Drake: Canada, Cash Money and the Corruption of Old School Hip-Hop

"We don't dress alike, we don't rap alike. I shine different, I rhyme different. Only thing you got is some years on me. Man, f*ck you and your time difference."

-Drake, on being criticized by other rappers

If you were to read a quick bio about Drake back when he was a teenager, you would probably have never pegged him as a potential rapper, much less a rapper of such astronomical mainstream success.  Born Aubrey Graham Drake, he was raised in Toronto, Canada, in a wealthy suburb called Forest Hill. He mother is Jewish, and Drake attended a Jewish private school for nearly all of his education. This sort of suburban upbringing puts Drake far away from the street life celebrated by rappers like Nas, Jay-Z and the Notorious B.I.G.  Many hip-hop aficionados criticize Drake for symbolizing the corruption of the rap and hip-hop genre, but in reality, Drake is a symbol of rap's new mainstream meaning and function.

The Early Years

Drake was born in Toronto to a Jewish Canadian mother and and African-American father from Memphis, Tennessee. His parents divorced when he was five years old, and Drake stayed Canada with his mother. Like most young Canadian boys, Drake played hockey and attended a high school with an international baccalaureate program. Drake, when asked about his childhood, said that his childhood was hard, and claimed that he and his mother never had much money. According to Drake, from a Canadian perspective, he was living the hard life. However, when he visited his father in Memphis, he was told that he "was the furtherest thing from 'hood," almost perfectly foreshadowing the criticism he faces now in the height of his rap career. One of his friends in high school had a father involved in television, and landed Drake a role on the popular Canadian television show Degrassi. Drake eventually decided to drop out of high school to pursue his artistic career. In the show, Drake's character, Jimmy Brooks, raps in a talent show. Drake's exposure to rap during his acting career is largely credited with his rapping success today.

Making Music: Mixtapes and Money

"I write poems in these songs, dedicated to the fun sex."

-Drake  in Poetic Justice

Though Drake didn't start out in the inner-city, he still earned his career. Between 2006 and 2009, he put out several mixtapes, showcasing his raps, singing and lyrical ability.  Songs like "Best I Ever Had" and "Successful" were big hits on the radio. His instant popularity with mainstream listeners got the attention of rapper Lil Wayne, who signed Drake onto the Young Money/Cash Money record label.

Drake's career was off to a promising start. He had signed with a well-known label, his breakthrough mixtape So Far Gone was hailed as one of the best mixtapes released in modern music, and Pitchfork Media hailed it as "one of the most compulsively listenable mixtapes." However, his next albums, Thank Me Later  and Take Care  did not resonate with the critics. Rolling Stone  criticized Drake's persona as a man "with a Jay-Z level ego and a Charlie Brown, feel sorry for me, soul." They also said that the album art depicted Drake in a way that made him look like his dog had just been run over.

Take Care album cover

Break from Tradition and Criticism

Drake bragged in "Best I Ever Had" that the "buzz so big I could probably sell a blank disc." Despite the skepticism of many veteran music critics, Drake put his money where his mouth is. Take Care went platinum and The New York Times and Los Angeles Times ranked it as the number one album of the year. Take Care truly began to show Drake's departure from the traditions of the rap genre. In the late 1970s, when rap began to take the Bronx by storm, artists like Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Kool Herc made the music about gathering community and creating a culture for the people forgotten within the impoverished areas of America. Later on, rappers like Public Enemy used rap to send a political message about the plight of African-Americans and the broken system. As Biggie said in "Juicy," "this is dedicated to all the teachers that told me I'd never amount to nothing, to all the people that lived above the buildings I was hustling in front of that called the police on me when I was just trying to make some money to feed my daughter, and all the n*ggas in the struggle." Rap began as a venue of expression for those who had the system against them and offered a message of hope and commiseration. So, where would Drake, a kid from the Canadian suburbs, fit into the rap game? For Drake, the answer was easy. He didn't need to fit the mold of old school rap when the new definition of hip-hop suited him just fine.

Over the past decade, rap has become more and more popular with the mainstream culture and, by extension, has become more mainstream. Instead of focusing on the hardship of life in the ghetto and sending a political message, hip-hop began to cater to a wider American audience and focused on the things that sell best: money, sex and alcohol. When Cosmopolitan Magazine interviewed Drake, he compared rapping to sex. In "HYFR (Hell Ya Fucking Right)," Drake truly illustrates his distinction from older rap music. Focusing on girls he's been with and all the partying he does, the video for "HYFR" features clips from both his bat mitzvahs (yes, he had two). With his money, shameless partying and unique heritage, Drake couldn't be more different from the rappers of old. 

"HYFR" music video

Since rap is now produced for kids in the suburbs, Drake, with his suburban upbringing, resonated with them even more than his old-school peers. Drake's party lifestyle certainly got the media's attention. Lists of Drake's alleged flings were published online  and stories of his tumultuous relationship with singer Rihanna (which caused his feud with singer Chris Brown) were also splashed across tabloids all over America. But nothing caught the American public on fire like Drake's motto: YOLO. YOLO stands for "you only live once" and debuted in Drake's song "The Motto," featuring Lil Wayne. The phrase immediately became a trending topic on Twitter and actor Zac Efron even got the acronym tattooed on the inside of his wrist. However, the acronym soon became the focus of lots of scrutiny. Many people used the phrase as an excuse to do stupid things, and a young, aspiring rapper tweeted YOLO about driving drunk and died minutes later. The Washington Post  called YOLO "the new acronym you'll love to hate" and The Huffington Post called YOLO the worst word of 2012. Actors on a recent episode of Saturday Night Live made a song mocking the phrase. But for most rap fans, the lack of lyrical content was the most alarming. After all, the lines "we got Santa Margherita by the liter, she know even if I'm f*cking with her, I don't really need her" certainly don't have the impact of a Tupac song. Drake's songs are pretty much on par with most pop songs: they are all about break ups and drinking the night away, with no recollection of the political movement from which hip-hop came. This is not to say that Drake doesn't respect the history of his genre: in "Marvin's Room," Drake pays homage to Marvin Gaye, because it was recorded in the same studio Gaye once owned. Still, the majority of his works lack the sophistication of his predecessors.

SNL Lonely Island "YOLO" parody music video

Though "The Motto" won't earn any awards in a poetry slam, Drake and the new age of hip-hop are here to stay. Kids across America, whether they hail from the inner-city or the suburbs, love the new sound of hip-hop and its focus on the party life. Artists like Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne also push this new content, making the hip-hop charts today seem like a far cry from the rooftops of the Bronx in the 1980s.  You can hate on Drake all you want, but the money flow doesn't lie. And, perhaps most importantly, despite your hate, Drake will continue to rap his way to the top.