The Influence of Drake: The Good, The Bad, & The UGLY

you've already won if you have people who are singing your songs word for word if you're a hero in your hometown if look look if there's people who have regular jobs who are coming out in the rain in the snow spending their harder money to buy tickets to come to your shows you don't need this right here I promise you you already won this is the moment the moment that my hero decided he was done with artistry i e i e i e are you guys stupid are you crazy are you dumb which one you could pick one and this is the moment my hero stopped taking himself seriously don't you want [Music] toce and this this is the moment that that oh oh my God my like music is therapy I'm sure a statement like that for me is like a high school gym teacher saying he likes basketball it's ridiculously obvious but I'm starting here because among all of our infatuation with the people that are making it it's important to remind ourselves that the music itself is actually the blessing fueling our interest and one of my first experiences with this truth that ended up changing my life came from a Canadian rapper who sings about his ex too much the first hip-hop artist I ever really got into was Drake that's a pretty common phenomenon for people my age he's made some of the most important music in the last 15 years whether that's been For Better or For Worse take care was the first album I ever bought in CD form jungle was the first song that ever made me shed a tear and Nothing Was the Same was the first album I ever wanted a t-shirt for I can confidently and proudly say that Drake's discography is the first batch of albums I ever truly took ownership of as being part of my music taste and all this is really just to say that this is why it hurts me so much to see the last few years and the route that Drake has taken to see him make himself into a meme to see my hero regress but the scary part is it's not just him that regresses it's everyone else that he's taking along with him let's go back to 2009 hip hop is in the eyes of many at its lowest point we're exiting The Bling era and while it had its moments thank you 50 Cent it led to a sort of dumbing down of the genre that we're still seeing negatively impact mainstream hip-hop today and I mean sure we had Kanye and Wayne but as Innovative as they are they were complicit of the time period they came up in it's been almost 40 years years this slowburn has gone on since the Golden Age it seems like the few high-profile rappers we have left are just milking this thing I don't know has hip-hop run its course is there anything new that we can get out of this genre hey I'm here with auby graham AKA Drake he's a star of De Grassi and an upand cominging rap artist how are you today good man how you doing I'm great I'm great now you're looking for a record label any success with that wait who who's this I appreciate your patience tonight it's been a moment since I've done some public speaking whether you like it or not this is a miracle that's who it is with the help of Lil Wayne and Young Money Drake took advantage of his instantaneous Fame and used it to become the most Exquisite and personable rap star of all time and I don't think it's a bold claim to say that he saved the genre and gave it the legs to keep moving forward but those legs didn't always walk the way that you or me would want them to go they grew into something that was greater than the sum of its parts and became uncontrollable For Better or For Worse but regardless of what I'm about to say in this video I want it made very clear from the get-go that Drake is the phenomenon that hip hop needed and despite his flaws we owe him greatly for allowing this integral subsection of the music industry to continue Reinventing itself see Hip-Hop didn't need one rapper it needed a movement I think when I first started out I just wanted to be uh just as important as little Wayne cuz I felt like nobody was ever going to be as big as little Wayne Uh like during like lollipop times and obviously at Carter three times there are likely an endless amount of small intricate factors that could and should be discussed when it comes to the way Drake has impacted this culture and another thing I want to make clear is that this video is not going to be all inclusive it's just what I believe is most relevant and what has impacted me personally as a fan and someone that really does care about his career if you were a hip-hop purist you would likely disagree with me on a lot of these things being objectively good but that's why I wanted to bring this back to 2009 Drake came into hip hop at a time where it was running itself into a complete dead end boom bap seems to be getting dry the revitalization of old soul sampling was exactly that old and it seemed like the popularity of rappers like 50 Cent was simply a ploy to milk hip-hop stereotypes to make popular music and so an expansion a completely new pocket of hip-hop is exactly what it needed and this new pocket wasn't necessarily pop rap or R&B with rapping it was diary [Music] rap there's something so special about the sound the aura of the projects that defined Drake's early career there was never a Toronto sound before but the colorless Euphoria of Noah saib synth work created something prettier something cleaner something completely new so far gone is my favorite album by Drake you could debate on what is objectively his best but so far gone is what I believe to be the