Drake is African American
It
feels ridiculous to have to say this: Drake is African American. Drake, born
Aubrey Graham in a city where almost one in ten people are black, is black.
Toronto's greatest civic triumphalist since Jane Jacobs is black.
He
is an African American man as much as any other African American man. And yet
Drake's own identity - his nationality, his mixed race background that includes
Jewish heritage and upbringing, the neighborhood he once lived in, the schools
he went to - is often taken to mean that his black experience is somehow
inauthentic. While certainly not the first artist to have this kind of analysis
imposed on him, Drake's profile means that his art in particular has been prominently
used to deny his black experience when it doesn't conform to someone else's
narrow vision of race.
Kendrick
Lamar, apparently, makes music that speaks to the "black experience."
Drake, who is half-Jewish, is accused of being inauthentic and catering to
white people because he grapples publicly with his own racial background. Yes,
this is a real thing that someone argued. So what, if anything, does this kind
of juxtaposition of Kendrick Lamar and Drake have to offer? Maybe you do find
Drake's music to be questionable, maybe you think his lyrics misrepresent the
Toronto he came from or is a part of - but neither of those things takes away
from his blackness. Nor does the sentiment that Drake's middle class upbringing
and wealth distance him from blackness. All the juxtaposition in this article
teaches us is that there are narrow and pre-conceived ideas of what black
experience is and especially about what being a black Canadian means. It still
feels ridiculous to have to say it: Drake is black.
Trying
to qualify or caveat his blackness because of his life experience, or trying to
undermine his authenticity with misguided and misinformed hot takes on black
culture, is a tactic that ignores the beauty and diversity of black experience
and black people.
I
feel this is so important because we as humans have the tendecy to give an
identity to people, meaning we label and define people based
on stereotypes and pre-conceived notions. More than anything, it is
important that we as humans, who interact with people of all races, recognize
our assumptions as misguided. So again, Drake is African American, it’s
time critics and listeners recognize that.
Cited:
http://canadalandshow.com/article/sorry-music-journalists-drake-black
Jack,
ReplyDeleteI am glad you decided to write a post about Drake, especially with his new album, Views From the Six. The best song on it is undoubtedly "Child's Play." I think that the general public tends to dismiss Drake's experience as an African American artist because his music often conforms to white ideals in the way that it is produced and the themes that are discussed on his albums.
I don't think that his experience as an African American is disregarded because of his Canadian, Jewish upbringing or because he is from New Orleans. Compared to other rappers, like Tupac, Biggie, or Kendrick Lamar, he has not endured struggles as socially challenging as they have - at least, not that we are aware of.
Life and the human experience is lived on a spectrum. Human resistance to believe in a spectrum stems from need and inclination to find comfort in in certainty and absolutes.The commonly perpetuated idea that the universe is best characterized the dichotomous relationship between absolute opposites. This attribution subsequently leaks into our perception of society and human identity. What is problematic with this concept's application into the social realm is that it neglects to acknowledge the spectrum's existence in nature as well as far as the electromagnetic spectrum, the charges on an atom cation neutral atom or anion, the nature of the genetic expression of allelic co-dominance etc. We far too often have the tendency to confine things to a pretty neat little box ironically because it makes us comfortable all while simultaneously forcing those further from the extremes into discomfort.
ReplyDeleteWell thought out comment and blog post. Drake is just another human being like us, who has a job. His job is to make money and provide for himself. Fortunately, life handed him some pretty good cards; his gets to express himself how we wants in a form of art while making millions of dollars from the massive amount of attention his art, thus he receives. While he does this, we get to listen to his art because he is popular and we get to decide what we think of his art. We also get to judge him based upon our interpretion of his art even though we don't know him. Who are we to judge this man's life based upon our interpretations of his art or the image he puts off? Of course the things Drake does are discredited by the public. That is how society is wired at the moment, racism is a real thing and it is inherent. African American slavery, as well as the evolutionary differences in physiology present in all humans that influence our perceptions of others, make anyone who is alive and capable of reading/writing inherently racist to some degree.
DeleteThe reason Drake isn't as associated with his race as some other rappers is mostly because of his subject matter. He doesn't write about the things traditionally associated with rap culture, describing race issues like Kendrick and NWA or describing the "Hard Knock Life" like Jay-Z or the "thug life" like so many rappers from the west coast. He raps about emotion and relationships, he sings in his songs to give them feeling, and does hip hop like few, if ever, have ever done before.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion this doesn't disassociate him from his race so much as it disassociates him from the black rappers who have come before him, but the problem lies in that many people can't tell the difference between those two things.
Drake's experience as an artist and member of the black community validates the works he has released for us to listen to. Questioning his "blackness" due to his upbringing and where he was born does nothing more than draw more attention to differing levels of "blackness".
ReplyDeleteI think that Drake has a very different approach to his medium, he didn't have to sell drugs or participate in gang violence, so he must bring a different sound and message to the listener because he cannot rap about an experience that didn't happen to him. His message is just as true as his peers and his upbringing shouldn't discredit what he has offer to the listeners.