Follow my Page

  / djnirake  

Lil Wayne and Drake might now be more peers than anything else, with their own histories and legacies of personal influence, but their relationship is a crucial example of how patronage functions within hip-hop. In Drake, Lil Wayne not only found an investment but a collaborator who could translate his explosive mid-aughts rap career into the kind of mainstream that wasn’t yet open to the idea of rappers as all-American celebrities. Rap is obsessed with lineage and family, and despite being from different places — and climates; the muggy heat, contrasted against the deep cold — Drake and Wayne innately understand how to use that mythology to their advantage.

Collaborations long played a role in Wayne’s prolific output. Extra-regional linkups with artists like Outkast, Fat Joe, and Playaz Circle, gave Wayne — who was, it should be noted, already a rap star — added heft in neighborhoods beyond the Bayou. But before signing Drake to Young Money/Cash Money Records in 2009, most of his commercial guest verses were focused on urban-pop through records like Destiny’s Child “Soldier” remix, Lloyd’s “You,” or incongruous collabs with Fall Out Boyand Enrique Iglesias. Wayne was famous, but his image hadn’t yet transcended NOLA gangster rapper.

And for that Wayne, Drake was a boone; the young rapper who appeals to endless tiers of consumers, but required something of a surrogate “rap dad” — a more strategic relationship than Baby was to Wayne — in order to maintain a link to the genre and world that birthed his career. Drake is so keenly aware of that mutability, the Degrassi-honed inner actor and pretty boy saleability, which makes me wonder if dark-skinned, dreadlocked Wayne (who made “Bitch, I’m me!” one of his unofficial tags) saw himself as somehow immutable.