

Instead, Drake, born Aubrey Graham, a Canadian with an African-American father who was raised by his white mother in an upper-middle class neighborhood and who starred as a teen in the Canadian TV show Degrassi: The Next Generation, continues in Kanye’s middle-class rap tradition of introspection instead of street-talk. While Thank Me Later boasts the kind of strictly A-list guest spots (Jay, Wayne, Jeezy) and producers (Kanye, Swizz Beats, Timbaland) that are the hallmark of event releases, in this post-808’s and Heartbreak world–and can we all agree now that Kanye’s album was a visionary classic that was slept on because of its pettiness and misogyny?–and because of Drake’s ability to sing hooks and unique backstory, the album doesn’t follow the same boring formula of one-for-the-street, one-for-the-ladies that has made so many original voices sound generic while still failing to sell. Drake, like Nelly before him, sings nearly as much as he raps and constructs songs that more closely follow pop song structure. It was probably Nelly ten years ago and that’s not actually a bad comparison. It’s hard to remember the last time there was an emerging rapper with the kind of real crossover pop stardom potential as Drake clearly has. XXL has reached out to Alpha Date for a comment.Drake is the great record industry hope of 2010 or at least the hip-hop version.

Whether or not it's all in good rap fun is unclear, but the streaming numbers appear to be doing the talking for them both. On the other hand, Drake has commandeered the record for most weeks at the top of the Rolling Stone's Artist 500 chart and has consistently been the biggest artist of the year.ĭrake and Kanye have been throwing both direct and subliminal jabs at one another leading up to the release of their albums and also once their projects have arrived. Additionally, the project's entire 27-song tracklist landed on RS' Top 100 Songs Chart, snagging the second most simultaneous entries in the publication's chart history. The only artist to accomplish this feat was Drake himself with his 2018 album, Scorpion, which earned over 725 million streams within seven days.ĭespite CLB out-streaming Donda, Kanye's album broke the record for the biggest Rolling Stone debut of 2021, thus far. Apparently, the Toronto rapper's offering is also on par to break the record for biggest streaming debut in Alpha Data history.
