Drake’s Unintentional Curse on Hip Hop

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In hip-hop, things are constantly changing. While one artist is rising, another is always slowly losing ground. At the same time, new sounds gain traction just as others start to feel washed or outdated. This is the natural life cycle of Hip-Hop. The old makes way for the young, who then create new sounds and go from there. It’s how it’s always worked and how it’s always been. But these days, things have taken an unexpected turn.

Whether he meant to or not, Drake finds himself in a landscape where is unequaled. Where there was previously always someone else lurking behind the throne, Drake isn’t just keeping the seat warm, he’s etched his name into it.

And just as they say that Tom Cruise is the last Hollywood megastar, Drake is currently the last of his ilk in the game. But now that he’s teetering closer to 40, it’s causing genuine concern among critics and fans.

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Narrated by: Spencer Pearman
Written by: Robert Blair
Edited by: Roman Bill
Music by: Josh Petruccio

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Drake’s run at the top has been so unprecedented it’s unfair like we can’t even have a conversation of if he’s falling off because the defeated every rumor of a fall off to the point where now just saying he’s going to do this for eternity does anyone even think about him falling off and you know why no one thinks about him falling off because there’s no other option remember little baby like you know I mean that like slipped on a wet spot and fell kendri is like in Ghana still Cole is riding around riding around bicycles in Tribeca yo Drake the only one who’s like yo bro in hip-hop things are constantly changing while one artist is rising another is slowly losing ground at the same time new sounds gain traction just as others start to feel washed or outdated this is the natural life cycle of hip-hop the old make way for the Young Who then create new sounds and go from there it’s how it’s always worked and how it’s always been but these days things have taken an unexpected turn whether he meant to or not Drake finds himself in a landscape where he’s unequal where there was previously always someone else lurking behind the throne thr Drake isn’t just keeping the seat warm he’s etched his name into it and just as they say that Tom Cruz is the last Hollywood Mega star Drake is currently the last of his ilk in the game but now that he’s teetering closer to 40 it’s causing genuine concern among critics and fans Drake can’t retire just for music sake and this is going to make me sound like a old hater but this is the first time in rap history in my opinion that there hasn’t been a a solidified new generation of Superstar every single generation we’ve had the biggest person could retire because we knew we had this next Generation that was solidified this is the first time we won’t have a new Superstar solidified as the genre morphs and the industry continues to shift Drake has always moved with it finding a way to keep himself ingrained into the culture and perhaps more importantly the top of the billboard to some this has been Drake’s unintentional curse on hip-hop caused by him covering too much ground and quite honestly mastering the game and while there’s an argument to be made that it was subconscious on drizzy’s part and just a testament to how talented he is the other side is much more cynical so let’s dive in the notion that Drake’s presence as a chart topping Mega star would spark hip-hop isn’t new in fact people have been theorizing about the potential damage he could do even before he was signed in a piece for vice titled the pillage why Drake is bad for hip hop Ryder Barry Schwarz broke down Drake’s rise and explained how he basically remolded the sound of the game to fit his specifications before anyone had an opportunity to object and before he’d even released his first album Drake had already been nominated for a Grammy and successfully homogenized the sound of mainam hip hop to accommodate him today the industry has never been smaller the machine has never been bigger and Drake is too big to fail looking at where we are now it’s hard not to see this as a premonition but how does Drake being too big to fail stifle others well just look at what happens when he’s putting on new artists although the likes of Lil Baby and 21 Savage have saluted Drizzy for the role he played in their Fame for every successful artist with a lengthy career there’s a party next door Quinton Miller or the weekend I mean just look at how we basically leveraged the weekend’s lack of resources to make him give up half of the songs he’d made for House of balloons generally Drake working with other artists is regarded as benevolent for his willingness to put on other artists but as examples like the weekends prove it isn’t always as charitable as it looks and it’s often about keeping Drake’s sound fresh not necessarily advancing others back in 2015 Earl Sweatshirt noticed this pattern and spoke out after people began to claim that he’d put on a young codec black Drake can be a bit of a vulture on young Raptor and I don’t want Lil Kodak to be a victim of it he said in a series of posts I still feel like Drake’s overall statement isn’t check out this new I heard it’s always self-serving I guess you’re right he said while responding to a fan it’s not his job to develop them as artists but the line between paying homage and wave riding is a blurry one while some may have considered Earl’s reaction an overreaction back then today this directly ties into academics theory on why Drake is always first to work with new artists basically he’s taking out the competition before they can rival him Drake has successfully cleared himself of a number two hear me out Drake rocked all these newcomers to sleep sleep that could be possibly an incumbent okay little baby all right bet Drake never hates on the new guy he just shows him overly love and almost gets credit for the new guy come up then after a while he steps away from the and never looks the same all of the legit competitors for Drake stop focusing on music this also holds weight when it comes to how we treated fetty wat when it came time for the My Way remix completely ignoring any request that fetty made before ghosting him entirely that was mon breakthrough record when he jumped on the record you know the first I asked him like yo can you just take my verse off and keep Monty up there and it just be let me be on the hook the first and last time I ever spoke to him when he asked me to get on the song that was it I haven’t even seen him in person yet I reached out to him maybe like 2019 and nothing where other rappers have historically guarded their spot with hostility or aggression Drake’s greatest weapon has been his apparent friendship just look at what he did to Jack harlo you feel like he bodied you on your own when you heard DRS first did you want to rewrite yours did you know that on average there are around 5 million car accidents every year in the US and a lot of those accidents happen during the holiday season even worse a lot of victims don’t feel comfortable suing for damages because they’re under the mistaken impression that they be suing the other driver a regular human just like them injuries sustained in a car accident are just one of the things that Morgan and Morgan might help you with they’re the largest injury law firm in America and they’re fully equipped to handle