt like Drake's attempt to replicate that magic. Drake, I think, understood that Savage's style is a newer take on the gory, ghoulish Memphis underground rap of the '90s. Drake has family connections in Memphis — it's where his father is from — and that '90s Three 6 Mafia stuff proved to be hugely influential on later rap generations in ways that Drake could grasp. I think that's why Drake and Savage invoked Memphis great Project Pat's voice on "Knife Talk," and I think it's also why "Jimmy Cooks" is built on a sample of fellow Memphis underground legend Playa Fly's 1995 track "Just Awaken Shaken."

"Jimmy Cooks" can't match the swirling, psychedelic menace of a song like "Just Awaken Shaken," and it doesn't even really try. Instead, the Drake track uses the "Just Awaken Shaken" chant as an intro, then switches directly into lush opulence. That lush opulence also comes from a sample — a sped-up slice of "You Were Gone," an obscure 1976 late-career slow jam from Brook Benton, the veteran R&B singer who died in 1988. (Brook Benton's highest-charting single, his 1961 take on the blues traditional "The Boll Weevil Song," peaked at #2. It's a 7.)

Playa Fly got a writing credit on "Jimmy Brooks," as did the four writers of "You Were Gone": Al Goodman and Harry Ray, from the R&B group Ray, Goodman & Brown, along with arranger Sammy Lowe and sideman/guitarist Walter Morris. (Back when they were known as the Moments, Ray, Goodman & Brown reached #3 with 1970's "Love On A Two-Way Street," which later got sampled on Jay-Z's "Empire State Of Mind." It's an 8.) That's a big part of the reason that "Jimmy Cooks" has 12 credited writers. Another reason is that "Jimmy Cooks," like so many Drake tracks, has a ton of producers.

The main "Jimmy Cooks" producer that I feel compelled to mention is the Tay Keith. Drake ushered Tay Keith out of the Memphis underground when they started working together in 2018, and we already covered Tay Keith's rise on the column on Drake and Travis Scott's "Sicko Mode." In the time since I published that column, we have lost Tay Keith. He died of an apparent accidental drug overdose this past June at the way-too-young age of 29. He was one of the great rap producers of his era. I miss him already.

The "Jimmy Cooks" production credits also include CuBeatz, the duo of twin German brothers who also worked on "Sicko Mode," as well as Anderson "Vinylz" Hernandez, a veteran New York producer who works with CuBeatz all the time. Russian-born producer Teslenko Alexandrovich, known professionally as Tizzle, also had something to do with "Jimmy Cooks." Also, the New Jersey club producer Dougie F is credited as a co-writer but not a producer on "Jimmy Cooks." He's got writing credits on a bunch of Drake tracks, and I guess he had something to do with Jack Harlow's "First Class," too. Trying to track down all the songwriting credits for recent columns can make me feel like I'm going crazy with a corkboard and some color-coded string connectors.

Anyway, "Jimmy Cooks." Before he got famous as a rapper, Drake played a character named Jimmy Brooks on Degrassi: The Next Generation. He was a high school basketball star who got paralyzed by a gunshot wound, and Drake spent much of his Degrassi tenure in a wheelchair. When Drake first got famous as a rapper, Jimmy Brooks memes followed him everywhere. So the "Jimmy Cooks" title is Drake riffing on his teen-soap-opera past, acknowledging it even as he talks his shit. It's the same thing that Drake did when he reunited the Degrassi cast in his "I'm Upset" video in 2018. (That's a fun video. Too bad about the song. "I'm Upset" peaked at #7. It's a 5.)

Degrassi doesn't figure into "Jimmy Cooks," though. Instead, the song is mostly Drake discussing his own magnificence. The shooting guard you're dating can only get you seats in the middle row, but Drake can get you courtside. Hoes say Drake's sauve, but he can't get RICO'd. He offers tributes to two rap figures, young Young Thug protege Lil Keed and veteran mixtape DJ Kay Slay, who both died in the months just before "Jimmy Cooks" came out, suggesting that Drake dropped the track almost immediately after recording it.

Drake's most memorable line on "Jimmy Cooks" is also his most toxic: "I can tell her head good before I even know/ Bitch, don't tell me that you model if you ain't been in Vogue." That part was too obnoxious even for Drake. A few months later, on another 21 Savage collab called "Spin Bout U," Drake jokingly retracted that statement: "I know what I said ‘bout bein’ in Vogue/ But just like that R&B group from the ’90s, girl, one call, I’ll get you in Vogue." Clunky wordplay, but at least he realized how shitty the first line was. ("Spin Bout U" peaked at #5. It's a 6.)

