Cole Bailey

Noelle Nagales

Writing 2100

December 8th, 2022

Drake is the G.O.A.T artist

Drake. Love him or hate him is a universally known superstar in the music industry, who started as a young actor on the show Degrassi to the number one listened-to artist year after year, miles ahead of his competition. While music is subjective and some may be reading the title of this paper and be surprised not to see their favorite artists such as Kanye, The Beatles, Tupac, Taylor Swift, and many more, I am not arguing why you should like his music more but instead of what his music has accomplished and the meaning behind it that separates him from each and everyone one of your favorite artists. Drake came into the Rap/Hip Hop industry which for years we constantly hear the top artist rap or sing about robbing, killing, drugs, and disrespecting women. Drake never had to fit into this industry’s mold of what an artist should be and what they should rap about because he never needed it. He was different from the beginning, he made it past thresholds that artists dreamed of reaching since the beginning and didn’t have to change who he was to make music which was “normal”, he made his own normal and changed the industry forever. Drake empowers women through his music, he doesn’t trash them and portray them as objects or trophies for showing off like many of his peers did. His lyrics aren’t the only thing that separates him from the pack when Drake came into the music industry there were rappers and singers, the rappers would only rap and the singers would only sing if you wanted a song that included both you would need both kinds of artists. Drake changed this completely as he would be rapping one second and singing like an angel the next. The hip-hop industry as we knew it would never be the same, Drake changed it for the better and we will never see an influence on the hip-hop industry or music in general such as we did with Drake. Drake’s intricate flow and music first caught my eye when I was seven years old as his album “Watch the Throne” which was a collaboration album with Jay-Z was the first album I ever downloaded on my iPod. Since then Drake has only grown as an artist and my appreciation for his music has grown as well, he has been my most listened-to artist every year since I first downloaded that album. Drake is the undisputed Greatest artist of all time due to his variety of music and genres, uplifting and culture-changing lyrics, the dominance of his name on the Billboard charts week after week, and his longevity and consistency which has allowed him to stay at the top for so long.

Poet, playwright, essayist, and professor of English, June Jordan in her political essay, “ Nobody mean more to me than you and the future life of Willie Jordan”, published in 1985, addresses the topic of Black English and argues that it has communicative power not only through writing but verbally as well. She supports this claim by describing Black English as important to Afro-Americans that depend on it, then explains it is an irreplaceable and perishing system of community intelligence, and finally provides a real-life example of Black English through students’ reaction to Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple”. Jordan’s purpose is to promote the idea that Black English is dependent on, but no longer used and easily forgotten because “White English” was the standard English and anything different was looked at in a negative manner. She adopts a sense of importance and relation to her audience, the readers of “On Call” and others interested in Black English. Drake is the greatest artist of all time for many reasons but the reason above all is the fact that changed what was “normal” in the hip-hop industry and not only with his lyrics about empowering women and the troubling path he took to get to the top but with the combination of singing and rapping in his music which was far from “normal”. We see a relation between Drake not being “normal” enough for the music industry and Black English not being “formal” enough for English when Jordan says, “ Nonetheless, White standards of English persist, supreme and unquestioned, in the United States. Despite our multi-lingual population, and despite the deepening Black and White cleavage within that conglomerate, White standards control our official and popular judgments of verbal proficiency and correct, or incorrect, language skills, including speech. In contrast to Nicaragua, where all citizens are legally entitled to formal school instruction in their regional or tribal languages, compulsory education in America compels accommodation to exclusively White forms of “English”. White English, in America, is “Standard English”.  In this quote we see Jordan argue the point that White English is held as the standard for English and that the education system in America deems Black English as incorrect because it doesn’t follow their “standards”. Black English not being the “formal” type of English is similar to Drake’s style of music and lyrics not being the “normal” type of hip hop the industry was used to. Drake overcame these common or “normal” ways of hip hop and created his own version and influenced music more than anyone ever has, which is why he is the Greatest Of All Time. 

