Drake Under the Philosopher’s Eyes

Gabriela Mojica

Prof: Neil Florek

December 12, 2016

Philosophy of Music

Drake Under the Philosopher’s Eyes

Aubrey Drake Graham know as simply Drake. He was born on October 24, 1986 in Canada. He is a rapper, songwriter, record producer and actor. He first got know as an actor in the series Degrassi in the beginning of the 2000s, now he is known mainly as a rapper. His album Take Care won a Grammy Award for Best Rap Album but has been nominated thirty-five times for various Grammy Awards. Drake lead the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks which broke the record held by Michael Jackson and Whitney Huston. Drake also has the most number of single on the Hot Rap Songs. Last year, 2015, he was The Worlds Most streamed artist on Spotify.

Drake like almost every rapper, mainly sings/rap about money and women. His songs are not as bad as many rappers in the sense of explicit vocabulary because they play them in the radio.

Theodore Gracyk in his book On Music he claims that bird songs is not music because they are not organized in a rhythmic way. Birds are like humans, social creatures. Social creatures communicate with each other by sound. Birds are not making music they are communicating with each other. In order for it to be music it would have to be sound patterns organized in a rhythmic or harmonic way. He also mentions the Lamborghini effect. What Gracyk is trying to say with the Lamborghini effect is that everything depends on your knowledge of things, in this case cars. Sure, a Lamborghini is very expensive and luxurious but what is so special about it? It has four wheels and you can drive anywhere just like any other car. If you know about cars enough you will understand the difference. Also, it was to do with your opinion and taste. He gave the example of a professor showing the students a performance of Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 some students might respond to it has boring.

Now here is where Drake and Gracyk come along. If we look at Drake from Gracyk’s bird song theory, then yes Drake does create music. It would be considered that he does create music because he does organize the sound with rhythmic patterns which will become pleasing to hear. Then if we see it from the Lamborghini effect it will depend on the person’s knowledge, opinion and taste to decide whether it is music or not. For example, my dad does not think many of Drake’s songs are music because he personally does not like and think some songs are just to inappropriate. Some people may argue its inappropriate because of its explicit language and because sometimes they rap about “meaningless things”. But what are meaningless things? For Drake they are not meaningless that is why he sings/rap about them.

I think that the Lamborghini effect can be a little contradictory because in my opinion it is really more of a personal opinion. You can still have enough knowledge about cars and still don’t think Lamborghinis are the best ones. Same with music, you can all the knowledge in the world about music and still think the Cello and drake are boring or that it is not music. I think it depends more on your opinion and taste. The same student who argues about how the Cello is boring he might also say Drake is boring. It does not mean that if you argue that the Cello is boring you are going to automatically say that Drake is not.