For many years, Drake has dabbled in a multitude of genres outside of hip-hop and R&B. He’s operated in dancehall, UK rap, pop, and many more. He’s even messed around the patois of the two former genres, sometimes to the chagrin of listeners and critics.
Drake feels he doesn’t deserve that treatment, especially when other artists do the same and receive praise. But some will argue that it’s deserved criticism, especially when the results are a “Wah Gwan Delilah,” for example.
As a result, Drake’s been labeled a “culture vulture” on numerous occasions. He’s mostly ignored the backlash with the exception of one fiery retort for grime rapper Wiley in 2019. “I hate that people think that me being into music from these kids that are trying to make it and trying to build a name for themselves is like, ‘Oh, that’s some culture vulture.”
He continued, “What does that even mean? I don’t understand what that means. Would you rather me not acknowledge anything or support? That’s some real confused hater sh*t. But it is what it is. I see it a lot. I’ll never understand how supporting somebody’s song or even going a step further, giving somebody a song or linking up, I’ll never understand how that is not viewed as something admirable. But I guess some people have their own outlook on it.”
Drake & Bobbi Althoff
The Boy is echoing that sentiment in his new interview with Bobbi Althoff, which was just posted earlier this morning per NFR Podcast. “I experience a lot of guilt tripping in my life where people are like, ‘No this is your fault,’ essentially… My intentions are pure. It’s the same way even in music. People will be like, ‘Your a culture vulture.’
People will describe the collaborative efforts that I have put forth and the artists that I’ve picked up or shined a light on as me taking. They’ll put a negative spin on it and try and tell me it’s a self-serving thing and I think I get real sensitive about that,” he said.
This is just one of many conversations that Drake and Bobbi have in their hour and 22-minute-long sit-down. It’s the first episode of the latter’s new podcast called Not This Again. In the video’s description she says a new interview will drop every month.
Althoff says about this sit-down, “Drake flew me to Manchester, then Belgium, and finally Switzerland, where this episode was filmed, to make amends. Over two years ago, we filmed an interview in bed that was later deleted. This one is staying up, probably.”
