The Pop Corporation

The thing with Old Heads is that they can’t help but slate stuff they think is new, even though it’s kinda old hat now. Look at any YouTube comment section, and there they are, saying Justin Bieber isn’t good, even though he’s like, thirty years old now or something. Autotune is bad, and new hip hop isn’t real.

It used to be Lil Wayne they came for. Then it was Soundcloud rappers. Then mumble rappers. And evergreen, Drake’s name usually gets mentioned. Now, that’s not to say Old Heads aren’t occasionally in possession of a reasonable point, but Old Heads have such a binary view of what hip hop is, that it’s all so unoriginal when they start folding their arms and telling anyone who’ll listen that face tattoos are bad and stuff about turntablism and the four pillars and all that stuff.

Interestingly, when you search for ‘four pillars’ on Google, you’ll also get an autocomplete suggestion about heart failure medicine. Funny that, isn’t it? Strangely apt.

And so, to the artist formerly known as Mos Def, who has potentially been quoted un-warmly or whatever – Old Heads only read headlines, despite their claims about being all about the deep dives – by being asked about Drake. Drake’s first album came out in 2010, which you’ll note is over a decade ago. Nice and timely view this.

Anyway, Yasiin can only answer what he’s being asked, right? And while a guest on The Cutting Room Floor, he was asked if Drake should be regarded as hip hop, which vexed him rightly. He said: “Why you doing this to me? Drake is pop to me, in the sense like, if I was in Target in Houston and I heard a Drake song… it feels like a lot of his music is compatible with shopping. Or shopping with an edge in certain instances… it’s likeable.”

So, the headlines being published are all ‘DRAKE ISN’T REAL HIP HOP ACCORDING TO MOS DEF‘, when more accurately, they could have read ‘YASIIN BEY THINKS DRAKE MAKES LIKEABLE MUSIC‘, but alas, clickbait headlines when multiplied with Old Head shares, you need to pit artists and different styles of hip hop against each other, when really, you can like ‘Black On Both Sides’ and ‘Nothing Was The Same’ just as much as each other, for different reasons, right? Like normal people do.

However, he continued to speak: “What happens when this thing collapses? What happens when the columns start buckling? Are we not in some early stage of that, at this present hour? Are we seeing the collapse of the empire? Buying and selling, where’s the message that I can use? What’s in it for your audience apart from banging the pom-poms?”

Drake’s output of late has not been the best of his career, and there’s a lot of filler material for sure. However, if we’re talking about banging the pom-poms, is doing adverts for Visa not a bit… y’know?

By the same token, only WORST kind of music fan expects an artist to stay broke. Advertisements, these days, don’t mean what they used to. And all music fans and musicians are hypocrites if you look hard enough.

What is tiring is that, it’s got nothing to do with what Yasiin Bey has said, and nor has it really got anything to do with Drake. Artists can have opinions and artists can fall off. Of all the interesting things Bey has to say, his views on Drake are probably down the bottom of the pile.

And watching the interview, the interviewer is good natured and says she’s likes Drake’s music. Bey is seen laughing and making a broader point too. The failing is from the half-assed headlines, and the sharing by people who didn’t listen to the whole thing and just absent-mindedly shared it, with their own Old Head schtick.