Would you fuck me for free? goes the Akinyele line that opens up Drake and DJ Khaled’s 2016 track, For Free. The popular song hinges on one essential question: Drake wonders if he is so good at sex (is this sex so good) that he should be paid for it (that I shouldn’t have to fuck for free?). The verse, repeated four times throughout the 3-minute song as part of the chorus, pares down the complex relationship between capitalism and sex to a cost-value comparison, proffering an occasion to ask questions like, who is sex free for, anyway? Or, why would I want to fuck you for two-hundred twenty-three thousand hours?
To start, the idea of anything being “free” is generally met with skepticism. Free breakfast at hotels, for example, comes at the cost of a night’s stay. Buy one get one free also requires a fiscal investment. The implication that, at base, sex is free already calls for our inquiry into what, exactly, we mean when we wield the word free. Under capitalism, sex requires investments at a variety of points before and after the actual “sex act” of penetration in its varied form that I argue could / should be encompassed by and accounted for in a discussion of the cost-value of sex. For one, there is birth control, most often burdening women in heterosexual sex, though sometimes nice dudes will splurge on some ribbed Magnums or whatever (I assume Drake buys some fancy condoms but I would really love some intel on this please reach out). Beyond hetero-sex, there’s the cost of preventing STDs, which may fall to any and all genders but implies a cost irrespective. There’s also the cost of desirability. Not necessary but often central to mutually consensual sex is looking good enough to be desired. The cost of desirability can be read in a few ways: how well does one fit into normative standards of beauty? And, how well can one afford to perform normative standards of beauty? Otherwise explained as: Lingerie is hot! It’s also expensive. Then, there’s what comes after — traveling to and from the place, possibly the renting of a space, etc.. This is not even to mention that Drake makes the (incredulous?) claim that he’s “got girls that'll cancel a flight back home / Stay another day for it” (where it refers to sex with him). Like, I don’t know when was the last time Drake cancelled a flight but I just spent 3 hours agonizing over a $50 difference in flights to Florida to visit my grandma. The differential costs may impact us differently, but both qualify as costs nonetheless. In short, capitalism problematizes the idea of free sex the way it problematizes the idea of free anything: everything is underpinned by a cost.
Also of note is that transition throughout the song of how the free sex is framed. At the opening of the song, the sex is a question of would (potentiality). It may or may not have happened, but what Drake / Akinyele want(s) to know is if “you” would fuck him / them for free. If the sex did happen, the questions implies a cost. If it did not happen, it implies the possibility of a cost and the question of subverting that cost. This would transitions to a should (obligatory), also contained in a question, albeit a different one. This question is a retrospective, as well as an opportunity to invite Drake’s sexual partner to imagine with him: I always wonder if you ask yourself / Is it just me? / he asks, Or is this sex so good I shouldn’t have to fuck for free? While the rest of the song implies that Drake asks to suggest that he is really good at sex, there are some lines that also suggest his partner is really good at sex, and that they might be engaging this question mutually. Critically, though, Drake is asking if s/he shouldn’t have to fuck for free. Contained within this “have to” is its dialectic: at present, Drake does have to fuck for free. Drake is gesturing to a new horizon of possibility, where sex with him supersedes its value in pleasure-capital (or, just pleasure, immeasurable) to cross over into the realm of fiscal-capital. Of course, we have already alluded to the idea that sex is always in the realm of fiscal capital, even when it isn’t readily obvious in the form of overt monetary transactions between sexual partners. What’s different about this excursion is the explicit suggestion that maybe there should be a monetary transaction, wherein sex becomes a service, in service to another. The transition from would to should and, importantly, should not have to indicates that maybe, to Drake or to Drake’s partner, the sex already is a service.
As much of a bummer as it is to view sex through this lens of cost-value, this song neatly encompasses the growing impulse to monetize whatever we are good at, an impulse exacerbated by the precarity of our socio-economic present and the popularity of social media as a site for personal brand building and marketing of the self vis a vis the self’s hobbies and production. Sex work and the commodification of intimacy are neither new nor especially provocative. But if we’re going to ask questions like whether we should “have to” fuck for free, we might also want to think critically about who pays when pleasure is articulated as service, when intimacy as transaction and hobby as business inform, consciously or subconsciously, popular discourse. Also, yeah, this song is from 2016 and I’m just really late to everything, ok.