To me Aubrey Graham is an interesting person. He went from being an original character on the hit teen drama Degrassi to being a Grammy nominated recording artist. You have to respect that. Honestly it’s quite a feat.
This young man came up on mixtapes and hype. Very few of us can forget Comeback Season or the ever popular So Far Gone. Even if the video for the hottest song on that mixtape (i.e. “Best I Ever Had”) was something of a flop, he was poised to be a new face in the world of hip-hop. I mean, he was on almost every song dropping those punch lines so perfectly. He and all his features made you really curious as to what the debut would look like. Even more, people wondered would he sign with Cash Money.
Of course he did and we all know what happened next.
Then came Thank Me Later. We thanked him then. That monster of an album was lead by the lead single “Over”. It also gave us the Kanye West produced “Find Your Love” and the very popular “Miss Me”.
Even with Grammy nominations, features, endorsements, interviews, and all the trappings of success surrounding him that usual question started playing through everyone’s minds-what’s next? I admit to being one of those people who always think that sort of thing when a new album is released. How much further could Drizzy Drake go? We were all wondering and waiting.
The features, production, and songwriting kept coming as we all sat on the edge of our seats in silent waiting.
Everybody remembers the leak of his entire Take Care album, right? Kudos to him for taking it in stride and just telling the masses to “enjoy”.
When it released, it was to mixed reviews. I have read reviews from both sides of the issue. Some people loved his sophomore effort and touted it as better than his debut. Others were highly critical of it, saying that Drake was soft and whines too much. Opinions are essentially based on who presents them so I cannot say who is wrong or right. All I can say what I think. My personal opinion is that Drake’s second album was pretty well put together. Granted there are moments when I am disappointed, the biggest being when he sampled the iconic Juvenile track “Back That Ass Up” for his song “Practice”. Other than that Take Care plays rather well.
But as with anything, success breeds haters.
Bloggers have made many a joke about Drake, going as far as to call him a “pillow whisperer”. This all compounds more onto that image people have of hip-hop artists being dangerous, tough, and thuggish. Drake isn’t that. People would do well to understand that.
Hip-hop artists have also been rather low on Drake, too.
The best examples of that would be two diss records from two well established artists. Those artists? Ludacris and Common.
Ludacris recently released a new mixtape. It is entitled 1.21 Gigawatts (Back to the First Time). One of the tracks on this really amazing mixtape is called “Bada Boom”. In this song he disses both Drake and Big Sean. Interesting, really.
Common has also released a diss track against Drake. I guess he’s not so enlightened that he can’t beef.
Hell, even Chris Brown’s “Marvin’s Room” remix is a low key shot at Drake. I mean, we all know the situations surrounding Rihanna and what not.
All this leads me to ask this: is there something about Drizzy? What about this guy engenders such hatred within fans, bloggers, and peers? Personally if I were Drake I would see it as an honor that two guys who’ve had such longevity in the game like Common and Luda saw fit to even mention me, good or bad. The rest I would chock up to people hating success and wanting to see you fall.
I hate to quote a movie here but a line from Spider-Man seems to fit here:
“But the one thing they love to see more than a hero is to see a hero fail, fall, die trying…”
Maybe that’s the same for rappers, too.
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