Just as a lot of other music fans across the world did on Saturday, I sat down to listen to Drake’s new project More Life. As I listened, I thought to myself, “Hey, Drake did a pretty good job here.” I then did some research and found that it wasn’t just Drake that did a good job, but more or less a small army of people responsible for Drake’s newest release. After reading the writing and production credits for each song, I was immediately taken back by the number of names I saw.
Now, I’m not here to badmouth Drake, and I know a lot of people credited were creators of the samples used on the songs and not directly tied to the project. It’s clear to me that music has changed. We are no longer in the era of musicians like Nas and The Beatles whose songs could be credited to a small handful of people. I liked More Life a lot, but I think it serves as a great representation of the current state music is in, a state of quantity over quality. A state where more artists featured on tracks, more producers credited for making beats and more songs in general, are better. With the exception of J. Cole, a majority of big name rappers nowadays look for this quantity over quality.
It’s simple, Drake and other musicians are simply an image, a means for making money for their record label. The more songs released with the artist’s name connected to them, the more money to be made, right? That’s probably why Drake’s “playlist” as he’s chosen to call it, comes packed with 22 songs. These 22 songs come with a phone book’s worth of writing credits.
The days of songs with only one or two writers credited to them are next to over. For example, Drake’s song “Glow” featuring Kanye West off of More Life was written by a team of eighteen writers. It baffles me that it took 18 people working together to come up with a song that repeats “watch out for me I’m bound to glow,” and “watch out for me I’m about to glow” over and over and over. I’m not saying it’s a bad song, but Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” is credited to only two people. I mean, come on.
I find it funny how Drake’s name is the one connected to the playlist, when he only plays the small role of reciting the words on the song. The producers deserve more credit than they get because they do a majority of the work. With the exception of DJ Khalid and maybe Metro Boomin, most people probably don’t recognize the big producers of today.It’s the producer that makes the rapper who they truly are. Every rapper has a sound, not because it’s the way they naturally talk, but it’s the way they sound when performing over their producer’s beats.
Music is different from what it used to be. Yes, I know the music industry’s intent is to make money and rappers and producers are business people, but at some point you’re going to want the authenticity back. I don’t think we’ll ever see the days of big name rappers working basically on their own again, but I also hope we don’t have to see too many more albums dropped by enough people to field a college football team.
Christian Gravius is a Staff Writer for The Bona Venture. His email is graviucc15@bonaventure.edu