injuries of any nature that might entitle you to compensation that includes car accidents workplace injury medical malpractice and more they have over 100 offices Nationwide 800 lawyers and thousands of case staff that means you don’t just get a lawyer assign to your case you get a whole legal team ready to help you fight for your fair compensation but don’t feel bad for suing when you sue for injury you’re not suing the middle-aged man who nodded off at the driver’s seat you’re suing his insurance company who are sitting on billions of dollars in profit every year and what’s more they’re using every resource they have to avoid paying out because that’s their job so why shouldn’t you do the same the best part is Morgan and Morgan only only charge you a fee if you win the case that’s right no matter how many hours of work they put in if you lose you pay them nothing so if you’ve been injured you can check out Morgan and Morgan their fee is free unless you win for more information go to forthepeople.com hiip hop Madness or dial pound law that’s pound 529 since Churchill Downs dropped the consensus is that Drizzy washed him on his own track in the aftermath Jack deluded himself into believing that it wasn’t meant to put him in his place but was actually meant to be a salute and during an interview on The Breakfast Club he outlined his theory to a very skeptical Charlamagne and envy I feel like that’s one of my best verses but he went so crazy that I was like yo I’m going to have to add bars or everyone’s going to say he boted me on my I actually feel like it comes from a place of respect almost because they had to get into that bag I don’t know how I could ever feel disrespected cuz what are you supposed to tell somebody y take it easy some of his bars meant so much to me that I could tell that he was like tipping his hat to me in a way that made me feel great so the same could be said for an artist from his own City in Tory Lanes back when Tori was first Making Waves Drake was sending shots spitting on do not disturb that if we do a song it’s like taking my kids to work with me you Overnight Celebrity you one day star swear I told you that I’m in this for eternity I am a reflection of all your insecurities however once it was established that Tori was no longer a threat they were soon touring together with Tori exactly where he wanted him as his opening act and just as he may harness an artist’s momentum or use it to help them derail themselves with a Timeless feature there’s an argument to be made that he does the same thing with his sound rather than ever rigidly sticking to one sound Drake has taken a globe triing approach to his music which has often seen him labeled as a vulture by artists in the UK Jamaica and Africa this is an allegation that he’s always refuted instead claiming that he simply shines a much needed Spotlight you know I definitely feel like because when I do things they do get magnified and Amplified people can sometimes feel uncomfortable you know one dance goes number one but like you know whiz kid was on the song with me I had blessings from like the real Dawn in that space I know those guys I link with those guys I go to their shows they come to my my shows they touch my stage the chatter is one thing but in the community amongst the Real G’s that are really doing it I’m solidified for sure the flip side of that coin is that he is once again using the Innovative sound of others to keep himself afloat it’s a sore point when people like Drake or Bieber or other artists come and do dancehall oriented music but don’t credit where dancehall came from and they don’t necessarily understand it Sean Paul told the guardian whether it’s the grime Pioneer Wy accusing him of exploding UK rappers or Mavado taking aim at him for using dance hall for his own ends it’s clear that what Drake sees as valuable contributions some view is self- serving and advantageous to him but because everyone knows the numbers he generates no one rejects him shoehorning his way into any bubbling wave in hip-hop or any other genre it’s only after he’s moved on to the next wave that people realized that even if his intentions were genuine he was the one who gained the most from it as a result when he was shut out from trance on Metro boomin’s recent album it was newsworthy to the extent that people assume there must have been beef even though in Metro siid he just wasn’t the right fit I was in the studio with Drake one time cuz we was going to do some stuff on my album and he just wanted to hear some songs from my album then he heard that one and really wanted to get on it I was letting him know that it was really just done for real and I was really just set on how it was I was like Brian didn’t try to sell you no dream locked in where it was he had hit me and was just like man uh let me see if it’s just anything he could add to it and he was like if you don’t like it then whatever he did some stuff a couple parts was cool but like I just felt like just even with like slime ver and traversed and the outro it just really was no room I just end up using the original and I guess the other one just leaked or something through Metro’s approach we see a way that Drake’s overarching dominance could have been avoided or at least minimized rather than looking at the short-term gain that comes from getting drizzy’s name on your album Metro did what was best for the sound of his project and didn’t allow the whole body of work to be overshadowed by Drake granted people are just waking up to this now just look at the overwhelmingly negative response to his feature on J’s who told you where the majority of people felt he ruined the track with some listeners going out of their way to edit Drake’s verse off the song entirely but when it comes to Drake’s true unintentional curse on hip-hop the major issue is that if he was just a little Brave he could have had every opportunity to help artists in a way that goes Way Beyond features considering how much clout he has in the industry and as hip-hop’s biggest star he’s excluded from some of the traps that many of them have to face but rather than speak out for streaming reform or Vibe for them to get their masters back he just focuses on getting his while no one is saying that he’s obligated to do these things certainly would have done a lot to dispel the notion that he just takes and takes without giving back if ever there was a perfect example of this it was when he had the chance of going independent and instead aligned himself once more with universal by taking this step as the world’s biggest artist he reiterated the disheartening message that major labels were the way to go if he’d gone the other way it could have been so so different you think that if Drake right now completely independent if Drake right now posts a picture on the gram of his new album new album out fully independent Drake will make $10 million a week for 60 weeks Drake is about to get the biggest bag in the history of the music business by far they don’t want that to happen because the day that that happens you might as well close the business down if Dr Go’s independent the music business is over functioning more like a corporate entity than a person at this point it doesn’t even matter if his music is increasingly getting worse so long as he keeps feeding the consumer and rather than grooming a successor via OVO or letting an artist grow organically without him taking his mandated percentage of the shine Drizzy has left mainstream hip hop without any viable alternative