Writer and editor for Billboard magazine, Karinah Santiago in her music article, “Drake: he’s everywhere”, published in February of 2012, addresses the commotion drake was making in the music industry and the numbers he was putting up at such a young age which were already higher than the best in the industry. She supports this claim by using her research of Drake’s number one song and album rankings and comparing them to other artists at the top which many believe to be better than him. Santiago’s purpose behind this claim is to display Drake’s dominance throughout the years through his top positions on Billboard which is a website that makes charts of the top music through streaming radio airplay, sales, and streams. Santiago aims to reach hip-hop lovers around the world who obviously know who Drake is but may not actually know the amount of stardom he has reached and the records he is breaking. Drake is the greatest artist of our generation and Santiago only proves this even more throughout this article. Karinah Santiago in this article shows accolades of Drake which prove statistically that he is the greatest artist of all time, whether it’s number one albums, number one songs, or even knocking himself out of the number one spot because his new music replaced it at number one. We see Santiago giving examples of these accomplishments saying, “ Drake carries over his chart domination to Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs as he repeats the feat he made last week on Rap Songs with “The Motto” (3-1). Drake earns his ninth No. 1 on the former survey, tying Jay-Z for the most No. 1s by a rapper. He also replaces himself at No. 1 as “Make Me Proud” drops to No. 2. Alicia Keys was the last artist to replace herself at No. 1 when “Like You’ll Never See Me Again” took the place of “No One” in January 2008. Drake now holds the No. 1 and No. 2 positions on the survey, also last accomplished by Keys five years ago”. In this quote we see her show the fact that Drake ties Jay-Z for the most number one songs on Billboard, we see him replace his OWN song at number one with an even better number one song and Santiago then compares him to Alecia Keys, one of the greatest artists of our generation for having the most number one and number two songs of all time. The craziest part about this article isn’t that he tied Jay-Z, isn’t that he broke Alecia Keys record, but that this article was published in 2012! Fast forward to the present day, 2022 and Drake is still at the top of every Billboard chart holding the records now for most top five Billboard Hot 100 hits (34), as well as the most top 10s (67), top 20 hits (115), top 40 hits (173), and total entries (293). This article from Karinah Santiago of Billboard Magazine proves my claim that Drake is the greatest artist of all time because it shows the records he was breaking just in 2012, now ten years later these records are shattered due to his longevity and consistency with dropping music and displaying his talent for the entire world to hear. Karinah Santiago’s article in 2012 is similar in comparison to Matt Van Sol’s article titled, “DRAKE IS THE TOP-SELLING SOLO MALE ARTIST OF ALL-TIME IN AMERICA” in 2018 which also shows Drake’s impressive numbers compared to some of the other greatest artists of all time. In this article, Van Sol shows the top-selling artists of all time in America according to RIAA which is the Recording Industry Association of America at the top of this list above Elvis, Eminem, Michael Jackson, and many more we see Drake otherwise known as Aubrey Graham as the top-selling solo artist of all time in America with $218,280,000 in sales. We see this in the text when Van Sol states, “According to the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), Drake has passed Elvis, Eminem and Michael Jackson for total music sales grossing up to $218,280,000 in sales. No other solo male artist has even broken $200,000,000, Elvis is second with 191,000,000 and Eminem is next at 172,000,000”. In this quote, we see just how big Drake really is because his career isn’t even close to being over and he is already the top-selling artist EVER, and this article was posted over four years ago. While the influence and change Drake made to the hip hop and music industry make him the G.O.A.T, these numbers only solidify it as no matter what metrics or statistics you look at, they all point to only one artist at the top, Drake. 

In Conclusion, Drake is the greatest artist of all time not only because of his influence and change on the music industry through his lyrics and different styles of music but also because every statistic ever proves he is at the top, and still going. Hopefully, after reading this paper you have come to your senses and have a better understanding of who is the actual G.O.A.T., regardless of what you think of his music, his influence and statistics will always prove it. Drake is the undisputed Greatest artist of all time due to his variety of music and genres, uplifting and culture-changing lyrics, the dominance of his name on the Billboard charts week after week, and his longevity and consistency which has allowed him to stay at the top for so long.

Works Cited:

Santiago, Karinah. “Drake: he’s everywhere.” Billboard, vol. 124, no. 7, 25 Feb. 2012, p. 79. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A280965686/AONE?u=nysl_oweb&sid=googleScholar&xid=476b05d2. Accessed 9 Dec. 2022.

Sol, Matt Van. “Drake Is the Top-Selling Solo Male Artist of All-Time in America.” The Source, 7 Dec. 2018, https://thesource.com/2018/12/07/drake-is-now-the-number-one-selling-solo-artist-in-america-of-all-time/.