Historically, Hip-Hop champions whatever the inverse is of a preening mixed-race Canadian former actor. And yet, Drake spent the 2010s as greatest trick the Devil ever pulled off: achieving Biggest Rapper Alive™ status.
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However, anti-Aubrey sentiment not involving his actual music has bubbled up slowly over recent years: There’s that whole “friendship” with “Stranger Things’” Millie Bobby Brown, and accusations that he was grooming her via consistent text message conversations when she was 14 and he was a grown-ass man.
There’s the years-spanning “culture vulture” sentiment that Drake hops on the musical wave du jour and cuts out the creator (not to mention that patois accent that evokes the Meagan Good WTF meme every time we hear it).
And, of course, there’s also the wanton misogyny that undergirds his entire persona: Look no further than the controversy behind the lyrics and cover art to last year’s “Slime You Out”...much ado for an aggressively mid track.
That is by no means an exhaustive list of Drake complaints. But he’s managed to hold on to his crown, exceeding his closest peers – Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole – in sheer popularity. His album releases remain stay-up-‘til-midnight events; posts on his 146 million-follower Instagram account make headlines.
But the last month or so has felt…different, thanks to a light friendly-competition salvo from Kendrick on “Like That” from Future and Metro Boomin’s March album “We Don’t Trust You,” which avalanched into a fusillade of tracks and Instagram posts from fellow A-list artists attacking Drake. The cemetery dirt over his body might be Kendrick’s trenchant, Earth-stopping six-plus-minute track “euphoria,” which has trended since it dropped Tuesday morning (April 30).
Just as I was preparing to file this piece, Kendrick circled the block on Drizzy, dropping “6:16 in LA” with a few more banana clips to ensure that there will be no bigger conversation in the first week of May than Drake’s boots getting smoked.
He’s now on the back foot with artists who were putatively his homies — men with whom he crafted chart-topping hits and full collaborative albums. He somehow ran afoul of Future, his collaborator on 2015’s popular “What a Time to Be Alive” project to the point that Future allowed Kendrick to get his shit off on “Like That.”
Drake gave Rick Ross one of his finest features, but Rozay has given us the funniest content from this beef in “#BBLDrake,” several shit-talking Instagram stories and an official diss track, “Champagne Problems.” Even Kanye West inserted himself in the beef like a former fat kid who now has revenge money.
J. Cole, who did a mini-tour with Drake in March, let Nas down and took himself off the game board, leaving Aubs to fight alone. (Arguably, Cole’s presence on Future and Metro’s follow-up album is an anti-Drake stance). Could this all be industry histrionics among friends? Perhaps, but a lot of this shit sounds personal – especially K. Dot’s last two tracks.
None of the men coming for Drake are saints, but they’ve shined an unprecedented lens over the totality of Aubrey Graham, forcing the rest of us to assess why we’ve allowed that cornball Canuck to get away with his tomfoolery for so long.
Issa Rae’s “Insecure” character said in Season 1 that Drake “really gets us” in response to Daniel’s insistence that “Every Black girl who went to college likes Drake.” The irony there is that Black girls who went to college are often the first to call out Drake’s brand of “You’ll never love your current man like you did me f*** your happiness” toxicity.
Indeed, Drake’s naked disdain for women is getting called out more often these days: Taking wildly unnecessary shots at Rihanna years after their breakup didn’t go over well with folks and led his “F***in’ Problems” collaborator A$AP Rocky to lob his own shots in defense of his babymoms.
In this battle, Drake’s former collaborators surprised me by harping on what’s been glaringly obvious for years: Drizzy’s disconnect with Black Americans. Yeah, he’s technically a Black rapper with proximity to Black artists everyone loves, and he has a colorfully Black daddy whose family has roots in Black Southern American music.
But peel back the layers of his carefully curated posturing and you’re left with a dude whose connection to Black culture feels more performative. Look no further than the fact that he admitted to “never really noticing color” – something that’s never come from the mouth of a self-respecting Black American.
Fair or not, Drake evokes the feeling that he’s a shade (or maybe two) from feeling like the guest in the House of Hip-Hop that Eminem admits he is. He reminds me of what comedian Aries Spears once said about Key & Peele: He’s a Black man cosplaying white folks’ idea of a Black man.
Of course, none of this would be as glaring if Drake was still making good music against which he could buttress his bullshit. His newer “ballads” in which he hits a vocal range as high as an ant’s belly don’t slap like they did a decade ago, and he has nothing else new or interesting to say in Hip-Hop. The OVO camp beats don’t even hit like they did. He peaked with “Nothing Was The Same,” which will be 11 years old in September.
I think the 15-year “Drake Experiment” might be drawing to a close. He’s already lost the battle against Kendrick, as he did the one against Pusha T six years ago. He has all the popularity and capital to move into his next venture that doesn’t involve stepping into a record booth. He should do so quietly – and without ever saying “n***a” again.
Straight From 
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