Naka on Wood

dominickbrady:

An excerpt of an editorial by someone with unimpeachable taste in Hip Hop: Hexmurda (manager for Black Milk, Elzhi & Guilty Simpson and the funniest guy on twitter)

Click the link for the entire piece written on 9/2/09

By hexmurda

I don’t hate Drake.

There, I said it. Don’t know the dude, never met him. I think he’s a talented cat, rappin’ and actin’ and sangin’ and all that. He’s even got the only record spinnin’ on urban radio that I don’t hate more than the KKK hates Obama. But that doesn’t make him the savior of Hip-Hop. Not by a longshot. However, apparently some real CEO’s (not the n****as in your hood with business cards for their record label and their car wash, with numbers scratched out) these n****as inhabit whole floors of skyscrapers and have anointed Drake “NEXT.” I can see it now, intra-office memos written in invisible ink, phone calls where coded phrases like “bury the sun” are uttered, secret communiques transported by carrier pigeon. Clandestine meetings on park benches where identical briefcases are exchanged. Limos pulling up to a rinky dink bodega in Brooklyn, with the shrouded occupants going through a hidden door behind the counter, down a secret passageway lined with platinum plaques. The passage leading to an underground fortress, that either looks like a witches’ coven or the f***ing NORAD bunker. They’re all here. All of them. Morris. Bronfman. Cohen. Rhone. Liles. Reid. Greenwald. Iovine. All of them. Sitting in thrones at a huge table carved out of an ancient oak tree, drinking from golden goblets filled with a substance that bears an uncanny resemblance to blood. These are the people who make the decisions. They decide whose careers thrive and who ends up on a f***ing milk carton in XXL. These are the folks who operate the proverbial “MACHINE,” and they can George Bush the button whenever they feel like it. And they have convened for one reason, and one reason only. DRAKE…

Edwyn Huang, Hiphopdx.com

This guys needs a 90’s gangsta rap cliche (stat!) so he can be happy and stop writing about today’s music.

Like many, I’m a Drake fan but I don’t think he’s the new hip hop savior or anything like that (my current ‘new class’ favs are Wale, Bobby Ray & Blu tho). Drake kinda reminds me of a sangin’, less hardcore Big Daddy Kane the way he switches up pleasing the ladies and massaging a 16.  He’s done it well so far.

I don’t think Mr. Edwyn Huang has ever listened to a Drake mixtape or anything outside of his singles. Drake’s popular for his ‘girl songs’ but anybody that listens to him knows that’s not all he makes. The nigga can rap and Huang didn’t make an argument against that because he can’t. Drake has dope rhymes and dope songs. You can dislike what he makes but you can’t say it’s unmerited because the very fact that he has 3 projects out and does shows gives him merit.There’s a lane for every artist these days but all lanes are not equal. Accept that and you’ll find you won’t have room to complain about today’s hip hop music.

Mr. Huang seems to have a problem with how fast Drake’s risen (in his eyes) but this is a new era where the old rules for rising to the top don’t apply anymore. If Drake’s album drops and it sucks then I can partially understand the critique but I didn’t read a valid critique of Drake’s actual body of work (albeit three mixtapes) in this “analysis.”  Huang’s arguments seem to be,
Drake only makes songs for girls (wrong but what if he did?)
Drake has no perspective (wrong, see The Calm, etc)
He rose too fast (but he says that’s ok for Kid Cudi….o….k?)

Mr. Huang seems to be pissed that the old school barometers of street credibility and scars from the NYC battling cirlces no longer apply.  He makes passes for the guys of recent success that didn’t go through that ie Kanye and Cudi, but seems to feel Drake is the last straw.  Huang can’t let this mulatto kid from Canada get a pass!  After all he apologizes to his Mom and couldn’t get it up in his teen drama show so he can’t possibly make Hip Hop music for 30-something males like me!  Therefore he doesn’t deserve to be successful and is a represenation of everything wrong with the hip hop music today!

Come back with less filler and actual facts.

~ DRAKE

The fact that Drake’s favorite rapper is my favorite rapper [Phonte] puts him in the running as one of my new favorite rappers.

Here’s another link w/ Phonte on Drake, R&B for men, LB & his other group, The Foreign Exchange