Drake
In 2009, Drake's So Far Gone mixtape started a ripple that turned into a flood. The freely downloadable release earned him a pair of Grammy nominations and – along with his first album the following year, Thank Me Later – marked a shift in popular music that could prove to be in the same league as James Brown's pioneering funk in 1965.
Drake's sophomore album, Take Care, debuted on Tuesday to a changed landscape. The languid sound of Thank Me Later stunned observers and divided critics when it was released, but today, the music industry is grasping at Drake's coattails and his success has opened a flight path for likeminded artists such as Frank Ocean and The Weeknd. So how did he do it?
Those who paid attention to So Far Gone – beyond wondering how a Degrassi actor hooked up with Lil Wayne – heard tracks like Successful, a hushed ode to ambition assembled by Drake's producer, Noah "40" Shebib. There was also Drake's versioning of indie chanteuse Lykke Li's own barely-there single, A Little Bit. Both songs were contemplative and spare.
Those aesthetics weren't without their precedents. On Take Care track We'll Be Fine, Drake salutes Aaliyah, the late singer whose restrained vocals and minimalist, Timbaland-produced singles shook up the pop world of the 2000s. And it's hard to imagine Drake rapping semi-ashamedly about impregnating a hanger-on in HYFR without thinking of Usher's self-lacerating Confessions Part II, Kanye West's middle-class-people problems or the parts of R. Kelly's catalogue that aren't about having sex in a zoo. Regardless, Drake established a new model: Spill your guts over frosty synthesizers, sample some indie music, release a mixtape and stardom is yours.
Or so upstarts like Frank Ocean hope. The rising singer is affiliated with hip-hop brats Odd Future, but his own mixtape, 2010's Nostalgia, Ultra, was aimed at the mainstream, featuring Ocean crooning over Coldplay and MGMT hits. It was Novacane however – a murky song about drifting rudderless in a sea of sex, hard drugs and confusion – that placed Ocean in Drake's nightclubbed-to-death milieu. The song's video now has more than two million hits on YouTube; Ocean contributed to Jay-Z and Kanye West's chart-topping Watch the Throne album; and he is now signed to Island Def Jam.
Toronto singer and Drake affiliate Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a. The Weeknd, is somewhat further ahead of Ocean. He's already released two mixtapes: House Of Balloons was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize; Thursday was downloaded 180,000 times the day it was released. The Weeknd appears on numerous Take Care tracks, where he sounds perfectly at home, given that his own music takes Drake's aesthetic and drags it into a deep, dark hole.
The cavernous echo on the drums of House Of Balloons single High For This would have been dubbed goth-industrial if it had come out a decade ago, with The Weeknd's yearning tenor telling his intended that "We don't need no protection." Thursday track Rolling Stone is full of mournful guitar and lyrics like "I been on this rolling stone, so take another hit, kill another serotonin," which, if it isn't a reference to crack, sounds mighty close. Major labels have been in a frantic bidding war for The Weeknd, but none have yet snagged him.
Frank talk about vices and guilt-ridden hangovers are nothing new in pop, neither are minimal soundscapes. But Drake's synthesis of them has proved wildly influential. Some critics have resisted these princes of darkness, arguing they glorify hedonism and denigrate women while at the same time toasting their own lost innocence. Still, with sales figures piling up, the public seem more interested in the regrets of our new R&B overlords than what critics say. Some things never change.
HOW CANADIAN IS DRAKE?
We all know Drake grew up in Toronto's Forest Hill and starred in Degrassi: The Next Generation. But if you ever doubted him, these facts are all the proof of his citizenship you'll need:
1. His producer, Noah "40" Shebib, is the son of Donald Shebib, best known for directing, producing, editing and co-writing the 1970 CanCon film classic Goin' Down The Road.
2. Take Care has numerous guests from Toronto, but only a true native would know who Chantal Kreviazuk is and invite her on the album's opening track, Over My Dead Body.
3. He dated Keshia Chante. 'Nuff said.