Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
There are two things I will never understand. Why is Drake so mad, and why are some of y’all still saying he’s a great rapper? I was forced to listen to the new songs he put out with “For All the Dogs Scary Hours Edition” even though I hated “For All the Dogs.” Why did I feel forced to listen? Because people said, oh, Drake really rapped his ass off on these songs. I said, maybe they’re right. What if he did? So I listened. And now I have to come here to say do you guys listen to music, or do you just skim through it?
I dug into “Red Button” first. I read the lyrics and everything. Color me unimpressed. As usual, we have the slam-poetry flow where Drake seems like he’s talking more than rapping. He shows no deep or sophisticated relationship to the beat, and that, for me, is the core aspect of MCing. A rapper’s relationship to the beat is everything, and Drake gives me none of the verbal rhythms that I listen to hip-hop for. They say Beyoncé is always on beat. Why don’t they say Drake is always off beat?
In the first part of his “Red Button” verse, Drake is furiously rhyming a ton of words that end in -ated. In the second part, he’s rhyming words that end in -ation. To me, it sounds like someone wrote down a bunch of words that rhyme and strung them together. This is not how you write great rhymes. Great MCs tend to make words rhyme in ways you wouldn’t expect. They make pairings that a rhyming dictionary would never include. T-Pain…
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