Credit: The Come Up Show

Drake has had a long and exciting career. The Canadian rapper and singer has become one of the most decorated artists in hip-hop, with four Grammy awards, 13 BET awards and a whopping 34 Billboard awards. However, his perceived creativity has consistently been under scrutiny from people worldwide.

Drizzy has long claimed he is a fan of all types of music. However, his attempts to make, incorporate, and profit from culture and genres of music he has no knowledge of have caused many to see him as someone who dilutes rich and culturally significant sonics for his own profit.

Most consider Drake a hip-hop artist. However, during his 16-year career, he has had suspicious stints making other genres before returning to his staple trap-soul style. Although rap music is one of the most dominant styles of music, its current homogeneity has caused many to look at newer and more exciting genres such as Afrobeat, Amapiano and UK Drill.

The uproar concerning Drizzy’s exploration of other genres is due to his suspicious timing. Whether it’s Grime, Afrobeat, Amapiano or Drill, the Toronto native only seems to incorporate elements from different genres when they peak their popularity.

In 2014, the ‘Best I Ever Had’ act was inserting himself into the fold of Grime. However, when the buzz was no longer there, in 2018, he hopped onto Afrobeat. In 2020, he began attempting to make UK Drill, and his 2022 project Honestly, Nevermind featured Amapiano producers such as Black Coffee, Tresor and Sona.

This experimentation has polarised fans for years. Drizzy has even been accused of stealing cadences from other rappers, such as XXXTentacion. Some claim the artist is merely embracing and supporting these various artists and their culture, while others suspect it is slightly more insidious.

Drake’s sudden interest in UK music came as a shock to many. For musicians in London, it was uncomfortable. The Black British community had been pioneering new genres for years. From Jungle to UK Garage, Dubstep, Grime, and Afroswing, there had always been music that was distinctly black, uniquely British yet always ignored.

As such, when Drake entered the fray to speak about artists the majority of the UK had forgotten about, it was not only strange but seemed incredibly dubious. For one of the world’s biggest urban artists to reference Brixton native Sneakbo almost seemed like a ploy for attention or a way to boost ticket sales, and it immediately polarised people.

For some, like the iconic UK rapper, Wiley, it was evident that Drake was using the excitement and popularity of drill music among the youth to reinvigorate his career and was only embracing the nation’s talent as a means to an end.

However, other figures from the grime scene, such as Skepta, were more than happy to work with Drake and saw the collaboration as, at worst, mutually beneficial. Unfortunately, people still remain split, and in the long term, Drizzy’s embrace of UK music didn’t do anything for the prospects of artists he didn’t collaborate with directly.

Yet, in 2020, he released a UK drill-inspired track named ‘War’, which saw him adopt various slang and cadences commonly used by London-based lyricists. That said, a mere endorsement of some drill artists and some copycat tracks probably doesn’t warrant the term “vulture,” The Toronto native barely scraped the surface, considering all the emcee-based genres the nation boasts. Drizzy didn’t flirt with Jungle, UK Garage, Dubstep or Grime, presumably because he couldn’t — or it was too hard.

Whether it is appreciation or appropriation, his genre-hopping and latching onto different movements have made many unsure of Drizzy, and as such, over the years, he has earned himself the title of “Culture Vulture.”