Opinion Piece: Has Drake’s career run its course?

In music, an artist is said to have a longevity or lasting power of about 5 years at the top. Anything more than the stipulated 5 is either by a stroke of luck or almost impossible to achieve. Every musician who came before the other, knows that being number one is rarely eternal and that one day, sooner than later, your successor in the game will take over the spotlight and thus will deem your light as the reigning artist.

For Aubrey Graham, better known as Drake, all the above could not be further from the truth. Instead, he has remained one of the most consistent and successful artists of his generation. Starting off in 2006, with a mixtape titled ‘’Room For Improvement’’, Drake was still a long way from being the larger-than-life global phenomenon that we have all come to know. The mixtape was a Toronto local classic and moved a measly 6000 copies.

In 2007, Drake released his second mixtape, Comeback Season, which faired slightly better than his debut tape. Comeback Season spawned a moderate hit titled ‘’Replacement Girl’’ featuring Trey Songz. The song was Drake’s first crack into the US mainstream TV circuit, with the video for ‘’Replacement Girl’’ featuring on BET’s ‘New Joint of the Day’ segment. From that point on, the Canadian unsigned hype rapper seemed to be on his way to superstardom.

Side Bar: Before we delve deeper into Drake’s music career, it must be noted that before him becoming a rapper, he played the role of Jimmy Brooks on Degrassi: The Next Generation from 2001 to 2008. In the Canadian teen drama series, Drake portrayed a promising basketball stalwart who becomes wheelchair-bound when one of his school peers shoots him in the back.

Now, back to the music…

Still on Comeback Season, the last song titled ‘’Man of The Year’’- which featured Lil Wayne, saw Drake earn an invitation on Lil Wayne’s ‘Tha Carter III’ tour. The pair recorded a handful of songs together including ‘’Ransom’’ and ‘’Forever’’ – the latter of which became one of Drake’s biggest songs.  

2009 was a life-changing year for Drake. Not only did he release his commercially successful mixtape to date, So Far Gone, but the Toronto native also inked a deal with Lil Wayne’s Young Money Entertainment. Boosted by the smash hit ‘’Best I Ever Had’’, So Far Gone was later repackaged as an EP with four new songs added to it. Best I Ever Had became Drake’s first Hot 100 single – peaking at number 2 on the Billboard Chart.

Post the 2010s and early 2020s, Drake remains a top-flight artist in every aspect of the world. All of his albums have raked in multiple platinum plaques and broken streaming records across the board.

Here’s where the spanner in the works comes in. Remember at the beginning of this piece, it was highlighted that most artists’ run is only capped at 5 years maximum. Well, with Drake the story is different. He has been the number one artist for almost 15 years and with such a commendable stronghold on the game, it is nearly impossible to topple one’s previous work.

The records have been sold, the tours have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars, the history has been made and the only appeal that Drake has left is his consistency and adaptive ways of keeping his artform as current as possible. Documenting his entire catalog on this article will take forever, so in the interest of time and for the sake of argument, we will only focus on Drake’s latest offering.

On 6 October 2023, Drake released his eighth studio album, For All The Dogs. The 23-track project features a bevy of heavy hitters, including 21 Savage (his Her Loss album collaborator) and J. Cole amongst others. Upon listening to the album, one can easily deduce that Drake has loosened his grip on proving himself to anyone – especially his critics – the monotonous bravado of his wealth and being a legend is prevalent on this album. Drake sounds like he’s trying to keep up with his younger peers, a dismal portrayal on his part. As a man who’s 3 years shy of 40, he still wants to play the ‘’immature’’ older brother role to the 20-something-year-olds who’ve become his understudies in some form of way.

Only on the song ‘’8 am in Charlotte’’ does Drake appear to be in his bag. As he proves his lyrical abilities through punchlines, unorthodox rhyme schemes, and reflective bars. Apart from this jam, the album is riddled with 99% typical Drake content. Something most of his fans have become accustomed to over the past decade and some change.

The only thing left for Drake to do now is to accept his crown as the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) and leave the gimmicks to the young guys. Also, it is clear that he sounds bored with the recording booth as there are talks of him taking a break from music – after the release of this album – due to health reasons. It would not be a bad idea for Drake to go on a much-needed hiatus, to assess whether he still wants to be an artist and whilst introspecting, maybe even reconsider the type of content he’d like to focus more on.

Drake has churned out hit after hit, and there’s no denying his staying power and star quality but even the greatest sportsmen and the like, know when the writing is on the wall, which might be the case with Drake…