Play Me Some Simpin, Mane: Drake - Nothing Was the Same

Pop is a competitive sport too of course, but hip hop has always been ABOUT who is on top in ways that pop has not. That's the part of the game that won't change. And Kanye is obviously the other guy who has been massively influential. Wayne would be the third, although at the moment he's not really in the game anymore. Idk, I like what rap has become because of those guys. It needed change, or else we would be listening to Pusha T all day long I guess.

What are these many many criticisms of Drake btw and why should I take account of them? I mean, the guy is far from perfect. It's just that there's been so much critical ressentiment surrounding him for so long now and it's kinda getting to the point where I think his undeniability is more interesting than the complaints about his rapping and singing and whatnot. I like his rapping and singing. I wouldn't pitch it against Jay-Z in his prime but I'd take it over, say, 80-90% of the other guys who are out at the moment.

I see way more automatic critical adoration tbh.

There are plenty of criticisms that have nothing to do with his voice or influences or even softness. Did you not read Katherine's great piece? People find him skeevy because his "sensitivity" is posturing, because he's unable to sketch out any of the characters in his songs (especially the women), ie his songwriting is poor, because his own problems - ie the things he makes the focus of his music and the means by which we're expected to identify with him - are horribly shallow and boring and basically because all of this means his much-vaunted sensitivity rings completely false. There's plenty else, this is just off the top of my head on my phone! And drake stand never ever engage with those criticisms of him

Man I hardly ever identify with ANY of the rap artist I listen to. Universality is not the issue. Why is this such a problem with Drake? If Barry White had wheezed "I want your hot love and devotion" I'd certainly love it so why shouldn't Drake be able to say it - in a genre where one doesn't even normally say those kinds of things. It has nothing to do with fandom. I am not a Drake fan, yet I'm struck by how angry you all are at him. Yeah, he's a douche. He knows he is a douche. He has given us new - passice aggressive as Al says - ways of being an asshole in rap. I applaud him for that.

*s

**?
***passive

I need to read these things before I post them. Sigh.

"He knows he's a douche" is the WORST defence both in art and irl. That makes it NO better!

Why should we praise someone whose artistic persona = passive-aggressive douche? Being more pass-agg and douchier than anyone else is not an impressive accomplishment.

Well, it works for Kanye and it works for Drake. If Drake had been simply a nice young fellow no one would have found him very interesting. Unlikeability/unsympathetic traits is pretty much a prerequisite for any rap star. You all tend to treat him as if he is trying to date your daughter or something.

Unlikeability/unsympathetic traits is pretty much a prerequisite for any rap star.

Yeah that was the route to success for Will Smith there. Maybe more seriously, what kind of essentialist fantasy are you embracing here?

Will Smith was the best you could do, huh? Sorry, these are pragmatics, not essentials.

actually painful to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUSp9npIvuE

Definitely painful to listen to, lol.

Well, it works for Kanye and it works for Drake

Nah, aesthetically it stopped working for Kanye in 2010.

Longneck, this is what I get from you:

*asshole drives by skillfully in sleek top of the line car, intentionally crushing bunnies*

You: "See? Isn't that something to be proud of?"

Us: "...no?"

You: "Well it is and the gas mileage is great too."

*asshole drives by skillfully in sleek top of the line car, intentionally crushing bunnies*

You: "See? Isn't that something to be proud of?"

Us: "...no?"

You: "Well it is and the gas mileage is great too."

Us: "...no?"

You: "At least the asshole was AWARE he was an asshole!"

Oh right, forgives all sins.

The concept of the asshole rapper is that foreign to you, huh?

drake's relationship to his assholeishness is so much more disingenuous and unpalatable than most, this is again something that has been said before.

also rihanna might be a good comparison point in terms of a legitimately game-changing ubiquitous artist (though drake is by no means the megastar she or even nicki are) who can also legitimately be criticised for both a) the shitness of a lot of her output b) the eye-rollingly cringe nature of the persona via which she's attained her ubiquity

like really an artist being a ubiquitous game-changer should be the start of the conversation, not a final argument

I love Rihanna. Sorry folks.

