In terms of mid-00s gems we thought we’d lost forever (including Lady Sovereign), Uffie was at the top of the list until about a week ago, with the release of a new single called “Drugs.” Unlike the title suggests, however, the lyrical theme expresses to her current boyfriend (lover, what have you) that she can offer him far more than any drug or nightclub ambience. Considering that Uffie once provided the backing track to a bad MDMA reaction with “Robot Oeuf” in Pedro Almodóvar’s 2009 film, Broken Embraces, this seems like quite an evolution. Very much the same sort that Lily Allen underwent after years of hardened partying that began even in the most germinal phases of her music-oriented life in Ibiza.
It was, in truth, a large bulk of the subject matter that occupied her music on 2014’s Sheezus. Having been married to Sam Cooper (now since divorced and also rightly using him as a topic of conversation for the track “Family Man” on her upcoming album, No Shame), Allen was discovering the continued wonders of domesticity (for she had also given birth to two girls by Cooper–inspiration for another song on No Shame called “Three”). Thus, on such offerings as “As Long As I Got You” (unspoken subtitle: I won’t get wasted off my tits), Allen sung the praises of the effects of her relationship with such gushing as, “What I like the best is how you can keep me on my toes/Staying home with you is better than sticking things up my nose/I had that awful feeling that I needed help/My life had lost its meaning but you saved me from myself.”
Somewhat similarly, Uffie speaks from the perspective of the one trying to make her significant other see the light beyond the ones shining in the club with the earnest reminder, “The drugs don’t love you like I do don’t walk away from me tonight/The clubs won’t treat you like I do don’t walk away from us tonight.” But, of course, he always does, seeking something beyond the walls of his romantic connection that can probably only be described as strange pussy. In this way, touches of one of Allen’s earlier cuts, “Shame For You,” are vaguely present as well (the acerbic tone of “gettin’ too greedy and messin’ around” being the phrase most likenable to Uffie’s gentler, “Everything we ever wanted is in front of us/Begging you to try and see before you give it up/Why do you lie?/Don’t need your Gucci sorrys”).
Likewise, Uffie also seems to be entangled with a “man about town” type, just the sort that Allen once used to be attracted to (e.g. Ed Simons of the Chemical Brothers), lamenting, “You’re a legend but you never let the party end/It’s 3 p.m. and I’m wondering where you are again/Why do I try?” Well, as Allen once said, “It’s not fair, and I think you’re really mean”–except she was talking about inadequate dick, whereas, in this case, it appears Uffie can’t let go likely because it’s at least adequate.
“I just worry about you darling,” she says sweetly at one point, a far cry from the girl that haughtily asserted in 2010 with “Art of Uff,” “I am a diamond in the rough, I came to fuck shit up.” To the contrary, in the present, Uffie is only trying to fuck her never at home boyfriend. Yes, to be sure, she’s made an about-face with her Lily Allen-like later career route. Though it might be hard to top “Drugs” with any other singles she releases from her long anticipated sophomore album–if nothing else, purely for the name of it.
