Welcome to the King Williams newsletter…a look at the intersections of Atlanta to the world.
Top Story: The Drake Effect - Part Two: Art, Assimilation, and the charts
Media Monday’s Vol. 5
Written by King Williams
Edited by Alicia Bruce
VII. Certified Lover Boy
Certified Lover Boy (CLB) is the sixth studio album and 12th major label project from Drake. CLB was initially announced in November 2020, with an intended January 2021 release. But for several reasons the project was pushed back repeatedly without a definite release date. The album was announced officially one day after the release of his rival Kanye West’s 10th studio album Donda on Monday, August 30th via Instagram with a new release date of Friday, September 3rd, 2021.
The cover
The cover for CLB was designed by German artist Damien Hirst. It is a combination of his previous works, his 2004-05 sculpture The Virgin Mother, his 2012 Spot Paintings, and/or also his 2014 piece The Cure.
The cover joined the long line of album covers of Drake projects that have been, ridiculed, hated, loved, but most importantly replicated. This strategy of Drake using his album art as replication has been in effect since 2015’s endlessly meme-able surprise album, If Your Reading This It’s Too Late. A cover designed by German artist Jim Joe, for his January 2014 show in New York City.
Parody is the Point
While his two previous albums, 2011’s Take Care and 2013’s Nothing Was The Same, we’re also ridiculed, then memed, amongst fans and detractors, the IYRTITL memes are what fully crossed over Drake into the larger internet ecosystem. The countless memes this covered inspired new advertising campaigns inadvertently. The theory of what a meme could be at scale was finally realized at the pace of the modern 3.0 internet.
The Drake album cover
Since he first debuted, Drake’s album covers have ranged from good (Nothing Was The Same), to bad (the audience reaction to CLB), to not trying at all (the generic ShutterStock images for What A Time To Be Alive), but most have generic with some exceptions. One of those being the cover of So Far Gone, which was copy a 2008 Economist magazine cover. And the other being 2013’s Nothing Was The Same which features an adult Drake on one full sized cover looking at his younger self on another full sized panel. That panel was done by Kadir Nelson, the same Kadir Nelson would later go on to paint the Obama portraits years later.
VIII. Memes, manipulation, and messaging
Richard Dawkins is credited for creating the word ‘meme’ in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins is credited as the first to both define and set the terms of what a meme is.
Dawkins likened memes to a form of pre-and-post literate societal form of communication in which images combined with words can provide meaning both implicit and explicit. Despite their seemingly harmless and sometimes generally stupid appeal, memes represent important societal evolution, communication, and culture.
Drake as a living meme
The evolution of Drake’s online omnipresence has been around since at least 2011. Drake’s 2015 saw his transition from the most successful and most popular musician to a living meme. What seems trivial to the adult makes perfect sense the younger you get. This transcendence also occurred during a mass evolution of the form as memes went from solely image only based communication to a variety of forms. And the most recent video for “Too Sexy” featuring Atlanta rappers Young Thug and Future, plus NBA champion Kawhi Leonard? is an example of manufacturing virality.
Drake memes as expressionism
Expressionism (n): a theory or practice in art of seeking to depict the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in the artist - Merriam-Webster’s dictionary
Drake memes over the last decade have become a real-time, global scale update of expressionist art. Drake like many other musicians rely heavily on mystery elusiveness to maintain the allure needed to sell albums and get singles on the radio. Drake took the opposite approach, becoming nearly omnipresent by becoming a constant source of interpretation, the expression of Drake is what expanded even when his musical output, social sitings, and traditional press runs decreased.
Hotline Bling
The expansion of the term ‘meme’ by 2015 in the minds of the every day person had begun to expand into GIFs (pronounced like ‘Jif’), micro videos (RIP Vine), photos, and in the case of the Hotline Bling video, a five-minute meme factory.
Drake has made himself deliberately the laughingstock. Understanding many of his detractors want to make fun of him, but instead of addressing most of them he simply empowers him to continue to do so, which promotes his music more. It’s a win-win strategy for all involved: the creators of the memes, the detractors of Drake, the fans of Drake, and of course Drake himself. It’s Drake featuring Drake.
IX. Art, amplification, and assimilation
What is art?
Since the release of CLB, conversation has emerged on to what is the purpose of album art? And what purposes should art have?
Art is defined by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as:
1) Something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings
2) Works created by artists: paintings, sculptures, etc., that are created to be beautiful or to express important ideas or feelings
Is the Drake album cover art or not?
