Pitchfork has named “Fucking Fans” as the best Drake song of the 2020s, putting a sharp spotlight on a track from Certified Lover Boy and arguing that it rises above the rest of his decade output. The piece calls the album a “better-than-you-remember” project and says the song captures the cold, lonely mansion music that has defined Drake’s 2020s.
The track is described as running on the spare OVO braintrust—40, Party, Noel—beat and a glacial tempo, with Drake trying to say sorry for having a kid behind her back while also missing spooning with her. At one point, the article says he shifts to a six-digit lock screen so more of his secrets do not get out, a detail that underscores how guarded the song feels even as it reaches for regret.
That is what makes the choice matter now: the song is being framed not just as a good cut on Certified Lover Boy, but as an exception inside a 2020s run that the writer sees as largely defined by isolation and distance. The piece contrasts the track with Drake’s earlier Heartbreak Drake era and says last year’s $ome $exy $ongs 4 U was off-putting, which helps explain why “Fucking Fans” lands as a rarer, more convincing version of the familiar formula.
The comparison also reaches beyond Drake’s catalog. The writer invokes Smoke E. Digglera’s “On tha Downside” to describe part of the song’s feel, placing it in a lineage of wounded, slow-burning confessions rather than victory laps. The article’s view is blunt: among Drake’s 2020s material, this is the exception that still feels alive, and it is the one that best captures the mood of his decade so far.
Pitchfork does leave room for the larger tension around Drake’s current output. If the 2020s have been shaped by cold mansion music and guarded introspection, then the appeal of “Fucking Fans” is that it sounds almost vulnerable enough to cut through the polish. The result is a ranking that does more than crown one song; it argues that the most durable Drake in this era is still the one who sounds most exposed.
