If there's nothing I hate more in my life and profession,
it's any sort of conversation that resembles a weekday morning CNN segment. Is
Putin a menace? Where's the plane? Should Biden run for president?
Autism-something-or-other? Is Drake a legend? Fine, Drake is a legend.
It pains me to say. Now, leave me alone.
While I'm a fan of barbershop discourse and shit-shooting in
general, this particular brand of rap debate is polarized and oppressively
dumb. "Legend," as applied to artists, and "classic,"
as applied to their artwork, reduce potentially rich and interesting
discussions of music to infuriating simplicity; I can't listen or speak for 10
minutes about Drake without some polarized simpleton steering the conversation
into a pundit's ditch, so hung up on the implications of affiliating one way or
the other. When Drake opened his latest mixtape, If You're Reading This
It's Too Late, with a simply diabolic boast—"If I die, I'm a
legend"—he's feeding his trolls and detractors; one can only hope that
they choke on it.
If you're going to drag your friends and family into
pointless conversations about Drake, let's at least be nuanced and fruitful and
honest with ourselves; essentially, Drake invented the fuego emoji,
such is his track record of hits and reserve of credibility among my generation
of hip-hop heads. Some of you will balk at my describing Drake fans as any
degree of hip-hop head, a sure sign that you grew up on either Guru or DMX, the
Walkman or the Discman, and with a poor disposition in either case. I hate to
break it to you, but listen: There is hip-hop scholarship and rigorous
listening beyond the fall of G-Unit.
There's no singularly, simply correct stance that's worth
taking on Drake, an affable (if not goofy) Canadian who's made good music,great music, awesome music, bad
music, and a baby handful of songs that are atrocious indeed. In 2009 he
made a million off a game-changing mixtape, then he made that
god-awful debut album intro "Fireworks" with Alicia Keys. His
missteps are few and inconsequential; Drake's got more than 20 hit records
to his credit, not counting his best guest verses and Young Money's posse cuts.
As of the first quarter of 2015, Drake has more hit rap records than the
Notorious B.I.G. or LL Cool J. He has more No. 1 records than Hov. Drake
left potential Ja Rule status in the dust 2.5 albums ago.
For all you salty motherfuckers who serially struggle
to come to grips with Drake's domination of mainstream hip-hop and indelible
influence of pop music in general: I understand. For three years, 2007-2010, I
fought the good fight against Lil Wayne's lazy, sedated nonsense; and,
ultimately, I lost. My one residual act of vengeance is to point out that Tha Carter
IV isn't as awful as Weezystans pretend that it is, if only
because "John" is among the best songs that either Weezy or Rick
Ross has ever made. (Please share your hopeless counterpoints with me in the
comments.)
The six years of consternation and angst that have dogged
Drake's ascent hardly disqualify him from the hip-hop pantheon; if anything,
the inexhaustible backlash proves his point. Even the haters won't let go of
Drake's robes. It breaks my heart to watch the real-rap dweeb and
boom-bap reactionaries wage hopeless war against Drake and his zombified
alliance of preppies, yuppies, hipsters, and jocks who, in their monotony, can
sound rather like the vapid, anti-literary bullies of De La Soul Is
Dead: flip "Crooked Smile" and "i" on screwed 40 Shebib
bass so we can dance to it. Drake is a despot, as his fans now freely admit; a
tyrant who thrives by fluid iterations of cool and a knack for hooks and chants
that could easily be repurposed as Sesame Street jingles,
for children. It's not right, but it's OK. "6 God" is delightful
regardless.
As I'm aging out of the target audience of most new rappers,
I'm gradually at peace with the occasional struggle of understanding music that
I don't like, made by artists who aren't built for me. Anyone who would call
Drake a narcissist, on the one hand, but then mock and dismiss the prevailing
taste of a generation should perhaps reevaluate their relation to art and other
people. Don't be such a myopic bore. Free your mind. Stranger
ascendances have happened, e.g., Gucci Mane is a legend, nearly in the
full, spooky, mythological sense of that word.Busta Rhymes, Noreaga,
Ma$e, E-40, Jacka, Boosie—all these guys are legends in their own
right. Biz Markie is a fucking legend! Take Care is
a classic. Make of these distinctions whatever you will.
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