There are no wrong answers when personally defining what art is, but the public has clear answers on what it isn’t. And it seems as if the public doesn’t believe this is art. Drake’s album cover can be argued as both modern art, pop art, internet art, or not art at all. Art is always subjective but the cover of CLB is generating a renewed debate. Whether or not you believe the album cover is indeed, the piece has opened up the wider, global discourse of thought around it and the album.
Amplification
Poking fun of Drake is a sport unto itself on the internet. Drake and his team perfectly assessed back in 2015 that in order to market an album you would likely need to continually have it promoted peer-to-peer. Within days of the image being released, the ROI on this type of campaign for someone at the scale of Drake’s is insurmountable.
Going viral is the key to success
When it comes to amplification on the internet the best form is virality. The ability to replicate a piece of content that goes beyond the individual who is engaging or creating that content. The key to virality is community, contacts, and communication methods. The most viral posts are ones that have a connection to a small and interconnected subset of people first. Is this group of people who will spread amongst themselves and then either by choice or secondary viewers will spread it further. But most importantly, memes work best when they are funny, even if that humor is vile to the point that it isn’t embraced by larger audiences as such.
This 2015 talk from Doa Nguyen, former publisher for digital media organization Buzzfeed, one the most influential companies of the last decade regarding digital media. The company has become known for its ability to make nearly anything go viral and to quickly have a monetization strategy attached. At the end of BuzzFeed’s viral written posts, listicals, and videos are advertising partners. The monetization strategy is not on the consumer of continent directly, this is Drake strategy as well for the streaming era.
How monetizing viral memes works
Streaming music now is affectively at zero, the same as it was when he first launched. The difference is the ability to stream his music is near ubiquitous. By Drake highlighting his most recent single or album, people who want to comment or participate must go to these platforms to do so. In doing so the advertising model of a page streaming service or an ad-based streaming service is what undergoes the entire experience. The user affectively pays nothing or $9.99 a month depending on their level of comfort with the platform and not Drake. So Drake’s team realizes in this economy it’s better to get more attention that can be directed towards a platform, a platform that is supported by as dollars or subscription revenue than it is for a direct sale.
In the streaming era of music, an artist gets paid more per stream if a user does via paid streaming service (Apple Music/TIDAL) than a free user who is monetize via ads on the platform (Spotify/YouTube’s free accounts). And in cases when there is no ecosystem, it’s on the creator of the contact to make sure that it ends in some form of sales funnel: touring, merchandise, and other items that could be purchased via one click.
Assimilation
The sheer number of replications of the CLB album cover were in the hundreds of thousands within a matter of hours, within days, corporations, artists and others were in on the trend. The moment people re-create the album cover, or re-interpolate the various promotional billboards that popped up in various cities across the world, they are assimilating into the Drake universe. It’s here with ‘the Drake effect’ has its biggest hold. The universe that was created now is directly attribute it to Drake and therefore everything that comes afterwards always brings back the reference point. This is peak level content marketing.
X. Drake’s peak is different
The Charts - CLB
Upon its release, CLB set a new all-time record for single day streams and broke the all-time record for streaming for the fourth time. Drake also became the first artist in history to control 9 of the 10 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time. Drake also became the first person in history to hold the top three positions on the Hot 100 at the same time, and has now done this twice in one year.
It also is the first time since the Beatles in the 1960s at one individual or group has held the entire top five singles on the Hot 100 chart. Breaking another record he set back in March as the first artist to debut with the top three singles simultaneously with a three song EP Scary Hours 2.
The Charts - Drake vs Drake
CLB is the second largest debut of any streaming album in history and the second largest debut internationally behind 2018s Scorpion. Drake beat himself with the most streams in a single day of an album anywhere. This includes setting, then breaking the all-time records at Spotify with 153 million for CLB versus 132 million for Scorpion. While also setting the new ceiling for the most new streams of a single song in a day and a week. But after the first day streams, Scorpion’s day-to-day streams are slightly better than CLB’s.
The Charts - Drake vs the field
Prior to the release of CLB, Drake was still competing with himself until this year. 2021 has seen the musical coming out party of 18-year-old Olivia Rodrigo for her debut album Sour early this year at over 300 million plays in a week. While Drake’s rival, Kanye West’s most recent album Donda topped Olivia Rodrigo to became the biggest streaming week this year, at over 357 million streams on a shorter 5-day schedule. And while those numbers in any non-Drake year, would be talk of the town for the rest of the year, CLB had 746 million streams which was down about 25% from the high of 1 billion first week streams for Scorpion in 2018. For perspective, 2020s top performing album, My Turn from Atlanta rapper Lil’ baby who garnered over 2.6 billion streams total for the entire year across all platforms.
