What Drake and Meek Mill's feud over ghostwriting says about hip-hop today

Last week, the Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill dissed Drake, insisting that the Canadian MC uses ghostwriters, in particular on their recent collaboration R.I.C.O. Mill is a high-profile rapper; R.I.C.O. is from his latest album, Dreams Worth More Than Money, which hit No 1 last week. He also happens to be dating Nicki Minaj, a pop-rap colossus and Drake’s labelmate. But if Mill is hot, Drake is perhaps the biggest thing going in hip-hop in the recent years, and his cultural influence has only expanded with his recent partnership with Apple, thought to be worth $19m.
It was on his Apple radio show on over the weekend that Drake responded to Mill’s allegations with a track called Charged Up, rapping: “Wow, I’m honored that you
think this is staged/ I’m flattered, man – in fact, I’m amazed”.
The track is rather sleepy. Meek called it “baby-lotion soft”, though he didn’t release a diss track of his own on Funkmaster Flex’s show Monday night, as promised (Twitter, rather predictably, took him and Hot 97 to task about the no-show).Maybe he didn’t have to. Drake’s lyrics aren’t exactly a denial. He stops short of saying unequivocally that he doesn’t use ghostwriters. Then again, he certainly doesn’t admit to being a fraud. At issue here is what constitutes ghostwriting.
Kendrick Lamar dismissed the practice on his recent song King Kunta: “A rapper with a ghostwriter?/ What the fuck happened?” Indeed, creativity is valued over almost everything else in hip-hop. But having someone else write your lyrics nonetheless has a long history in the genre. The Sugarhill Gang rapper Big Bank Hank used some of Grandmaster Caz’s rhymes on the genre’s first big hit, 1979’s Rapper’s Delight, without so much as bothering to change his ID. “I’m the C-A-S-N/the O-V-A/ and the rest is F-L-Y,” he rhymed, inadvertently shouting out the name of Caz’s alter-ego, Casanova Fly. Virginia rapper Skillz has made almost a whole career out of ghostwriting. Dr Dre has made no secret of using writers over the years, including DOC, Eminem, and Jay Z. Diddy, likewise. Kanye West has been accused of using uncredited ghostwriters, including Consequence. “I helped out with some of the rhymes from ‘Champion’,” Consequence told MTV, describing the Graduation track. “I mean, there’s a lot of joints [that were not credited].”And that’s the rub. Using someone else’s bars is usually thought of as OK, so long as you give credit where credit is due. It’s more honest and ensures that behind-the-scenes scribes will get proper royalties. What’s odd about Meek Mill’s outrage is how shocked he seems to be that one of his collaborators might have received help. He claimed he would have taken R.I.C.O. off of his album if he’d known Drake hadn’t written it. “I don’t trick my fans!” he tweeted.
He believes that an Atlanta rapper named Quentin Miller does Drake’s ghostwriting, though Miller denied the allegation. Others point out that Miller has lots of credits on Drake’s most recent mixtape, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, and he was even given a co-writing credit for R.I.C.O.
That said, this is not the first time Drake has been accused of using someone else’s creation. Future believed he deserved publishing for inspiring Drake’s hit Started From the Bottom. But Future added that he’s ultimately not upset, and Miller clearly isn’t either. At the very least, it seems, when Drake uses other folks’ efforts, he makes it worth their while.
But Meek Mill’s larger point is perhaps this: at a time when Drake is being crowned the king of hip-hop, he’s undeserving. How can we call Drake the best when he’s not even writing his own stuff? It may be less scandalous when someone like Diddy, Dr Dre, or Kanye use writers – considering they were producers first. But anyone who wants to be taken seriously as a true lyricist is widely believed to need a strong “pen” game.
The only problem is, as Lupe Fiasco noted, if rappers want to fit into today’s radio format, most have little choice but to get help. Rappers who write their own stuff are great, but it can be hard for them to succeed if they’re not following the boilerplate. Meek Mill might argue that he’s succeeding while writing his own rhymes, and that he’s a stronger natural writer than Drake. And while he has his delights, and is certainly on the come-up, his stature doesn’t nearly match Drake’s.
Say what you want about him, but Drake knows better than almost anyone what it takes to get a hit made. Drake has a longer, proven track record of crafting memorable songs with strong hooks, bridges, themes, and imagery. At the end of the day, being a compelling rapper is about more than just writing lyrics.


source:the guardian