Is it that much of a consensus that Drake is an insincere douche? It seems like that's the one thing everyone for sure agrees upon, but it seems to fly in the face of the guy being generally liked by his contemporaries. Obviously his music is idiosyncratic and many songs dive into his insecurities, perhaps (Marvin's Room) to such an extreme degree that it might seem prurient to some, but to me, at least, that codes more as a guy who's figured this part of his life out to the extent that he can write about it.

deej, I certainly don't consider The Chronic and Illmatic as prototypically insecure albums, but I think the late careers of those artists may shine a little light on how hungry they were to impress. I also haven't been a Drake fan from day 1 - I actually quite disliked the guy until Take Care won me over. Now it's at the point where I'm dropping 80 bucks to go see him stadium with Miggy and Future. (Those two contributed to my splurge choice a bit I suppose...)

The reason I situated Drake back in what the perception of him was in 09 is because the perception has completely changed but I don't think the music really has. NWTS is probably more like So Far Gone than his other albums, and dropping hashtags is the only really significant shift in his rapping that I can hear.

longneck are there any successful artists you'd actually criticise hard? you really seem to be saying that success is its own validation

I think one thing we're missing regarding the whole Drake/Katy Perry/Rihanna significance discussion (which is just a little silly imo) is that both Katy and RiRi are fairly fungible commodities. They leave, someone else will occupy their chart slot with a pretty similar song. Think it's fair to say that Drake occupies a fairly unique role, of his own invention to boot. I'll say the same of Nicki though, for sure.

"Longneck, why do you eat at McDonald's?"

"They are successful."

"Yes but--"

"THEY ARE SUCCESSFUL."

They leave, someone else will occupy their chart slot with a pretty similar song

i don't think this is true at all - i mean they have their imitators, sure, but no one is checking for rita ora or buying into miley's white-rihanna reinvention

and tbh i remember when katy first emerged assuming she just wouldn't fit into the pop landscape as it was then

and without wanting to bring this back to influence i think shipz covered why drake isn't that "unique"

I was a big fan of Kanye and Wayne who thought 808s and "Lollipop" were hugely disappointing turning points in their careers, so that stuff becoming the blueprint for their biggest successor and really the whole next 5 years of the genre is just depressing to me, if I was gonna wake up one day and go "no wait this stuff is actually awesome" it probably would've happened by now.

Lex, are you playing stupid now? It's not about whether or not you could critisise someone hard or not, it's about the terms of the critique. I criticise succesful artists all the time. For instance, I totally detest Eminem and everything he stands for. But this is about how we criticise Drake. Ship's review is well written but his criticisms aren't new at all, they're pretty much the consensus among everyone who follows Noz on twitter.

Unless you don't think I listened to the album and responded to it honestly, what's the issue?

I definitely think you listened to the album and wrote honestly about it. My point is that your review pretty much summed up most of the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people. I've shared a few of them myself. I just don't think those points are very convincing anymore.

...to who?

To me?

non-real hip hop people

Longneck, the realest hip-hop people there is.

Lol. I'll be dat.

now that's a phrase I haven't heard in a long time. A long time.

But your reality, how do we know of it?

Longneck's point is legit though; as I've said earlier, rappers in the game right now generally tend to like and respect Drake. Just look at the OVO Fest lineups he assembles every year. Those who make a point out of objecting to him (Common, DMX) come off as dinosaurs idolizing the good old days of a now-antiquated "REAL HIPHOP".

Lol I just had a discussion with someone who said Drake couldn't possibly make a classic album because he addresses girls in his songs. That ain't REAL hip hop.

"He knows he's a douche" is the WORST defence both in art and irl.

yep such an easy cop out

also this idea that drake is so self-aware of his douchiness?