XI. ‘The Drake Effect’ is showing signs of decline.
Drake is (slowly) declining in popularity and influence, but the scale is much different. The peak influence of a 2009-2014 Drake feature verse was the cheat code to promote a new artist to mainstream music success, the impact is waning.
‘The Drake Stimulus Package’ isn’t working as well anymore
‘The Drake Stimulus’ package over the last three years hasn’t yielded much relative success. The ability of relying solely on a Drake feature to catapult an emerging or unknown artist into the mainstream hasn’t had the same effect as it did five years ago.
Take for example Young Bleu, a newer generation rapper-singer from Mobile, Alabama. Young Bleu is on a well funded subsidiary to a mainstream record label Warner Bros. Records, via Meek Mill’s Dream Chashers records imprint. Drake is featured on his debut mainstream single “You’re Mines Still”. As a result, the single featured heavy national radio play and music streaming service placement because of the Drake feature. While the song is a success, it has not reached a Drake-level of success. Despite generating over 100 million plays on Spotify alone, the song is underperforming compared to Drake’s previous heights, nor the single has not managed to make a household name of Yung Bleu.
Via Trapital (5/22/2019), Why Drake’s ‘Stimulus Package’ Can’t Save Everyone:
But there’s a big difference between a marketing tactic and a stimulus package. Tactics, like Drake’s guest verses, have a distinct shelf life. They are most effective when tied in with a broader marketing strategy and are backed by a strong product. Meanwhile, a stimulus package should provide a sustainable boost and foundation for an artist who would struggle without said support.
Under further examination, analyzing the difference in video views and streams for “You’re Mines Still”, you begin to understand what’s happening to the Drake stimulus package. The Drake feature now works best in three scenarios:
First, with an artist that is already established, (see: Bad Bunny’s “MIA”),
Second, with an artist who should’ve collaborated with Drake but hasn’t yet, (see: Drake’s surprise verse on Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode”) —see reaction below:
Third, is from a city with a strong music ecosystem + marketing team/record label.
See: Atlanta’s own LVRN record label push of Atlanta R&B singer Summer Walker’s single “Girls Need Love” remix featuring Drake.
There are still some notable exceptions of ‘the Drake stimulus package’ still working. It’s been most evident in the careers of Atlanta based acts. Including 21 Savage, Future, and the current King of Rap, Lil’ Baby. It was Lil’ Baby who parlayed 2018 Drake featured on “Yes Indeed” into a series of songs with Drake, while growing his profile independently from Drake.
But compared to the impact of other artists, Drake’s last 3-5 years could be considered comparable to the Jordan-era of the Washington Wizards. If the numbers came from anyone else, it would be a great sign of success—but not for number 23.
Drake’s future is in international music
Where Drake’s effect is still at its most potent is internationally. 2016’s “One Dance” featuring Nigerian artist WizKid, the biggest African artist was a tremendous boost for WizKid and the entire Afrobeats movement. Drake’s 2017 ‘playlist’ More Life was a global exposure to London Grime, House, and R&B, with artists the like of Jorja Smith and Skept got huge boosts in global exposure. While 2018’s guest verse on “MIA” by Latinx singer-rapper Bad Bunny has aided in bringing more people to Latin Trap and Latin Hip Hop.
Both “One Dance” and “MIA” work because these are already established artists (WizKid, Bad Bunny) are already top-5 in their respective niches. A push from Drake sends the single further outside of their pre-existing demos, reinforcing their position and his. “MIA” has over 1.2 billion views on YouTube and over a billion plays on Spotify alone. While “One Dance” is the first song on Spotify to reach 1 billion streams in 2016 and is one of the most streamed songs ever on the platform.
XII. Conclusion
Drake at 34 is now the elder statesman. Drake has seen his audience grow up but his musical content hasn’t. Despite the elder statesman status and fatherhood, his music really reflects anything about his personal life. Resulting in fans and critics like to expect every Drake album as being the same Drake album. While his biggest rivals Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West have been willing to take swings on each album regarding lyrical content, something Drake has not. Despite the streaming success, its becoming harder to mask the continually middling audience reviews of each album, especially CLB which has the lowest audience and critic responses of his career.
Drake has mastered the art of making successful singles for radio and streaming but that formula now is becoming stale. The success on the charts is a testament to understanding the marketplace but missing the point. We may never see another artist with the same level of dominance or pivoting like Drake has done in music, and that should be celebrated. And if there is going to be a new chapter in this book of a long career, it’s time to make some changes.