Revisiting PartyNextDoor’s “Loyal” And The Perks Of Dating A Friend

Cynicism is a growing phenomenon in music. True love songs are hard to come by these days. Deriving its name from Rihanna’s “We Found Love,” Yellow Diamonds is a series of lyric breakdowns in which VIBE Senior Music Editor Austin Williams celebrates songs that sound like love found in a hopeless mainstream.

Today (May 26) marks three years since my girlfriend and I began dating. By the time you read this, we’ll be sunbaked on a beach or a balcony in San Juan, Puerto Rico. A song we bonded over early in our relationship is “Loyal” by PartyNextDoor and Drake. The record’s refrain, “You’re my best friend,” became an affirmation we’d randomly (and poorly) sing to each other during quiet moments at home. Coincidentally, the last time we were in San Juan, Valentine’s Day weekend 2020, Puerto Rico’s own Bad Bunny hopped on the song’s remix days before we touched down. This felt like the universe telling us we were exactly where we were supposed to be, paired with exactly whom we were meant to find.

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Friendship has been the foundation of my relationship with my girlfriend. Though 2019 was the year we became partners, we’ve been friends since we met in college in 2015. As our love has matured since graduation, there’s something ironic about the fact that a song by PartyNextDoor and Drake is what we adopted as the soundtrack to that maturation.

In one of the earliest editions of this column, I observed how loveless most mainstream R&B music has become since the late aughts. “Love songs died when singers started singing about things rappers rap about,” I argued. Few accomplices are guiltier of abetting this death than PartyNextDoor and Drake, as the former rose to prominence with the benefit of the lines blurred by the latter’s So Far Gone (2009). Both men make extremely emotional music, yet neither one of them makes particularly romantic music. A rare exception to this is “Loyal,” the OVO duo’s 2019 collaboration in which they sound as sentimental as they ever have about the sort of friendship they’ve both taken for granted in other records.

Though “Loyal” lacks the wining and dining most people expect when they imagine romantic music, there’s an almost childlike sweetness to the way it describes closeness, made more serious by what it presumes that closeness means in the grand scheme of things. Throughout the song, Party and Drake illustrate a friendship with a woman that evolves over time yet remains reliable. One might suggest this exemplifies the sort of “situationship songwriting” I’ve sometimes dismissed and other times praised in the past. Perhaps it does. But like in the latter case, “Loyal” treats the act of loving someone through fluid labels with the same amount of care that I’ve used to handle my own relationships.

What made turning my best friend into my girlfriend relatively easy was my recognition of how romantic certain friendships can be in the first place. Our days as life partners don’t look all that different from how we spent our time before we made that commitment. During the four years that we were friends, we shared secrets over dinner, met up every December to Christmas shop for our families, and looked after each other in ways that never mistook protection for ownership. Our 2020 Valentine’s Day trip to Puerto Rico wasn’t even the first time we left town together.

But, of course, getting on a plane with a partner feels more special than boarding a bus with a friend. Before my girl and I took that first flight to San Juan, I obviously didn’t understand a word Bad Bunny rapped in the verse he added to “Loyal.” And the English translation I just Googled ahead of our second trip to PR revealed a set of freewheeling lyrics that mean less than I hoped they would. But as I replay the original song during the ride to JFK, the soft, sincere ways PartyNextDoor and Drake appreciate their best friends continue to resonate with me to this day.

A small thing I appreciate about “Loyal” is that PartyNextDoor and Drake’s lyrics are identical. Like the writing in all great pop songs, this repetition turns lines that might otherwise seem too simple into the sort of mantras that can define an entire relationship—even if what’s said isn’t wholly relatable.

While the song’s pre-chorus ends with a lyric I’d repeat no less than a thousand times in my life, its sole verse describes a sort of discord I’ve never experienced: the awkwardness of having to avoid “war” between your partner and your friends. This is the one part of “Loyal” that feels reflective of the needlessly complicated romances PartyNextDoor and Drake sing about elsewhere in their catalogs; songs like “Low Battery” and “Not Nice” by the former, “U With Me?” and “Days In The East” by the latter, and even their 2016 collaboration “Come And See Me.”

I don’t know what it’s like to date someone who doesn’t get along with my friends. That’s one of the main benefits of dating someone who was already your friend long before they became anything else—they seamlessly fit within the rest of your inner circle.

But once “Loyal” arrives at the end of its pre-chorus, which is as catchy as any other part of the song, it pinpoints yet another benefit of dating your best friend: the ability to spend time away from each other without tripping over anyone’s sense of entitlement. This also comes up in the song’s post-chorus.

At this point in “Loyal,” PartyNextDoor works his vocals up into a wail as he laments the ebbs and flows of his friendship with the woman he’s been yearning for. It’s not that he’s bored or pained by the way things have been going, he’s just developed a desire for more of the good thing he already has. This is a crucial part of taking a friendship to the next level.

As Party sings about not wanting anyone else after spending too many summers without his soulmate, I’m reminded of the moment I asked my friend to be my girlfriend. Even as a grown man, it was important to me to ask this with the formality of a teenager, because every relationship I’ve seen crash and burn (including some of my own in the past) began with a “what are we?” sense of ambiguity. I wanted to be intentional from the start with this one.

I popped the mini question the day before Memorial Day 2019, the unofficial start of the summer in New York City. While other single or non-monogamous people I knew were gearing up for a season of flings and fleeting romances, I decided I wasn’t going to spend another summer with anyone besides the love of my life ever again.

I think most people misunderstand what makes a person loyal. A look at social media or certain songs that fall short of Yellow Diamonds would have you believe loyalty is defined by how many storms someone can weather. Usually, these storms are levied by men who feel entitled to their partner’s devotion no matter how much destruction they’ve caused. But there must be more to it than that.

Even PartyNextDoor, an observant yet rarely reassuring writer, understands this. Throughout the chorus of “Loyal,” the moody musician abandons the cynicism he’s best known for and instead imagines loyalty from the perspective of a man with all the power in the world but the good sense not to abuse it. Less rich, famous, and talented men have failed such tests of compassion.

But when I think of what speaks to me the most about this song’s take on loyalty, it isn’t the part about staying down despite being worth a lot of money. It isn’t even the part about pain subsiding with the reprieve of companionship. What’s most profound about “Loyal,” and ultimately most reflective of my own life, is the idea that faithfulness is something you give to a friend.

My girlfriend won’t always be my girlfriend. God willing, there are at least two more titles I’ll get to call her someday. But the loyalty she receives from me will always be because she’s my best friend.

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