Drake Just Wants Success, But at What Cost?

(Editor's Note: This is the first in what will be a regular column from Minnesota based hip-hop artist Mike Dreams (Michael A. Hannah) called "A Dreamer's Perspective." In today's column, Dreams examines the financial success Drake has suddenly found, and the potential cost to his soul.)

After the topic of success in music and selling your soul came up in a blog post in a comments section on 2dopeboyz.com recently, I was motivated to look deeper into it. The first comment on the post was someone claiming that they knew for a fact that Drake worshiped the devil to become successful. Now, to me, that devil worship stuff was sounding a little extreme, but I actually wouldn’t put it past a lot of artists who all of a sudden blow up and when they do; the morals they stood for before they got famous go out the window. Now this has happened throughout music history. In an American Popular Music course I took my freshman year of college, we studied Blues and came across a couple of artists, such as Robert Johnson, who allegedly sold his soul at the crossroads for music talents. I also remembered hearing this about some rock groups and even Snoop Dogg in the early 90s, according to his autobiography. Now, we all know some of this is certainly just speculation and fabricated ideas to make the artist sound more mysterious. I don’t believe that is the case for many, and especially not Drake. With that being said though, I have noticed that Drake maybe has felt he had to change who he was to fit in, until what he changed himself to be like really became who he was.

Now, I hope no one takes this as hatred, because I’m probably a bigger Drake fan than anybody out there. He has made some of the most introspective and personal music that I have ever heard from an artist, in the likes of a Jay-Z or Kanye West. He puts his personal life out there for you to hear about. This could be some of the same issues you’re dealing with at the time, so the listening experience can, at times, serve to be therapeutic. I remember sometime back, I saw Drake say on a video clip that “I make some good clean hip hop for everybody to enjoy”. I believe that was 2004 and it was on a Degrassi “Behind The Scenes” episode. He was still considered a class act by the time “Room For Improvement” and “Comeback Season” came out, but he had started cursing in his music by then. Now, some wouldn’t see that as a very big deal, because profanity is all throughout hip hop music. I’m only stating it to help show the chronological changes. At this time, he still said he didn’t do drugs or smoke weed.

By the time I heard a track called “Overdose On Life” in early 2008, I started to see a transformation. He was talking about how his “sense of judgment’s official gone, up in to the air, all the smoke from the Swisher is blown, I’m grown, I’m grown.” You started hearing him talk about how he partakes in Promethazine (Lean) usage and some activities that reflected that of his mentor, Lil Wayne. I remember that he even did a blog post about it on his MySpace. It’s not there anymore, but he was addressing how he was changing, because some of his original fans were noticing how his content and morals were altering who is originally was. I remember that, in a nutshell, he talked about how you have to evolve as an artist and you can’t stay the same. He knew people were worried about him, but it was him telling us fans to not lose faith in him. He seemed to address this in the bonus track on the commercial release of his EP “So Far Gone”, a project that contained five songs from the very successful free mixtape by the same title that was released via internet in February 2009. “Fear” was what I viewed as sort of a subtle cry out of what was going on his in life, as he basically stated that he knows what’s happening, but he has to do what he has to do to be successful.

“They want the hits, I play the game”

Even the song “Successful” itself was about that personal struggle that I know all of us go through daily in whatever we are doing, whether it’s music or something else that requires advancement to stay relevant. It was about the struggle in your mind with your own personal will. Money, cars, clothes and hoes…I SUPPOSE? It’s like “If that’s what it’s going to take for me to be successful, I suppose I will have to go with it then.”

To conclude this whole pondering session, I can say that Drake is still one of my favorite artists and always will be. He’s influenced me tremendously as an artist. But sometimes, I’m concerned about an artists’ soul and if they are selling it for success. It’s not worth it. Stay true to who you are. Things may look good, but if you have to alter who you are to achieve them, that couldn’t have been God’s will. It might have been better just to pass on that and believe that another opportunity would come again where you would be able to become successful without changing who you are.

That was just my two cents on the matter. I hope it gave some people something to think about. Drake is still one of my favorite artists in the game right now. With that being said, I’m looking forward to his debut album “Thank Me Later” and I hope he’ll address some of these questions his fan have about him through his music.