Drake is not the best rapper in the world.
Sorry, folks, but it’s true. And I know this may seem hard to believe for many Emporia State students because when you listen to your rap station on Pandora or you surf the internet or when you’re watching TV, there is Drake singing “Hotline Bling” or dancing in some goofy meme.
I have nothing against Drake. Actually, I would argue with anyone that he is definitely one of the better mainstream rappers out right now, which is mostly because there are so many bad mainstream rappers/singers (Fetty Wap, Young Thug, Rich Homie Quan,).
Drake has dropped some pretty dope singles this past year with the exception of “Charged Up,” but I have to ask, why don’t as many ESU students know about Kendrick Lamar’s new “Untitled 2” single? Or the fact that west coast native, The Game released two full rap albums in “The Documentary 2” and “The Documentary 2.5”?
As someone who has been listening to hip hop since birth, I can assure you that the answer to this question is not that Kendrick and Game are bad rappers. Just saying that is laughable.
The answer can be summed up in one word: Apple.
Last year, Drake signed a contract with Apple, and ever since then, his music has taken over just about every media outlet.
The problem with this is that with the help of Apple, Drake has single-handedly shut out music by all other rappers.
So, when Drake gets in a public beef with another rapper such as, Meek Mill, it doesn’t really matter what diss track Meek comes out with, because Apple has extreme influence over what people are listening to on a day-to-day basis. If followers of the Drake vs. Meek Mill beef would have voted on the winner based off of the singles released, they could easily make the argument that the diss tracks were a tie.
This argument would only be hard to make since hardly anyone has even heard Meek Mill’s diss track, “Just Wanna Know.” This is a problem.
People are being led to believe one rapper’s view point over everyone else’s even though they may have something those rappers more important to say besides a “hotline that’s blinging.”
With the way that Drake has taken over the rap game since his deal with Apple, I can’t help but think that ESU students would automatically assume that Drake would fatally defeat conscious rappers out there such as Kendrick Lamar, J Cole or Kanye West. I don’t think this would be the case if students would be more vigilant musically.
Drake isn’t on top of the rap game not only because of his deteriorating music, but also because he’s become more mainstream through Apple.
