Lykke Li’s ‘I Follow Rivers’ Appears on Drake’s ‘Iceman’

Drake’s new Icemant track “Janice STFU” lifts the central melody of Lykke Li’s 2011 single “I Follow Rivers,” marking the second time the rapper has reached into the Swedish singer’s catalog. The first, a sample of “Little Bit” on 2009’s So Far Gone, arrived before either artist’s full breakthrough. Now, nearly two decades later, the interpolation lands on a song aimed bluntly at internet gossip and professional rivals.

Li heard about the clearance through a text from co-writer Rick Nowels. “I thought he was trolling me,” she told Rolling Stone. “Then I got the email.” The track credits also include her longtime collaborator Björn Yttling of Peter Björn and John. Li describes hearing the finished recording with a friend: “It has that raw, revenge, hip-hop energy.”

The song’s path since its release on Wounded Rhymes has been unusually durable. A 2011 remix by Belgian DJ the Magician pushed it through clubs, and cover versions have multiplied on YouTube and social media. Li herself sees it as a piece of work that left her hands long ago. “It doesn’t even belong to me,” she said. “It has a life of its own.” She recounts her two-year-old son singing the chorus line “deep sea, baby” after hearing it from a nanny in the park, not from her. Last month she performed the song to a late-afternoon crowd at Coachella, the same line ringing across the Outdoor Theatre.

Drake’s trilogy rollout has pulled in an unexpected range of references, but the reappearance of Li’s writing feels less like a callback than another iteration of a song that keeps moving through the culture on its own terms.