The 'Hotline Bling' rapper admits he felt judged for being light-skinned and Canadian while opening up about getting accused of appropriating Jamaican and U.K. culture.
- Dec 27, 2019
AceShowbiz - Drake addressed some of the controversial issues that plagued him during his career. Besides talking about his feud with fellow rappers, the 33-year-old Canadian rapper opened up in an interview with RapRadar about feeling excluded from the black male hip-hop community.
He said, "I've been in a lot of rooms and in a lot of conversations and just felt the other side of judgement, racial judgments sometimes, like being light-skinned, being Canadian, having people I look up to and respect tell me I can't identify with what's going on."
The lyricist also denied accusations suggesting he appropriated Jamaican and U.K. culture, "The definition of appropriating a culture is not supporting that culture, doing songs with people who are deeply rooted in that culture, giving opportunity to people who are in that culture. That's not appropriating."
"Appropriating is taking it for your own personal gain and denying that it was ever inspired from this. That's the true disservice that somebody could do to the U.K., to dancehall, to afrobeats. Me, I've always... I ensure that I'm not only paying all due respects verbally but... I make it a point to give opportunity to people that I respect."
"Again, I'm not one of those people that can be inspired by something and be like, 'well, that's inspiring, thanks' and move on with the, you know, under my arm like running down the field," he continued. "I've got to at least honor the person that handed me the football before I ran for the touchdown."
He additionally slammed rumors claiming he used ghostwriters. "I pulled my weight when it came to my pen," he said. "Anybody that knows me knows that my strongest talent is writing... That's why people ask me to write songs for them."
