Together, Drake, Don Toliver, and Ella Langley are a covetous power throuple. Between Langley’s chart-conquering country ballad “Choosin’ Texas,” Toliver’s world-conquering album Octane, and Drake’s triple-album buffet ICEMAN (which defied the laws of public shame to rebirth Drizzy as the goofy hitmaker we first swooned over), 2026 was their regnal year. The sharpest move on Drake’s comeback ascent might just be joining their star power on “Solar Eclipse,” a slurry, blacked-out remix of “Choosin’ Texas.” Even more shrewd, he released the song as an addendum to the least remarkable ICEMAN album, HABIBTI, a lukewarm suite of sulky R&B that mostly sounds like the plagiarizing little brother of 2011’s Take Care.
Forfeiting the twang of the source material, “Solar Eclipse” staggers across the faded interiors of psychotoxic trap-soul. The original blonde temptress of the Stagecoach Ballroom in Fort Worth melts into the backdrop of Houston’s after-hours lounges, where there’s sweat on the strip pole at 5 a.m. and scattered Pérignon bottles abandoned for the next midnight delight. Drake relies on the subtle emotion of his singing voice to transport us to these mood palaces. He sings, “A cowgirl ends up riding off on me” in the opening chorus, flipping “A cowboy always finds a way to leave” into a sex scene, while Langley’s line “I can tell by the way he’s two-steppin’ ’round the room” becomes, well, another dick reference. Drake ditches the tear-salted Jack and instead sloshes through enough “yak” (cognac) to expedite his feral impulses.
In his verse, a smooth-talking Don Toliver leaps at the opportunity to shout out his home county of Fort Bend, Texas. While Toliver shares Drake’s loverboy swagger, his rizz is almost strictly reserved for escapades occurring on the way to, from, and at the club, with the bass boosted and a cup of lean at his side. When his crackled Auto-Tune rap-singing hits “Solar Eclipse,” it’s a rock-star entrance layered on top of electric guitar stabs. As he surveys the aftermath of his last sexual conquest, he nods to some familiar comforts: “Pre-rolls in my house, it’s guns in my couch/Don’t touch unless you wanna find out.” It’s a classic Don Toliver blend: hinting at the potential for tenderness, then immediately cutting it with the everlasting promise of danger. The formula has enraptured heartachey women still sporting a devilish twinkle in their eyes at clubs the world over, and now it makes for a heavensent counterweight to Drake’s well-worn sensitivity. This New Yorker has no tethers to Texas, Tennessee, or Toronto, but the next time I’m in a car gliding down a dark highway, this post-summer anthem gets the first play.
