On Friday, Calvin Harris dropped “Slide,” his early “Song of Summer” contender featuring Frank Ocean and Migos.
Earlier today, Ocean jumped on to the song’s “Genius” page to annotate a lyric to the track. On the page, Ocean annotated the intro verse, which says, “I might / Empty my bank account / And buy that boy with a pipe / Buy that boy with a pipe.” The line, according to Ocean, is in reference to the 1905 Pablo Picasso painting, Boy with a Pipe. “A picasso painting that sold for so much money,” Ocean wrote on the page.
Videos by VICE
Picasso is later referenced in the third verse of the song with the line, “Walk in my mansion, twenty thousand painting, Picasso.”
In 2004, the painting famously sold for $104 million at Sotheby’s auction in New York. The painting broke the record for the most amount paid for a painting at the time.
After the sale, the Washington Post published an article on its high value. In the article, Picasso expert Pepe Karmel said, “This just shows how much the marketplace is divorced from the true values of art.” It’s a familiar refrain in much of Ocean’s statements about his work and the music industry as a whole.
Listen to “Slide” below.
