There are two things that irk me. Pretenders and haters. People who spend their lives pretending to be whatever and hatin’ on whomever can pretty much get doused with a bucket of slime. Nickelodeon. Unfortunately, the release of Take Care brought out the hatin’ ass pretender in men around the country. To mask their deep appreciation (what else) for a record that actually speaks to a portion of their every day experiences, men started pretending like Take Care wasn’t for them. Even worse, men started acting likeTake Care was garbage because, well, what kind of rapper doesn’t lie about who he is? Men lied and said they grew ovaries listening to it. Men hated on Drake for talkin’ about women, instead of bad b*tches and h*es. Men hated on Drake for…uhh…dealing with the consequences of making major choices in your twenties. The thing about Drake that appeals to female audiences isn’t that his music is effeminate/emotional/for suckas. It’s simply that he’s every guy every woman has ever been in a relationship with in Mp3 form. We don’t relate to Drake. We know him because Drake makes music for men who date and sleep with women. That emo light-skin ninja you love to call soft? That’s ya’ll. Every. Single. One of you.
So, you think “Marvin’s Room” is the “player haters anthem” sung only by the ultimate lonely boy? Actually, that song is the very conversation your girl is having with her homeboy about you right now. Yep, that’s right. Somewhere in the world, your girlfriend’s brother/homeboy/ex-man/father is telling her that she can do better—much better—than you, sir. Despite your best efforts to disguise it, women know that men actually hold women in high-esteem. It’s why you’re annoyed with the dude your home-girl/sister/ex is chillin’ with right now (no one’s good enough for her). In truth, sometime this week you’re going to tell your home-girl, sister or ex-girl that she can do better, too. Maybe she can, maybe she can’t. But the point is, someone thinks so and someone is, in fact, “player hatin’.” It’s the reason why your home-girl calls you at 3am complaining about her man. She wants to hear someone player hate the sh*t out of her current dude. And, you know why she calls you out of her 27 female BFF’s? It’s not because she wants a “male perspective.” It’s because she knows you’re down for some good old-fashioned player hating delivered in the form of perspective. In fact, Adam was using that “I’m just sayin’” line on Eve way before Drake was even born. Genesis.
You can’t stand hearing Drake warn his girl to stop wasting her time with him because he’s focused on his grind right now? Really? Because that seems to be the theme of most relationships that take place between the ages of 20 and 32. Drake telling an accomplished woman that he’s proud of her is a little too sappy for you? I get it. It’s cooler to tell a woman that you’re proud of her thighs, huge a**, long hair, and light skin. But, that has to get old. Or, maybe it doesn’t. To each his own.
The thing that gets me isn’t so much that men like to deny that they actually relate to this dude—It’s that most of y’all are worse than him. Care Bears. You can’t stand his whining? Yeah…okay. If Drake spent one hour sifting through me and my friends’ inboxes, he’d have enough material to write his next four albums just based off of the dozens of emotional e-mails men like to send when they even think they’re in love and sh*t starts going bad. If he went ahead and added Gchat conversations to the mix, he’d have enough material to last a lifetime. Give him a spy cam to watch over our most personal moments filled with testosterone tears, male sniffles and he-man hissy-fits, he could write enough material for the next seven generations of “emo rappers.”
Now, I’m not going to sit here and say that Drake is the greatest rapper alive (far from it), but he’s definitely an accurate representation of straight men everywhere. I guess you could say he’s “not a rapper.” That may be true at times, but not because he sings “too damn much.” Rather, Drake’s not a rapper in the traditional sense. Most rap is about smashin’ bad chicks and getting’ racks on racks. Drake, on the other hand, is about consequences. He talks about what happens when you get money to blow too young to make good choices with it. He talks about dating women who’ve been hurt. He talks about being hurt. They’re conversations that men have with their home-girls and the fights you’re having with your girl right now. Maybe men don’t appreciate Drizzy airing out their emotional laundry. Whatever it is, women know what’s up, no matter how much you try to deny it.
