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Yasiin Bey Says Drake's Music Is Compatible With Shopping

During an already-memed podcast interview, the artist formerly known as Mos Def said the Canadian superstar's music was likeable, but he wouldn't call it hip-hop.

Drake
Drake
Courtesy OVO/Republic Records

Hip-hop legend Yasiin Bey has a hot take on Canadian superstar Drake's music — specifically, that it isn't hip-hop. In a new interview with designer Recho Omondi on her fashion podcast The Cutting Room Floor, the musician and actor said Drake's music is pop, rather than hip-hop, and that it makes him think of shopping — or, "shopping with an edge," Bey said. Clips from the interview have been widely circulated and already-memed.

In the video of the interview, Omondi asks Bey: "Is Drake hip-hop?" "Why are you doing this to me?" Bey whispers, before answering that to him, Drake is pop. "In the sense that it's charting like popular music?" Omondi asks. "In the sense that if I was in Target, in Houston, and I heard a Drake song...so it feels like a lot of his music is compatible with shopping," Bey replies, and Omondi breaks into laughter. The two then riff on the shopping comparison: "So many products!" Bey exclaims, "They have everything here! This is great. This is the new Drake, you hear it? This is great."


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Bey then becomes more philosophical, wondering how long Drake's commercial dominance can last. "What happens when this thing collapses?" he asks. "Are we not in some early stage of that at this present hour? Are we seeing the collapse of the empire? Buying and selling, where's the message that I can use?"

Bey's comments bring up a lot of issues that are often the subjects of critical debate in music: when does commercialism overtake art? If music is made for consumption can it still have a potent message? When an artist like Drake or Taylor Swift becomes too big to fail, what does that mean for the industry and for artistry? And when an industry — or a society — values consumption so highly, where can that possibly lead?

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Drake hasn't responded so far, but he referenced Bey last year in a comment to Complex, when the website had poets like Hanif Abdurraqib review the Toronto artist's poetry book, Titles Ruin Everything. Drake asked the site to do an article "where the baddest Instagram girls in the world review my poetry book, not the head of the Mos Def fan club... Thanks."

Yasiin Bey has earned his place in hip-hop history, with influential albums like 1999's Black on Both Sides. In 2022, Bey released a new album in collaboration with Talib Kweli as the duo Black Star, No Fear Of Time. Bey has also long been politically active and outspoken about racism and police brutality. Elsewhere in the podcast, he talks about violence across the globe, particularly in Palestine, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as colonial legacies.

Find more clips from the interview here.

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Panos A. Panay
Raphaële Sohier

Panos A. Panay

Features

Recording Academy President Panos A. Panay on Canada, Diljit Dosanjh and the Grammys’ Global Future

The influential music executive returned to a place he has called home at NXNE for the Billboard Global Summit. Here's why it was particularly meaningful for him.

The music landscape is changing quickly, and Panos A. Panay, the President of the Recording Academy and the Grammys, is right in the middle of it.
This week (June 11), Panay interviewed Punjabi superstar Diljit Dosanjh as part of the Billboard Summit at NXNE. For him, it represented a global shift in music where sounds carrying different cultures and languages are pushing against the "Anglo-American" mainstream. Celebrating the universality of music in the diverse city of Toronto holds special meaning for him.
Panay spent some formative years in Canada, and says in some ways he considers it as much like home as Cyprus, where he was born. It shaped how he sees the world and his career, and it's been important in his work at the Grammys, which is also going through changes. Since he started his job in 2021, along with CEO Harvey Mason Jr., Panay has been helping the Academy adapt to a new generation of artists, represent diversity and navigate the changing music scene.

Before he was at the Recording Academy, Panay founded the online platform Sonicbids, which brought him to NXNE many times. Again, it feels like coming home.

In this exclusive interview with Billboard Canada, Panos discusses Dosanjh, how the Grammys are changing and the future of Canadian music.

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