I think that Vogue line is fucking stupid in the way that so many Drake lines are fucking stupid. Drake says stupid shit. That's part of the experience. Even though I bump on that line, though, I like the way that Drake locks in on "Jimmy Cooks." Especially after hearing a full album of him halfheartedly singing over house beats, "Jimmy Cooks" finds him playful but self-assured, like he's giving himself an encouraging speech in the mirror. Then 21 Savage shows up, and the track really gets good.

"Jimmy Cooks" came out when 21 Savage was on a run. When Savage first blew up, he had a ton of presence, but he wasn't necessarily a great rapper. That changed. As Savage transformed into a durable mainstream star, he grew sharper and funnier on the mic. He made hits without Drake, too. In 2020, Savage's Metro Boomin collab "Runnin'" reached #9. (It's an 8.) A year later, Savage appeared on J. Cole's "My Life," and that song made it as high as #2. (It's a 7. Cole will eventually appear in this column.) Just a week before "Jimmy Cooks" came out, 21 Savage had a great verse on former Number Ones artist Pharrell's single "Cash In Cash Out." I love that song, and I think Savage's verse is even better than the very strong Tyler, The Creator verse on the same track. ("Cash In Cash Out" peaked at #26. Tyler's highest-charting single, the 2024 Daniel Caesar collab "St. Chroma," peaked at #7. It's an 8.)

On "Jimmy Cooks," 21 Savage gets a superstar entrance. The music drops away, and the aforementioned J. Cole makes a quick cameo, telling you to get the fuck out of his face. Then a different beat comes in, faster and more urgent, and Drake repeats his previous line. (That beat-switch is almost certainly one of the reasons that the song has so many producers.) Drake introduces his guest with a flourish, getting Savage to call you, the listener, a "pussy," stretching out the second syllable and making it sound like even more of a schoolyard taunt. At that point, the way that 21 Savage pronounced the word "pussy" was basically a catchphrase, like the way Too Short says "bitch." Look, that's rap music. If you can find a fun and memorable way to deliver a demeaning cussword, you can write your name in the history books.

21 Savage gets off some great punchlines on "Jimmy Cooks." "Smack the backside of his head like he Bart." "All that workin' out, that n***a must think he a wrestler/ But this ain't UFC, this chopper came with a compressor." "The Glock 4-5 came with a switch/ If I was Will Smith, I woulda slapped him with the stick." That last line is obviously the one that landed the hardest. A couple of months before "Jimmy Cooks" came out, Will Smith, someone who has been in this column a few times, slapped Chris Rock in the face onstage during the Oscars telecast. With that line, Savage advanced the seldom-heard argument that Smith didn't hurt Rock enough — that he should've just gone up on that stage and pistol-whipped him in front of the world. The slap was a crazy moment, but just imagine how much crazier it could've been.

Look, I love this bullshit. I want music to make me feel something, to hit on a visceral level. When 21 Savage says some absurd, over-the-top violent shit, that does the trick for me. It doesn't have to be real. Matter of fact, I prefer it when it's not real. I like it when it's so far outside the realm of realness that it becomes a bleak joke. That's my shit. That kind of good-natured devil-may-care bloodlust used to be pretty common in mainstream rap music, but I don't hear anyone, 21 Savage included, coming up with that kind of face-scrunch line today. Savage's "Jimmy Cooks" verse has at least three face-scrunch moments. That's enough for me to declare it a good song.

"Jimmy Cooks" doesn't even have a proper chorus. There's nothing to get stuck in your head. It's not a moment-defining rap hit, and I can't say that it had the kind of societal impact that a hit song is supposed to have. I honestly don't care, though. "Jimmy Cooks" is two sleek and menacing tracks held together by a dramatic beat-switch moment, and it's two guys talking charismatic and confident shit, floating over those beats. It all works for me. I'm not going to sit here and try to argue that "Jimmy Cooks" deserves classic status, but it's got a lot of the stuff that I want in a big rap hit. This column has recently covered a lot of songs that debuted at #1 and then vanished from the charts. "Jimmy Cooks" is absolutely one of those disappearing hits, and it was gone from the top 10 one month after it came out. Still, I like the song better than most that fit into that category. It feels more like a real song to me.