best and most genuine depiction of who Drake is and what I think best exemplifies the positive change that he made to hip-hop we're hearing about a lil way protoge someone who will be the successor to the mainstream king of rap and he opens his with an R&B ballad it was ballsy at best and career suicide at worst but Lust For Life was a match that Lit the flame burning down everyone's previous understanding of what rap could be it's normal now for a rapper to sing on their songs to incorporate Melody into their rhyme schemes to focus on catchiness and pay attention to how their hooks sound but before Drake that was everything but a necessity and once you go deeper and you actually listen to what he's singing about you realize that he's changing the culture of misogyny as well Drake wasn't rapping about oral sex or domineering or how he is the best and the brightest he's putting women on a pedestal people have always wondered why women love Drake's music which I think is indicative of How Deeply rooted the gender dynamics of Pop Culture have objectified women and belittled their identity and we really take this part of dr's persona for Grant I mean sure he's drifted away from it over the years but it's remarkable how much heat an upand cominging rapper was able to take just for changing the stigma on how you sing about relationships Drake didn't sing about women as Expendable or as objects there was certainly part of it that he leveraged at an angle to make himself seem sensitive and tasteful but it was obvious from the get-go that Drake thought highly of his partners and desired more than just sex he was well always a certified lover boy and even if you think Drake took the ideology of the sensitive guy too far at a certain point it has to be commended the most significant Improvement he made to hip-hop that being that he acknowledged people have emotions Drake has always been vulnerable he talks about his feelings and while there's a group of people who hear this and spit on it in came a much more significant crowd that saw it as inspiring and relatable there's a certain ego a certain Charisma that Drake invalidated Drake exposed the rapper facade as being a fake depiction of one's ego on the grandest scale the genital swinging contest that made hip-hop what it was doesn't exist in the same way that it did before because songs like Marvin's Room Best I Ever Had and Find Your Love upended the landscape of the most foundational aspects of rap music Drake's Relentless honesty and willingness to look like well a person with failures and shortcomings and a wear my huget attitude exposed just how hard the hearts of most hip-hop fans really are and so Drake in the matter of a few years completely divides hipop but when I got to Marvin's Room the track that everybody seemed to like how can y'all like this song this song is the biggest [ __ ] song I've ever heard you call you calling no that was on that was on the the second part of the track that be live part you calling another man's girl talking about [ __ ] that [ __ ] that you love so bad that's some [ __ ] [ __ ] y'all really do I call it real [ __ ] before I call it some [ __ ] [ __ ] that [ __ ] [ __ ] to call another what you mean How It Was Your Girl first yeah that's even childish I had a first I had real sh I had D I really want to acknowledge this as best I can because this is what I try and do with my videos I try to connect with you guys emotionally to relate with you on how I learn how I grow for music and what it means and Drake gave us the belief that that was okay that a hardened attitude only gets you so far and that we must engage with our deepest thoughts and feelings in order to truly get somewhere and yeah I get hate comments all the time about how I sound stupid or too sensitive or that I say it's not fair too much and even from the small audience I've accumulated I can tell you that it gets to me a little bit so it's hard to describe the amount of admiration I have for Drake's confidence as a man to act this way and not succumb to the hate especially since despite being treated like a second class artist you can't describe just how much more accessible diverse and relatable hip-hop became because of this culture shift rap didn't have to be as edgy and aggressive as it had always been it could finally be more than that but this shift was actually a torpedo one that was aimed at the most tired and stagnating Hip-Hop tropes but ended up exploding onto something much more significant than its intended target Drake himself has always been a movement which granted him a degree of power no artist should have and while he brought a new era of mainstream music to our ears that was at least refreshing the caveats would come to light almost simultaneously I think one of the most pivotal moments for me in my career was was when when you showed up to the soar gone party in in Toronto that prominent marriage between like sports and entertainment it was really big for us and then from there I mean the prominent marriage between entertainment and sports is that a good thing I feel weird talking about this aspect of Drake's career in anything but a positive light because I don't feel as if it's entirely fair to him so we won't go as far as saying it's bad we'll just call this part A beige flag Drake's career mirrors this uncontrollable rise of the internet where the expectations the perceptions of and Norms of being a celebrity were evolving too quickly to keep track of people like