Millennials everywhere have a new reason to worship at Aubrey “Drake” Graham’s feet after his latest announcement. On April 5, Toronto’s deified rapper officially released two new singles from his upcoming album Views From the Six. On that fateful Tuesday, our tween selves had a sudden wave of nostalgia upon realising that Drake’s latest single cover designs were created on Picnik, the original selfie-editing program. After the program was shut down years ago, many were heartbroken—until now. While cadences of other fan-favourites FotoFlexer and Piczo can be seen on the covers for Pop Style and One Dance, Drake spoke with the former CEO of Picnik to revive the popular editing website to create the pictures you will see every time you open iTunes.
The special edition OVO x Picnik collaboration is one of many outreaches Drake has fostered in the past few years. From pioneering his own brand of whiskey to repping the Toronto Raptors basketball team, Drake has cultivated a multifaceted public persona—but there has been a missing flourish in his product portfolio, a missing link until now. The OVO x Picnik project will be ground-breaking for Drake’s industry. This manoeuvre shows that Drake is not too godly for us, and he still can represent himself through a generic cursive font on a solid background.
When asked to comment on this new feat, Drake simply told The Strand that his inspiration to revive the software stemmed from the nostalgia he, and many others, have for the culturally effervescent year of 2006. “I wanted my latest single covers to remind you of those creative projects in middle school when you would get to throw together a flame track on GarageBand. There was always that one kid who knew Picnik in and out, you know? That kid who always knew how to make those cool little hearts to add to a picture? When you had that kid in your project group, you always ended up with this masterpiece of a cover for your work, and I wanted to have that aesthetic associated with my brand today.”
Drake and his team have always been up to date on trends in order to enhance the rapper’s brand, and this business move to incorporate the opulent Picnik program shows their drive to refine Drake’s image. With each of his new single covers, Drake displays today’s minimalistic tendencies through the use of vacant monochrome. It resonates with today’s throwback culture through the cover design’s confusing mixture of the gaudy font and lack of images.
Drake has always been an innovator, especially when taking something pre-existing and making it fit his own brand. While sitting in his courtside throne at the recent Raptors game, Drizzy felt excited about the prospects OVO x Picnik has for the future: “I’ve always felt like my vision has been bigger than the bigger picture. That’s why it was so important for me to bring Picnik back for this project, even though it faltered under the sheer pressure of a world looking to forget the fact it ever tried to edit pictures on there. It’s time for this website to rebrand, like I did when I got this beard.”