Anyway, "Jimmy Cooks" wasn't supposed to be a single. Drake really wanted to make the Honestly, Nevermind club-music thing happen. In the 10-minute video for track "Falling Back," Drake staged a wedding with 23 different Instagram models, which was probably supposed to be self-aware comedy but which instead came off as the dumbest kind of megalomaniacal bullshit. In any case, "Falling Back," an extremely forgettable track, debuted at #7 and then vanished. (It's a 4.) Other than "Jimmy Cooks," the only Honestly, Nevermind track where Drake even tried to rap was the relatively energetic "Sticky," which came in at #6. (It's a 6.) None of the other album tracks made it into the top 10. "Jimmy Cooks" is the best song on the album, and it's the only one that people really wanted to hear. I don't think that's a coincidence.

You might've noticed that songs from Honestly, Nevermind did not dominate the Hot 100 in the week after the album came out. Honestly, Nevermind still had enough juice to debut at #1 on the album chart, but it was a relative flop by Drake standards — 204,000 in first-week sales equivalents, or about a third of what Certified Lover Boy did less than a year earlier. Honestly, Nevermind went platinum once, while the "Jimmy Cooks" single is now triple platinum. Both Drake and 21 Savage have tons of songs that are way bigger than that. In October 2022, when the song was already halfway forgotten, Drake and Savage finally made a bare-bones single-shot "Jimmy Cooks" video that only included about half of the song. That music video doubled as an announcement: Drake and 21 Savage had made an entire collaborative album, and it would come out in a few days.

Drake and Savage pushed back the release of their album Her Loss by a week because Drake's immunocompromised friend and producer Noah "40" Shebib got COVID, but the record still came out in the first week of November, and it did a lot better than Honestly, Nevermind. I'd like to think that's because it is a lot better than Honestly, Nevermind. Her Loss got a whole lot more spirit and swagger than basically any other late-period Drake album, admittedly a low bar. It's much more of a Drake record than a Savage one, but Savage's presence still adds edge.

A week after the record's release, eight Her Loss tracks made it into the top 10. But an even bigger superstar had a dominant hit out that week, so none of the Her Loss songs reached #1. Drake seemed annoyed about this. ("Rich Flex," Drake and Savage's highest-charting Her Loss single, peaked at #2. It's an 8. That song is quintuple platinum now, thanks in part to a viral TikTok moment. It's fair to say that "Rich Flex" is a bigger real-deal hit than "Jimmy Cooks," even though only the latter reached #1.)

Drake and 21 Savage have collaborated a bunch of times since Her Loss, but those more recent team-ups don't feel as special. Earlier this year, for instance, Savage chanted the hook on "B's On The Table," a Drake song that reached #15. Savage hasn't been back to #1 since "Jimmy Cooks," but he has put more hits up on the board. Later in 2022, for instance, he appeared on Metro Boomin and the Weeknd's "I Don't Wanna Know" remake "Creepin'," which peaked at #3. (Mario Winans' original "I Don't Wanna Know" peaked at #2 in 2004. That song and "Creepin'" are both 8s.) In 2024, Savage released his American Dream album and made it to #5 with the luxuriously macabre "Redrum." (That's another 8.)

Right now, however, 21 Savage seems to be in a bit of a dry spell. At the very end of last year, he released What Happened To The Streets?, a perfectly solid big-ticket rap record that came and went quietly. Its lead single, the Drake collab "Mr. Recoup," stalled out at #51. Straight-up street-rap isn't big on the charts at the moment, and Savage is nothing if not straight-up street rap. He could always return with another big song, but as of right now, this is the last time we'll see Savage in this column. But Drake will be back. Drake always comes back.

GRADE: 7/10

BONUS BEATS: On Super Bowl weekend in 2018, ICE agents arrested and detained 21 Savage, and he faced possible deportation. Before his arrest, people didn't even know that Savage was born in the UK. He'd been living in Atlanta since the age of seven. Savage couldn't leave the US for years while he fought the charges against him. In 2023, however, Savage finally got his green card. Drake made the announcement on his 2023 song "8AM In Charlotte": "Savage got a green card straight out of the consulate/ Where I go, you go, brother, we Yugoslavian." Here's the video for that song, which peaked at #17:

And here's video of Drake making a surprise appearance with Savage at a Toronto show in 2024, when plenty of Drake's other collaborators were turning on him:

The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal The History Of Pop Music is out now via Hachette Books. I'm bookin' up ambition on a kitchen stove. Wait. No, that doesn't work. "Bookin' up ambition" is not a thing. Um. Hmm. "Tommy Books." There we go. It's not great, but it'll have to do. Buy the book so I can throw a party for my day ones.