At this point, it’s pretty firmly established that Drake took the L in his back-and-forth with Kendrick Lamar earlier this year. Only Aubrey himself (or his staunchest online supporters) could make the argument that Kendrick did NOT run roughshod over Drake’s reputation with his flurry of aggressive diss tracks, which included the presumptive song of the summer, “Not Like Us.”
Fortunately for Drake, there is a path to redemption — at least, according to former Kendrick Lamar labelmate, Ab-Soul. The Carson artist, who is still signed to Top Dawg Entertainment and appeared in the “Not Like Us” video alongside the other original members of the label, shared his theory on Twitter (back to not calling it “X”).
“If Drake is the MC I imagine he can be,” he wrote. “Redemption is not off the table.”
If Drake is the MC I imagine he can be. Redemption is not off the table.
— Ab-Soul (@abdashsoul) July 9, 2024
Of course, this is pretty much the crux of the divide between the two rappers, as well as being the main case against Drake from the majority of his critics over the past decade and a half. Drake spent his first two mixtapes, Room For Improvement and Comeback Season, courting the underground before blowing up seemingly overnight after the leak of a reference track of Drake’s song, “Brand New,” which he’d written for an unnamed R&B singer.
Since then, Drake has split his time on recordings between harder-edged, tough guy-style rapping (because the backpacker thing was never all that profitable) and brokenhearted crooning. In an effort to appeal to the zeitgeist, though, both his raps and his singing have taken on a manosphere-inspired, Red Pilled outlook, which has alienated a bunch of his most dedicated fans. Ab-Soul’s comments reflect a general vibe on rap discussion forums like Twitter that there’s a version of Drake that could potentially earn back his lost respect as a rapper, but he’d have to reject some of his biggest defenders, ditch the toxic attitudes, and start writing like his old rhyme heroes Phonte and Lupe Fiasco again.
It’s a bold theory, and I’m not sure it’d hold true in practice, but therein lies the rub: If skills sold, truth be told…