OPINION: The main problem is that he’s not that good at the main thing MCs do: flow.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Listen, if Drake is in your Top 5 greatest MCs list, then your list sucks. And if Drake is your No. 1 or 2 best rapper of all time, you should be excommunicated from hip-hop culture. I said what I said. I don’t care if you’re Dave East or Kanye West. People have been making the case against Drake for a while — “Drake seems to have his sights set on a throne that doesn’t necessarily coincide with soccer mom-friendly pop hits,” wrote Pages Magazine — but I still see too many people trying to make a case for Drake. Stop the madness.
I’m not saying you can’t like Drake. I like Drake. He’s made lots of hits. He’s possibly the biggest rapper ever as far as sales and streaming numbers. But if you’re a real hip-hop head, you know that there are standards by which we judge MCs. Maybe Drake is your “favorite” MC. That means you like him. That’s cool. But when you say he’s the greatest, you’re saying he’s greater than everyone else and that’s just nuts.
There are several criteria by which we can judge MCs—the sound of your voice, the number of landmark albums and songs you’ve dropped, the quality of your lyrics. Under lyrics, we can talk about topics, wordplay, diction, vocabulary, ingenuity, metaphors, double-entendres and more. Drake’s voice is very sonorous. His voice is easy on the ears which helps explain why he’s so popular. His lyrics are often catchy but rarely are they deep or complex. That’s not what he’s about. That’s fine but compared to the elites, Drake’s lyrics, his topics, his wordplay, his metaphors, his double entendres — all underwhelming. He’s lacking in that crucial area compared to the all-time greats. But to me, there’s another area where the gulf between Drake and the elites is even larger: flow.
The first and central criterion I use to judge MCs is flow. It’s probably the most complex and important aspect of MCing, and there are academic papers written on it. How do you relate to a beat? How do you glide and slice through sound? Do you create a rhythm as you move through the beat so you become another drumline within the track? Can you get in the pocket rhythmically so we feel you hitting the rhyme in your soul? It’s not enough to be on top of the beat; a real MC will be a little bit behind the beat — that’s where people start to sound really cool on the mic.
When I first hear a hip-hop song, usually I can’t make out most of the words but I pay close attention to the flow and if it’s enticing, I want to keep listening. Flow is one of the best parts of hip-hop — I live to hear the way great MCs effortlessly slice through a beat. For me, you could be talking about nothing but if you’re flowing through the beat in a beautiful way, I’m home. I love the way the most elite MCs rhythmically attack their sonic environment — I’m talking about Jay-Z, Nas, Lil Wayne, Andre 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop, Rakim.
The way rappers interact with the track is always really compelling even when I have little idea what they’re rapping about. Drake, on the other hand, flows in a way that sounds more like a singer in the talk part of the song. He flows in a way that recalls slam poetry. Flow is not what we listen to Drake for. He’s got many gifts as an entertainer, including immense charisma, but in the main category that defines MCs, he’s just too far away from the elites to be considered one of them. He’s not terrible but he’s just too far from elite level to be considered one of them. It would be like saying an NBA player who’s an average shooter is the best player of all time. If he’s not crushing the No. 1 test for MCs then he can’t be the best.
When Drake fans try to make the case for Drake, they always leap to sales and say things like numbers don’t lie. Yes, he’s sold a lot, but numbers are not really relevant to the hip-hop GOAT conversation and there’s a good reason for that. To do massive numbers like six million albums — which Drake did on “Views,” “Take Care” and “Scorpion” — you have to activate millions of pop music fans. Drake is selling to people who don’t usually listen to hip-hop as well as to people who love hip-hop. That’s fine, and it’s an achievement to reach people who don’t usually love hip-hop, but people who aren’t hip-hop fans don’t usually respond to the best hip-hop. And if we want to correlate sales and hip-hop greatness then you’d have to conclude that Eminem, Kanye, and Post Malone are some of the greatest ever because they’re among the top-selling rappers ever.
More to the point, if you include sales as a key metric, thus giving Drake an edge over someone like Nas because he has only once sold more than three million albums that means that you’re letting non-hip-hop fans have the deciding vote on who’s the best MC. That’s insane. If we got 20 serious hip-hop heads to come together to choose once and for all who’s the best MC of all time, would we be OK if 20 people who don’t know much about hip-hop wandered in and said they too wanted to vote? Of course not. The MC GOAT has to come out of the feelings of people who live for hip-hop and deeply understand it, not tourists. And since we’re imagining things, let’s put 20,000 serious hip-hop fans in a stadium and then have the MCs come in — Jay, Nas, Kendrick, 3000, Wayne, Snoop, Big, Pac, and … Drake Who do you think would rock the crowd? Who would make people holler? And who would seem out of his depth?
I’m sorry you can’t look seriously at flow, lyrics and voice, and then say Drake belongs with those guys. It’s one thing to like him. I like him. But when you say he’s one of the best, I want to vomit. He’s a great entertainer and an important part of the modern landscape, but he ain’t no all-time elite MC. Stop. Being a mature hip-hop fan means knowing that Drake may be fun, but he’s not the greatest MC of all time. Not even close.
Touré is a host and Creative Director at theGrio. He is the host of the podcast “Toure Show” and the podcast docuseries “Who Was Prince?” He is also the author of seven books including the Prince biography Nothing Compares 2 U and the ebook The Ivy League Counterfeiter. Look out for his upcoming podcast Being Black In the 80s.
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