musicians and athletes were facing much more pressure than just the need to continue making music or performing well on the field they had to be likable on camera to be graceful of the media and to speak out on any important social or political issue that their fans had discourse over it was this weird grounding of our celebrities social media gave us access to a part of their lives that had always been and should have stayed private I think the moment this started happening in sports was this video video camera what is what a t what it is see to we up here in the gas station SL wy/ Starbucks frzy you get a burger some gas and get you some carpet down the road for another 5 hours in this joint slim it's funny and silly but it's also strikingly normal these are the best basketball players in the country millions of people watch them play basketball three nights a week and they're at a gas station Wendy's sitting in chairs made for people half their size it's innocent at its surface and of course in its intention but the video is representative of a complete shift in pop culture and Drake and LeBron should be hailed as Visionaries because of how quickly they realized this this was always going to happen but Drake appearing on commercials LeBron starting the more than an athlete movement both of them making public appearances at each other's games or shows and of course their huge social media presences are all some of the most significant molders of how an athlete or musician should utilize their platform in our culture now the shift is still taking hold but it's already changed a few things that I don't believe are all together good in the industry first and foremost it's pretty much eradicated the middle class celebrity it's not enough to just be known for what you do now you have to have a presence it puts pressure on Rising artists to have a brand or make business decisions or to comment on social happenings that they probably aren't ready for and just don't want to handle and for the ones that don't they just don't get that famous now you can point out exceptions in music like Frank Ocean or Kendrick Lamar who have taken silence and made it part of their brand and Kevin Durant himself in sports has always been outspoken about fighting this shift Y come here every day ask me about free agency ask my teammates my coaches you R up the fans about it let us play basketball that's all I'm saying and now when I don't want to talk to y'all is a problem with me come on man grow up grow up yeah you grow up come on bro I come in here and go to work every day I don't cause no problems I play the right way I try to play the right way I try to be the best player I can be every possession what's the problem what am I doing to y'all talking talking so who are you why do I got to talk to you tell me does that is that going to help me do my job better no bro I didn't feel like talking but even though being enigmatic can be conducive to popularity most of the attention this attitude gets is negative it is now impossible to be famous quiet and likable you can be two of these qualities at most now obviously I don't see this as healthy or good for the industry but I don't necessarily blame Drake for it what I do hold him accountable to is how this shifted his priorities you know as you uh receive things in life money blessings whatever your appetite begins to grow right so it's like if I give you a million dollars tomorrow um you're going to learn what it's like to have a million dollars and then you're going to start being around people that have $10 million or $100 million you're going to learn that there's other things that you can't get with a million dollars so you know you're your your appetite your appetite grows and I think this is an important point that fans of celebrities should be more aware of money and fame is seductive it's addictive but this comment is made with an angle it's not commentary on the tribulations of his career it's a justification this was never about the movement for Drake it's the success and that is the root problem of the bad Drake's most significant flaw as an artist is that the undeniably world-changing influence he has on hipop and the music industry as a whole was not intrinsically motivated Drake's honesty his sense sensitivity his world changing Persona it all just kind of happened let's think about two of my favorite groups of all time and how they influenced hip-hop A Tribe Called Quest and deas soul [Music] us the Golden Age of hip-hop would never have been as significant as it was without the diversity and Innovation that a plethora of subsections in the culture propagated and tribe and dea's contributions were bringing Jaz and positive vibes to hip-hop for possibly the first time now we could argue about whether they were as impactful as Drake is now but it's worth asking the question of why those sounds aged so inconspicuously well and their albums are still relevant it was just a thing that was going on in the culture about awareness about identity about coming out of the hood and being able to present ideas that will lofty we don't have to do [ __ ] the police there's a time and a place of [ __ ] the police and and a group for that we don't have to do fight the power there's a time and a place and a group for that we're allowed to be different for tribe and DEA they didn't care about being famous they didn't care about swimming in money or excess they cared about music The most significant difference