Drake is Hip-Hop’s most popular and polarizing figure. He is not an artist that inspires indifference, especially when it comes to his history of nods to the Bay Area’s indie rap scene and its many heroes.
It started back in 2011, when Drake hopped on “The Motto,” a Bay Area-influenced song with his mentor Lil Wayne and Tyga, an LA rapper who no one really cared about at the time.
The music video started with an intro from none other than Mac Dre’s mom, something that came as a surprise to almost everyone. It also featured cameos from E-40, Mistah Fab, and Berner with shots of the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge and the SF skyline throughout.
There are two things Drake seems to genuinely love: making chart-topping music and attaching himself to regional rap scenes like a tourist buying an overpriced hoodie in the airport gift shop five minutes before boarding. Houston, Atlanta, Memphis, London drill, Jamaica, Afrobeats, reggaeton. If there’s a local sound bubbling somewhere on Earth, Drake will eventually appear beside it like a supportive stepdad holding a camera at a youth soccer game.
And for over a decade, one of his favorite side quests has been the Bay Area.
Not in the fake “I had sourdough once” way either. Drake’s Bay Area obsession is weirdly specific. He doesn’t just shout out E-40 because everyone knows E-40. Drake references rappers the way a 36-year-old Vallejo dude wearing Girbaud jeans explains hyphy history outside a gas station at 1:12 a.m.
This man knows deep cuts. He also pays homage to them, or steals them, depending on how you look at it.
Beyond featuring Mac Dre’s mom in “The Motto” music video and shouting out Mac Dre multiple times on his Take Care record, Drake also “borrowed” several lines from San Francisco rapper. Rappin’ 4-Tay’s West Coast classic, “Playaz Club.” He “paid homage” so heavily that Rappin’ 4-Tay sued Drake and won.
Despite his legal issues with Bay Area legends, it seemed the Bay still loved Drake. That was until Kendrick Lamar made pedophilia allegations into a club anthem that even a chart topper like Drake couldn’t “One Dance” his way out of.
Kendrick attacked Drake on more than just being a kid diddler, he said Drake disrespected the Bay by disrespecting 2Pac.
Drake used an AI deepfake of Pac’s voice, along with other West Coast legends to diss Kendrick Lamar in what may be one of the cringiest diss tactics in Hip Hop history.
Lamar, now famously rapped on “Not Like Us”, in a very hyphy-adjacent, Bay Area style beat
“you think the Bay gon’ let you disrespect Pac, ni***, I think that Oakland show gon’ be yo’ last stop, ni***.”
Which naturally flipped Drake’s strategy of co-opting regional sounds against him. The rest of the song Lamar called him a pedophile, a rapist, a culture vulture and a ton of other insults. And despite Drake’s popularity, everyone, including the Bay Area, ate it up.
Drake’s typically performative brooding and sensitivity suddenly became very real.
Kendrick Lamar was Leonidas in 300 and he just made Xerxes, the God-King of the Billboard charts, bleed in front of everyone.
Drake was fucked. Well, not in a real sense, his music remained among the most streamed on Spotify along with every other streaming platform. And he could still sell out stadium shows anywhere on earth, but his image of invincibility was shattered.
So after two years of centi-millionaire sulking, Drake returned to rap with Iceman, a revenge letter to everyone in Hip-Hop who was ever rude to him. He also made two other albums, but who gives a fuck? We’re talking about the Bay.
He also wanted to defend himself against the culture vulture allegations. So naturally, one has to display deep knowledge or connection to a region in order to successfully do that.
This is where “2 Hard 4 The Radio” comes in – A Drake remake of a legendary, but deeply underground Mac Dre song that was strictly a regional hit. Rappin’ 4-Tay’s “Playaz Club” notably got airplay outside of the Bay.
Drake used the song as an opportunity to refute Kendrick’s claim that he can’t come to Oakland. “Got an Oakland show tonight, baby. My young boys from the Yoc goin' crazy”
He also gave a shout out to Antioch. Antioch is elite ball knowledge in the Bay. Transplants don’t really know anything about it, or its contributions to the Bay Area’s rap scene, but they’re numerous.
Everyone knows Oakland and Vallejo when it comes to Bay Area Hip Hop, but Antioch is known by locals, and locals only for the most part.
Drake wanted to show that he had not only a surface level understanding of the region, but real connection. He also had P-Lo produce the beat for him. This once again was deeply strategic. P-Lo is a local Bay Area legend with mainstream adjacency.
P-Lo is the producer from the Bay with a ton of local respect and can still fly to LA, Atlanta or NYC to cook up beats for Hip Hop heavyweights.
This selection was a subtle shot at DJ Mustard. DJ Mustard is an LA producer that has “borrowed” so heavily from the Bay Area sound that Mistah Fab is rumored to have confronted him in a nightclub over it.
The question is will it work? Kendrick, while not from the Bay, is from California. Drake is from a different country. However, LA has taken so much from the Bay Area and repurposed it as its own, one has to ask, what’s the difference? LA is as different from the Bay as Toronto is.
And one could argue Drake put money in a Bay Area producer’s pockets, whereas Kendrick paid a guy who arguably is imitating the sound.
At the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter. Both Drake and Kendrick are rich as fuck and live great lives while us normies are analyzing mean-spirited poetry written by rich people who are detached from the very same streets and cities they talk about in their songs.
Maybe both Drake and Kendrick won, and we’re the fuckin’ losers?
Who knows?
