Back in 2008, Swedish indie-pop artist Lykke Li received a request to sample her song, “Little Bit.”
“It was just an email, like, ‘Hey, can this guy use this song?’” Li recalls.
That guy was Drake and the song’s haunting, minimalist beat ended up on his 2009 mixtape So Far Gone, helping to launch the rapper into the rarefied club of global superstars.
Now, nearly 20 years later, Li appears on another Drake album — this time in the form of an interpolation of her signature song, 2011’s “I Follow Rivers,” which the rapper uses on the Iceman track “Janice STFU.” It’s a blistering indictment of internet gossip and shit-talkers, where Drake slams his rivals and the constant chatter and criticism around his career.
When she gets on the phone with Rolling Stone, Li had recently returned from “blasting it in the car with my bestie,” she says. “I think it’s potent. It has that raw, revenge, hip-hop energy.”
Similar to the last time Drake crossed her path, Li was informed by way of a text, from co-writer Rick Nowels (Peter Björn and John’s Björn Yttling, Li’s longtime collaborator, is also credited). “I thought [Rick] was trolling me,” she says. “Then I got the email.”
To say “I Follow Rivers” has had a long tail would be a bit of a mixed metaphor. The song, a standout from her album Wounded Rhymes, got an extra boost through a popular dance remix by Belgian DJ/producer The Magician. Li recognizes the resonance of what has become her biggest hit. “I mean, it is the most mysterious, incredible gift of my career because it’s had so many lives and different iterations,” she says.
Indeed, covers, remixes and mash-ups of “I Follow Rivers” abound on YouTube and social media, a phenomenon Li likens to “a scripture or a verse or a hymn.” She elaborates: “It goes back to like my feeling about what music is — that we are 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. And as a songwriter, that’s the greatest wish. I’m so grateful and blessed to have one of those songs that doesn’t even belong to me. It has a life of its own.”
Offering a proof of concept, Li shares that her two-year-old son recently sang to her, “Deep sea, baby,” a line from its hooky chorus. “I’d never played him the song,” she marvels. “Apparently there was a nanny in the park that was playing the song. So he found out about ‘I Follow Rivers’ through someone else.”
Last month, Li delivered that same line to tens of thousands at Coachella when she played the Outdoor Theatre stage in a late-afternoon slot.
As for Drake’s mammoth trilogy roll-out, Li confesses her screen time is limited, and she hasn’t yet absorbed all three albums. (Iceman, Habibti, and Maid of Honour dropped at midnight on May 15). But she has been thinking about the rapper, whom she doesn’t know personally. “Strangely enough, I’ve been really craving Drake and have actually been listening to ‘Marvin’s Room’ lately,” she says. “The old Drake was such an era. When you’d walk into a room and they’d play ‘Hotline Bling.’ … So yeah, I was missing him.”
Back in May, Li released The Afterparty, her first album in four years. The nine-track LP is a much rawer offering in her discography, exploring themes of spirituality, ego death, and the human psyche. It’s rumored to be her last album, though Li has only confirmed she’s interested in exploring art outside of music. ” I don’t want to spend my life inside the algorithm. How you spend your day is how you spend your life. So what do you want to do? I want to live on a remote island and meditate. I want to sail away,” she told Nylon recently.
