The RISE & Fall… & RISE?! of Aubrey ‘Drake’ Graham: Chronicles of Hip-POP’s Lite-Brite MEGA-Hype.

March 30th, 2010 | By Alejandro Ford

Never has a MEGA-hyped somewhat-known-UNknown gone from being the dopest unsigned hypester on the globe to the dopiest P.R. FAILure in the Galaxy to a Grammy-winning quadruple threat with ‘Hip-Hop’s fate in his clutches’ until Canada’s great lite-brite hype Aubrey ‘Drake’ Graham rocketed into superstardom with the globally-droOled-over ‘mixtalbum’ So Far Gone errrrr, riiiiight before plummeting into epic faildom, when he:

A) performed the ultra-explicit misogyno-smash “Every Girl” (..in a skinty bar stool) for a record-setting BET Awards viewing audience with a Chuck E. Cheese ‘ball crawl’-worth of underaged tweeny-bops on-stage (Drake on BET Awards debacle: “It was just timed very poorly and it definitely wasn’t planned like that”…“To anyone who was offended, my personal apologies; it wasn’t intended to offend anybody”)

B) starred in a skank-juice splattered video for his fcuk-face-inducing femme-anthem “Best I Ever Had” that he later apologized to his female fan base for releasing (Drake on soft-pornish music video debacle: “I guess one thing I didn’t consider is what the song personally means to a lot of women”…“To those women, I apologize. I do apologize. My intention wasn’t to put anyone down. It was to make them laugh. I wanted people to see something visually different.”)

C) crumpled into a pathetic chumpling on-stage during the America’s Most Wanted Tour (Feat. Weezy, Jeezy & Soulja Boy) despite being instructed by Doctors NOT to perform on his shredded ACL (Drake on-stage collapse debacle: “I blacked out and really forgot I was injured. I was just so full of adrenaline, so happy to be there, it kind of set in for me…”)

D) signed his soul over to an insanely-impregnatious Gremlin named Weezy (*Cue: Super Mario Death Ditty*: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHJSZSRSljk) who knighted him as thee, uh, other official face of his criminally-UNtalented Young Money collective consisting of nonsense spewing kiddy bops and a ‘Barbie’-obsessed ButterBARS with the illest femmecee ‘Fire Marshall Bill’ flow ever. *Jim Carrey shrug*

And somehow, these events occurred—back-to-back…to-back—only weeks after the lyrically-dexteritous uber-MC (“I’ma rapper-turnt-singer and you can tell that he smoke/I don’t need no vocal cords/All I hit is C-Notes/N.E.R.D. flow, I spaz if I’m provoked/I’m about to change the F@#$# game/Pass the remote”)/tolerable vocalist ‘melody hummer’ (See: “Say Somethin’”) emerged from the underground as the second-coming of (Golden-Era Hova) + (Pre-Bad Boy Biggie) + (Post-9 bullet-50 (Cent) who, unlike Aubrey, never won a Grammy, moved 200K+ officialized ‘mixtalbums’ (available for FREE online) or secured lucrative endorsement deals (Sprite) pre-debut album.

Dammit, Aubrey ‘Drake’ Graham was Neo (The ONE), Luke Skywalker (The CHOSEN ONE) & Bruce LeRoy (The ONE + ‘The GLOW’) in the punch drunken hearts of mainstream POP fiends who had never heard of the preppy spitsmith or struggled through an episode of the ex-child TV star’s hit show Degrassi until Weezy publicly co-signed him as the NEXT, best..HIM.

..Um, but serious Hip-Hop heads?! ..Yea, we knew ‘Aubrey’—back then, during the golden ‘grustle daze’ and wept the day he dumped Hip-Hop to go steady with POP years after bringing an ‘Obamian’ sense of hope to the diseased genre during his inevitable come-up through Canada’s burgeoning Hip-Hop/Soul scene (See: Kardinall Offishall, Melanie Fiona & Slakah the Beatchild).

However, Aubrey DeBarge Graham was now simply ‘Drake’: Your Favorite Radio Programmer’s rapper’s most side-eyed rapper and yet another sugary radio killa MC with a nauseating Auto-Tune fetish, cringe-worthy ‘super-crew’ (with no purpose other than to hold his diamond-flushed jewels & Blackberry while he performs) and steadily declining anti-Pop following led by the same progressive backpackers who UNfollowed Weezy when “Lollipop” dropped.

BUT, then again, I doubt the mixed boy wonder’s Hip-POP love affair > his undeniable musical intangibles effortlessly displayed throughout his classic pre-deal mixtapes Comeback Season & Room For Improvement when his collabs with Little Brother & Elzhi “Don’t You Have A Man”/“Think Good Thoughts,” Slakah “Share” and Dwele “Deceiving” convinced me, along with countless others, that Drake was, indeed, IT.

So, now—finally—in 2010, the lyrical rapper formerly known as ‘Wheelchair Jimmy’ is poised to convert every doubter standing between him and his platinum plaque to a believer with one of the most anticipated Hip-Hop albums—maybe, ever—on the strenf of his wildly-ambitious/obsessively-scrutinized lead single “Over” which brilliantly infuses the BEST of ‘underground Aubrey’ with the absolute WORST of ‘Drizzy F. Baby’ in a way that no devoted fan/Draketheist © probably envisioned.

To me, “Over” bangs..but to you, it may..umm..NOT..but come [INSERT OFFICIAL Thank Me Later Release Date HERE (June 15?)] 2010, we’ll ALL (officially) know where Drake stands as a ‘Top-3’ candidate to one day rock the coveted Hip-Hop crown once co-worn by Big, Pac..and now *Hov (debatable)..hmm, honestly, only Drake knows and remember, he’s ‘just not anybody’…or is he?! ..Clock’s ticking.