You’re wrong, Drake is a rapper through and through

"literally there is no difference between drake and future"

Is wrong

Genres are subjective, but how they are classified and categorised is quite objective. The majority of the discussion around the Trilogy mixtapes is retroactive. At the time, it was unmastered, unmixed, and unfinished. The gothic/depressing/druggy imagery surrounding his early music is not typical of pop music, and while pop is a fairly subjective term, no one, not even his alt r&b peers, sounded like him, which is why he was labeled in several genres before a formal name emerged.

Living in Toronto, I have heard songs like High for This and Wicked Games on the radio, but I go back to that one Drake lyric that remains in my head: "This is nothin' for the radio, but they'll still play it though"

A palatable beat isn't really subjective thing to point out, most of what you hear in pop/rnb is a standard 4x4 beat with a groove, lush instrumentation or hip hop/trap beat. Wicked Games just samples (or uses) a live guitar and bass under an electronic beat

As for the indie point, I'm not really sure, "indie" is a misnomer, indie hardly means underground nowadays, even back then, acts like Oasis or The Smiths were called indie while being pop. Though, if you are talking about lesser known indie rock acts, I don't know if I would call them pop to begin with, unless you give examples. It's case-to-case really

Perhaps it is reductive though, r&b has often evolved over the decades

Bro sales has always been a thing before Drake and Taylor Swift

Deadass

Acting like MJ stans having been d*** eating his sales for decades now
They point to other reasons why they stan him, but sales his commercial success has been a factor as well when discussing him compared to other artists

The main difference is one primarily caters to a street audience and the other doesn’t.

Both of them rap.

Both of them sing.

Both of them make music for the radio, the charts, and the clubs.

Both of them talk about fame, money, women, competition, etc.

Both of them heavily dabble with R&B.

Both of them make songs that cater to women.

Both of them have songs that cater to men.

Honestly the other big difference is that one is much more lyrical and that’s the guy you’re saying is the pop artist

”Blud Teanna Trumping that cock so hard he’s f***in up his brain patterns”

he didn’t say it wasn’t, follow along with your finger next time

bait threads are KTT's main currency

there’s three things you can always count on every day: death, taxes, and ktt bait threads

like they deadass dont get what we saying

this isnt bait this is pain from my heart as a passionate drake and hip hop fan

why you think they made the album together

"Both of them rap" is such an ignorant thing to say like there isn't so many styles of rap

And saying this about Future who was one of the first to popularize the trap sound is something else

Gotta be a troll

Which leads me to the final point I made. The biggest difference in their rapping styles is one is way more lyrical and bar focused than the other is, yet THAT is the guy you’re calling the pop artist. Do you see how that makes no sense?

.....drake was also one of the first to popularize the melodic rap we know and love today

i think you're looking at it too literal. imagine were playing skyrim, they have the same class but different race, they play the game the same way. obviously aubrey half jewish graham from toronto isnt the same person as nayvadius wilburn from atlanta.... but they have the damn near exact same skill set lmfao

This exactly

Yo I just discovered this German electronic group they're crazy

How is "literally there is no difference between drake and future" not wrong if you just said they have different styles?

It's 2024 and people still give a flying f*** about someone being labeled pop

Embarrassing

There is a difference in ONE aspect of their styles. They’re extremely similar, not identical.

The issue is not Drake being labeled pop, the issue is that people label Drake pop as a way to dismiss his status and presence in the hip-hop genre

They really don't

Mos Def does, arguably, but barely anyone who Drake caters to gives a s*** anymore

Drake has nothing left to prove as a rapper and this is such a boring, redundant argument that got old in 2015

Pop music is great, pop music is respectable, some of Drake's most enduring songs are 10000% pop music by any metric

Drake calls himself a pop star

He also makes hip hop music and works within the culture

It's such a dead end discussion and loaded with so much baggage

Remember, even Mos Def didn't want to talk about this and rolled his eyes when it was brought up

Drake's music sounds good in Target. His music sounds good in a lot of settings. A lot of hip hop sounds good in Target.

Idk when genre discussions got so annoying for me but here we are lol