Lykke Li’s biggest hit gets a new chapter when Drake interpolates it on his “Iceman” album for “Janice S###.”
Lykke Li found out that her biggest song is getting a second life on Drake’s new album, and the Swedish artist is still processing the cosmic timing of it all. Nearly two decades after Drake sampled her track “Little Bit” on his 2009 mixtape “So Far Gone,” the rapper’s now using an interpolation of her 2011 signature song “I Follow Rivers” on the Iceman track “Janice S###.”
The song is a raw, aggressive indictment of internet gossip and the constant criticism that follows Drake’s career, and Li’s haunting vocals sit right in the middle of all that chaos.
When Li got the news, it came through a text from co-writer Rick Nowels, with Björn Yttling of Peter Björn and John also credited on the track.
“I thought he was trolling me,” Li recalls. Then the email arrived. She immediately blasted the track in her car with her best friend, and the reaction was immediate.
“I think it’s potent,” she says. “It has that raw, revenge, Hip-Hop energy.”
According to Rolling Stone, Li hadn’t yet absorbed all three albums from Drake’s massive trilogy rollout, but she’s been thinking about the rapper anyway.
What makes this moment even stranger is how “I Follow Rivers” has refused to die since its release. The song got a massive boost from Belgian DJ/producer The Magician’s remix, and it’s spawned countless covers, remixes, and mash-ups across YouTube and social media.
Li describes the phenomenon like watching scripture take on a life of its own.
“It goes back to my feeling about what music is,” she explains. “We’re all just downloading something that somehow exists in God or the universe. With certain songs, there’s an alchemy or symmetry to them that allows them to have their own life in the world.”
As a songwriter, that’s the ultimate blessing, and Li knows it.
“I’m so grateful and blessed to have one of those songs that doesn’t even belong to me anymore,” she says. “It has a life of its own.”
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