Still, one of the things that people find both equally engrossing and just plain gross about his music is how he reinterprets the stories of others, dragging them into his own narrative without their consent. I ask how women react to him when he mentions them. "They love it. I'll get girls that hit me up like, 'Oh, that's how you feel?' Whatever. They love it. They hang up the phone and be like, 'Ah, I'm hyped!" When I compare this practice to Cam'ron's old tactic of repurposing voicemails from angry ex-lovers as skits on his albums, Drake cuts me off. "That's different. That's malicious. I never do that to girls. Every girl, there's some heartwarming sentiment there, even if it's talking about how we didn't work out. It maybe jogs their memory. It's a good thing. My phone starts blowing up every time an album comes out. Tomorrow will be one of those heavy AT&T days for me, for sure."

They love him anyway! he's so blessed!

sick neg, bro

"whatever. they love it."

drake is obvi a douche

i do think that he has a pretty unique sound at this point. synthesis is ok ... its not like he sounds like kanye

also al not liking lollipop is crazy imo

the charitable reading would put that "whatever" as a placeholder for other things these women say to Drake on the phone rather than a comment on how he feels about what they're saying to him but it's still hilariously douchey that he would say "whatever" instead of "etcetera" or "and so on" in that scenario

considering that pretty much nobody itt is a REAL HIP HOP hardass who thinks the entire problem with Drake is that he sings or writes about girls or that he's "soft" maybe we can engage with what people itt are saying instead of just responding the (real and numerous) people outside ilx who dislike Drake simply on those terms?

My comment about how Drake knows he is a douche was meant to suggest that EVERYONE knows that Drake is a douche, yet it gets hurled at him as if it is some kind of revelatory gem of criticism every so often. So what if he mentions some girl he slept with or loved or whatever in a less than sympathetic way? Rappers tend to do that. And writers tend to use and reinterpret stuff others say for their own purposes all the time. So why do we turn our moralizers up to eleven every time Drake is involved? Because he is annoying? Hell yes he is annoying. He also sounds like a sheep, but somehow that doesn´t really matter too much in the grand scheme of things. He's still ahead of the pack in almost every imaginable way and he still - as deej says - has his own sound. It is perfectly fine to criticise his craft or his songwriting or even a perceived stiffness in his delivery. What bugs me is the condescending tone we - and I do think Ship's review is symptomatic here - tend to take on just about every time we write about this guy whenever we're not fawning over him, whether we are real-hip-hop dudes who think he is soft for rapping about girls or just snarky internet rap cynics. It's so polarized - in quite predictable ways. I'd love to read something fresh and illuminating about him soon.

You might start with putting those false binaries in the trash.

i'm condescending towards Drake because i think he's kind of a dullard.

As far as the "Drake is mean to women" criticism goes, the ILX double standard drives me bonkers. I'm pretty sure I said the exact same thing in the Take Care thread a couple years back (and got called a sock for it) but let me again call attention to how much this board seems to adore Terius, who is a million times more of a man-child than Aubrey is when it comes to women.

I get that the 'they love it' thing is offputting... 2 potential explanations. One way to see it is him being obnoxious to and dismissive of his exes... and I guess I'm more of the "let him without sin cast the first stone" in that department. The second is that they actually do get along, which is also plausible. I mean, Drake seems like a clown, but a friendly one, and I really wouldn't put it past him to maintain friendly, teasing relationships with exes. Is it that unthinkable that a dude can look back amusedly at failed relationships?

Another criticism I hear: the 'vanity' issue. Obviously the guy is very pleased with the success he's had and basks in it. Drinking to accomplishments, clinking gold bars together, yada yada. I find that fun to watch, even though it's a little perverse. Isn't perverse glee, like, at least half the appeal of rap anyways? Again, I see a double standard in how other rappers get to be gleeful idiots as long as they code somewhat traditionally. Drake is obnoxious and smug, sure, but, like... isn't that part of the game?