So Many Products

The One about Drake and Kendrick.

This post has been months in the making. You don’t have to know me long to know that I’m a Drake fan. I’ve been roasted many a time for defending him as a formidable emcee despite his capitulation to pop. “Nobody can find the pocket like him!” “Ok, he has ghostwriters now, but they’re all writing raps for him with the flows and style that he created!” “He’s a sonic architect!” “A curator!” “One of the most versatile artists of our time!” “The male Beyonce!” I’ve done my best. Needless to say, the events of the past few weeks have been a dark time for Champagne’s fans as we’ve watched him bow out of the very battle that he begged for. I didn’t see it coming.

But, truthfully, I’ve been wanting to write about Drake since January when Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def) said he made Target music:

He apologized a few days later, foreshadowing the move that J. Cole would make when he dropped and, then, infamously un-dropped his Kendrick diss “7-Minute Drill.” In both instances, the damage had been done. Bey’s criticism of Drake wasn’t that Drake was a product, but that he was only a product. That his production was completely devoid of political function, with nothing to offer but a vapid commitment to commerce. Drake could never be a comrade. Ironically, between Drake and Kendrick, Drake is the one who signed an open letter to President Biden urging a ceasefire in Gaza. But this, too, - the barb that Drake brazenly adheres to a lower ethic while maintaining a higher position of cultural dominance - foreshadowed the angle that Kendrick would take in each one of his diss records.

Unfortunately for Bey, as he continues to stand beside his Black Star group mate Talib Kweli who was banned from Twitter 4 years ago for obsessively harassing a black woman following her discussion of colorism in hip-hip and the trend of rappers almost exclusively marrying light-skinned women; and Kendrick, as he has yet to meaningfully address the allegations of domestic violence and his own romantic investments in colorism, their appeals to virtue fall short. If we agree that abusing black women reveals a dearth of revolutionary capacity, then Bey and Kendrick actually aren’t so different from Drake when it comes to integrity, political or otherwise.

Still, there was never a question that Kendrick would win the battle of authenticity. Drake acknowledged as much with a subtle shot at Kendrick in the 2015 record “100” - "I would have all of your fans if I didn't go pop and stayed on some conscious shit.” Kendrick has always been playing a different game. He’s always styled himself as a race man, dedicated to the uplift and betterment of black people, whatever that has meant for him at whatever point he’s been at in his career. A principled, if imperfect, patriarch. A product with different marketing. To the contrary, Drake’s project for the past decade has been to convince us of his superior wits. His claim to fame hasn’t only been his sustained success, but the presentation of himself as more sophisticated and strategic than his peers, principles be damned.

Joe Budden has speculated that the reason so many rappers have rallied behind Kendrick (in addition to Drake’s documented history of pursuing relationships with women who are already in relationships) may be because Drake is co-owner of a record label that gives him a percentage of ownership of Kendrick and other artist’s publishing. Perhaps one chess move too many. But this is the exact kind of maneuvering for which he’s been celebrated both inside and outside of the industry - understanding the market enough to become the market. In a culture that prides itself on having its own set of homegrown capitalist predators, Drake’s assertion of ruthlessness as he’s forged his path in hip-hop has been just as highly regarded as Kendrick’s assertion of righteousness. There’s always been more than one way to make a dollar and demand respect. Drake is a descendant in the Jay Z/Roc Nation brunch lineage of honoring those who’ve achieved black capitalist excellence by any means necessary.

So, Kendrick handled Drake by doing the very thing that everyone thought Drake was singularly good at in his class of rappers - ruthless outmaneuvering. Not only by dropping back to back records and making the last one a certified hit (i.e. re-purposing Drake’s strategy against Meek Mill), but also by removing copyright restrictions from his tracks so that content creators could monetize their reactions without receiving cease and desist letters (i.e. manipulating the market to his advantage). There’s something surreal and awe-inspiring about watching someone get beat at their own game in real time. At every turn, it was Drake-esque.

And Kendrick won. If not with word play, then with shock value; if not with shock value, then with preparation; if not with preparation, then with a more well-executed appeal to culture and tradition. In the end, Drake’s biggest failing wasn’t that he was a product, but that there were limits to his omnipotence. In hip-hop, predation has never been disqualifying. What has been routinely disqualifying, though, is when the power someone says they have isn’t as totalizing as they say it is. There are no humans involved. Only slaves and gods.