between Drake and the other innovators of hip-hop is that for him success is the end not the means think about it like this for A Tribe Called Quest being famous was an aside it was a hindrance even they loved their fans and accepted popularity because they saw it as a benefit servicing their greater goal that being pushing hip-hop forward the success was the means and the impact was the end but for Drake changing hip-hop and starting a movement was his means to become as famous as he is this is obvious whenever you hear him talk about his career and his music he loves his work but only for how successful and impactful it is and this is the undercurrent making earthquakes in the music industry the ugliness of Drake's [Music] influence it seems that the further Drake's career has gone the more significant of an influence he has but now he's pushing the envelope backwards there was a huge change in Drake's Artistry sometime around the views if you're reading this it's too late era that saw a complete overhaul in how he approaches hit making songs like Best I Ever Had headlines hold on were going home sure they had their influences and wore them on their sleeve but they exhibited to this day some of the best songw writing that mainstream rap music has ever seen But when hotline bling came out Drake learned something there are Trends Styles genres that other people are doing that he can make more popular his music is riddled with it you could talk about trap production slowed down Soul samples or simply just biting straight up song ideas off of people but it's the other genres of music that most people when they refer to him as a culture vulture while it's worth pointing out that he likely brought more attention to the people really being creative with these styles of music nobody actually likes fountains or controlla or Mita Rhythm or any of his other International songs for their style they like it because it's Drake it's similar to when Kanye released yeus he saw a certain style of music with Death Grips he realized that they did all the creative leg work for him and he made the style his own that wasn't really as interesting or objectively good but a lot of people liked it because he's Kanye it's hard to gauge whether or not this phenomenon is destructive for the industry as a whole since Drake doesn't seem to be encouraging other artists to do the same it's just hard to defend in any way since he often defends himself by pointing out that it brings attention to the people pioneering this music which is barely true if at all and there is no light at the end of this tunnel of regression since it would be almost impossible for Drake to see the way he's swaying the industry objectively or without a chip on a shoulder now we're in the times where you know the first reaction is just people just want to say the like the funniest [ __ ] so it's always like the the album will drop in at 12:01 trash trash trash bins you know whatever whatever for any for any artist you know it's like you know I think people are more more excited about you know being top Comet than being you know actually really taking an out listen this movement the culture shift the absolute Revolution that is Drake has invited a degree of conversation in pop culture that makes it almost impossible to decipher what is good or bad every time Drake drops something the magnitude of the thought bubble surrounding his work is unlike anything we've ever seen I would delve into this point myself but I think Anthony Fantan summed it up perfectly in a conversation with the popular streamer Los Drake is an anomaly in that he's the only artist and and maybe people like Kanye come close to where whenever he puts something out it makes this insane feedback loop of conversation where it's like everyone engages in it not for the quality or the content of the music but because they know there's going to be a conversation going on uh so it's like everybody Dives in because we're everybody's going to be talking about it and everybody's going to be listening to it it's going to be this Universal experience that we all need to you know kind of have a collective um you know know experience over even if that experience isn't altogether good and the difficulty with this phenomenon is not even having to do with the people talking about the music it's the way that it guides or doesn't guide Drake fantano continues in the interview to make the point that Drake doesn't try harder in his music because there's no reason for him to do so which I agree with to a degree but a bigger part of it in my opinion is that there's absolutely no indication towards Drake that the music he's making is anything but the best sure Instagram comments say that the songs suck but as Drake highlights in his Rap Radar interview that's a given for any piece of art that gets released in the social media era as far as Drake and his Camp are concerned the numbers keep improving with every new release the Dumber his music gets so what's wrong with it it's easy to turn around and say well Drake has to self-evaluate he needs to listen to his music for himself and have his own standards but if you're one of the most famous people in the entire world and everyone is feeding into your your work it's worth asking the question if it's even possible to be objective anymore I mean Drake has always been a bit silly and cringey compared to your typical hip-hop artist but do we really think deg grassy Drake would have the balls to do