Great tune this.
The key thing with drake is, is that heās a complete freak
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like queen he has a few good singles and a heap of filler on every release
is he still rumoured to be ādatingā 11 from stranger things, who is about 15?
when i saw him live his lightshow was amazing
Yeah bringing back Top Boy might be his greatest achievement. What a fucking show.
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Heās also the perfect advert for good marketing. A supremely average rapper with boring beats can become the biggest ārapperā on the planet because he was marketed perfectly.
Not sure rapper matters much. Every genre has examples of terrible artists getting massive off the same tactics 
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Thatās fair 
Personally donāt find him an average rapper. I think he actually did something quite new. That nasal tone that he has, and his lyrics, are very un-macho. Thinking back he was one of the first big rappers to do the rapping-singing switching back and forth. Thereās a lot that you can say about him but I do think his overall sound was quite a new thing, though itās obviously been replicated a lot by this point.
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Iām not going out to bat for Drake too much and I know this is an old chesnut of an argument, but regardless of whether or not it resontes with you I think itās fair to say that itās not just marketing, there are loads of people who really love his music. Most of what he puts out does nothing for me but it seems pretty clear that thereās something about his music which has an effect on a an emotional level.
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Think it goes without saying there isnāt an artist or band out there whoās popular solely on marketing.
Obviously even the lowest artists on the HGATR list are hugely important to a lot of people but thatās beside the point @paulo was making.
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I mean sure. There are no objective music opinions but he described him as āaverageā which isnāt really dismissing him, particularly not in the context of this site where most of us are into the more interesting edge cases of music genres we love.
Average is doing the work of mainstream to me here.
I just donāt really think a āeveryone is good in their own wayā both sideism is that important a point.
Your question is more valid. I canāt really comment on the evidence for or against his fame being based on marketing because I donāt know him, but I certainly do think shrewd management is an important part of what separates bands that make it big from those who donāt.
Maybe Paulo has more evidence I was only objecting to an unintentional framing that made it sound like it was peculiar to rap.
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I donāt know a lot about it, but I tend to think that the US hiphop thing is kind of its own beast when it comes to making it big. My impression has been that you basically need to have the goods when youāre starting out to get anywhere. The level of innovation is so ridiculously fast that unless youāre already established it doesnāt cut it to make something that sounds like whatās already out. Iām always amazed that I can stop following it for a year and when I come back thereās a whole new style going on and new superstars. At least thatās how its felt to me over the last ten years or so, since I started being interested.
I donāt think Iāve ever seen even videos of Drakes stuff, so have no idea how he / they have approached all that.
Score time!
Drake scores 2.02. Sandwiched between Kings Of Leon and Aerosmith!
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I think thatās what it is for me. Itās not the ubiquity, itās not the filler, itās not the dodgy texting, I just cannot abide the manās voice.
Always loved this single
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disgrace
yeah i get exactly what you mean. am quite interested in what it is that people (including me) like about some voices and not others. i think i have quite a high tolerance for a nasal voice. billy corgan comes to mind, some people hate his voice, but iāve always been into it. i really struggle with male falsetto but other people love it. i know itās just another way of saying horses for courses, but i think there must be something more to it than that.
with drake thereās this other aspect of it where his voice is not only nasal but is quite a lot higher than most other massive famous rappers, who overall tend to have pretty deep voices. itās one of the aspects that takes his music away from macho tropes i think.
Think everythingās been covered here, I definitely caught the Hotline Bling bug and listened to it loads, plus the playlist he did (with Passionfruit on it) was in heavy rotation for a while. That was before he was outed as a nonce tho.
Anyway here he is in his big moment in the Canadian version of Grange Hill:
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Have never knowingly heard him.