Drake just put a date on it, with a catch. The songs he debuted in his FOMO short film are coming to streaming services this Thursday (Oct. 1), but he made it clear during a Kick livestream on Monday (Sept. 28) that not every track is making the trip.
“All the songs you guys have been asking for… well, not all of them, but enough of them, are coming on Thursday,” he told viewers.
That quick correction carries a lot of weight, because he never said which songs are in and which ones stay locked inside the film.
FOMO premiered on YouTube on Sept. 15 and runs about an hour. Packed into that runtime are around a dozen new or reimagined songs, which is basically a surprise project hiding inside a movie.
The lineup has plenty worth chasing. There’s “Cold Shoulder,” a remix of “Choosin Texas” with Don Toliver, “Be Free” with Gordo and “Quebec,” among others.
One of those songs has already found a home. “Miss My Dawg,” his collaboration with Yeat, has since landed on Yeat’s Cocoon EP, so anyone who wanted that one on repeat didn’t have to wait for Drake’s rollout.
That leaves the rest of the tracklist as a guessing game until Thursday. Drake gave fans a firm date and an open question in the same breath, which is a very Drake way to keep people talking.
The film wasn’t only about new music, either. FOMO also gave fresh visuals to songs from Maid of Honour and Habibti, the two albums that dropped alongside his Iceman album back in May.
That makes FOMO feel less like a standalone release and more like an extension of a busy year. Drake put out three albums at once in the spring, and he spent the summer building a film around both old and new material.
Before the premiere, he framed the project in personal, almost motivational terms. “This is self funded surrealism. A story about making the absolute most of it all in one summer,” he said, adding, “Credit to nobody but the members Here’s some life advice before you watch Nobody is coming to save you.”
He kept going with a message that read more like a pep talk than a promo post. You must use each day to decipher who you love and trust and march forward with them I hope this serves as motivation to make that call, take that trip, drop that song, open that shop, see your parents, leave that relationship or stay in it forever, spend the bread, get some more etc,” he wrote.
There’s a real tension between those two sides of the rollout. On one hand, FOMO is pitched as a self funded art piece meant to be watched from start to finish, and on the other, fans clearly want the songs on their own terms, in their playlists and in their cars.
Drake seems to be splitting the difference. By releasing “enough” of the songs rather than all of them, he gives listeners something to stream while keeping part of FOMO tied to the film itself.
Which tracks make the final cut, and whether the missing ones ever surface, is something only Thursday will answer.