something like this [Music] get okay honestly do I really have to talk about this are you serious this is the most frustrating bit for me and it's the point that I want to leave you guys with to consider and take with you as we continue to navigate either being a fan or hater of Drake's work wherever you are this level this immensity of cultural influence that Drake has it's toxic and it's unprecedented and it's unlike anything we've ever seen before the vice grip that Drake has on the media on our youth on the internet it was never possible before and it's clear that our culture from top to bottom has no idea how to handle it now that it is it's becoming a meme that Drake could release a single of himself coughing and it would go number one and that's a silly joke but it's true people are wondering why Drake can't make an album with the same level of consistency and quality that projects like take care and if you're reading this too late have and this is exactly the reason why sure Drake revolutionized the infrastructure of the music industry but somewhere along the line it changed from growth to a horrible irreversible regression Drake initially challenged the ideologies of gangster and self-indulgence in a way that was healthy that pushed hip-hop fans to look at their egos and personalities from A New Perspective but eventually the people who would not accept this movement and made fun of Drake got to him he stopped really taking ownership of who he was and made it into a joke we could have an entirely different discussion about whether hostility and beef and Hip Hop is overall good or bad for it but it can't be denied that it at least enforces accountability sure it's flawed and it inspires a type of ownership that can be destructive in some ways but it's authentic as Drake has completely dismantled the cornerstones of hip-hop he's inspired a new attitude towards music that evokes a surface level of traction and it capitalizes on fomo not love for music itself hip-hop and music as a whole is no longer full of interesting people who want to rhyme about real life and Concepts or topics that offer growth and inspiration for their listeners it's now just a game a race to see who can come up with the idea that will get the most clicks long gone are the days of people like Jay-Z who revealed the undercurrent of authenticity and realness that came with a life of crime no more are the days of A Tribe Called Quest who wanted to push their listeners to be true to self and share stories that showed others we aren't really that different and there's absolutely no chance we'll ever get back the realest version of the weekend who illuminated just how horrifying the PMW lifestyle is for all those who are coercing us into chasing it now they all just make music that sounds cool to numb the ears and I don't blame Drake but I hold him accountable for propagating the destructiveness of the movement now with all of this said I do want to end the video by pointing out that I always have and still do love Drake he is a fantastic artist he's innovated hip-hop in some of the best ways in the history of the genre and most importantly he's well spoken and sensitive and he seems to be a good man at heart when you listen to his interviews that is apparent and I think he was a great choice to be the vessel introducing the social media era celebrity template so if you're a huge Drake fan and you just clicked on this video to pick apart all of my arguments criticizing him or you think I'm just hating for clicks I get it and I really hope that I articulated myself in a way that showed I really am a fan of him and I'm only talking about this because I know he he's better than this this is a person who was indescribably influential in my life during my formative years and he's inspired me to write about music the way that I do without his confidence to be unapologetically himself who knows if Jackson's music palette would even be a thing and all that is really just to say that it shatters my heart to see my hero so non-committal so if you like Drake and you are a fan don't think I'm telling you not to be I would be a hypocrite but I want to encourage you to truly and honestly be a fan blindly liking everything he does playing all of his music as if it's gospel protecting Artistic integrity and passion that doesn't actually exist all that will do is keep Drake in a state of regression and hold us back too we have to find a way in this convoluted peer pressuring online era to like what we like to truly think about what we're consuming to take ownership over what we are engaging with somewhere along the the way Drake stopped pushing us to like what we like it doesn't mean that we can't but we have to be aware of the pressure to be surface level that's why I made this channel so we can walk away from art with something to make us better and I guess I am the hypocrite because that's not what this video is about but that's all right we don't have to take away something to make us better this time maybe we can just leave something here let's drop the peer pressure let's step away from the shallow let's learn to like what we like but most importantly let's make a promise to hold Drake accountable I'm trying to do it all tonight I got plans I got a certain Lust For Life

Channel: Jackson's Music Palate

Views: 10,593

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Id: jpecMX3KkaY

Length: 28min 45sec (1725 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2024