The well-known music artist and rapper, Drake, came out with his latest album, Her Loss, in collaboration with 21 Savage. The album hit number one on the Billboard 100 chart almost immediately. Drake’s loyal fans across TikTok were quick to praise him specifically for his single “Spin Bout U” because he includes lyrics that indicate he is pro-choice when it comes to abortion. The 36-year-old hinted through lyrics that he condemned anti-abortion lawmakers following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States. The rapper’s lyrics said “Damn, just turned on the news and seen that men who never got p***y in school are makin’ laws about what women can do.”
Even though Drake is not the first singer to call out the anti-abortion ruling in his music, he received an unusual amount of praise for it. Other artists such as Pink wrote a protest song called ‘Irrelevant’ and Lizzo even showed the phrase “our body, our choice” after performing one of her songs in public. However, the same amount of recognition and praise was not given to them for doing the bare minimum. Mostly young women on TikTok were putting Drake on a pedestal for being pro-choice, however they failed to acknowledge the already prevalent misogyny present in Hip-Hop culture. Musicians such as Drake use rap to objectify and sexualize women regularly, their music mostly contains sexual lyrics that idealize a certain type of woman, and therefore Rap music ends up reinforcing the male gaze. One of drake’s infamous lyrics says “I blow a half a million on you hoes, I’m a feminist”, which is ironic in itself because feminists do not view women as ‘hoes’.
A lot of listeners also called the musician out on his album for being misogynistic because he drags a female artist, Megan Thee Stallion, in one of the album’s songs. Earlier in 2022, Megan was shot by another famous musician and Drake accuses her of lying about it. However, Megan did not stay silent and was quick to retaliate by tweeting “Stop using my shooting for clout”. The fact that Drake unnecessarily mentioned the female rappers shooting, without having any connection to it, just shows how problematic rappers can be. Invalidating a woman’s accident and her pain even when she is famous seems to be the norm. Therefore, even if fans are praising the song Spin Bout U for being pro-choice, they should acknowledge the rapping industry still has a long way to go in terms of being feminist and respectful towards women.
I think this boils down to the fact that men are often championed for doing the bare minimum while advocating for women's rights, because the bar that has been set is really low. Although Drake is still low in the list of misogynistic rappers with the most toxic lyrics (Eminem's at Number 1 for sure), his songs are not exempt from problematic tropes. One of his songs, Girls Want Girls from his last album, faced a lot of backlash as well for the lyric 'Say that you're a lesbian, girl me too' because he uses lesbian and queer women as props for heterosexual fantasies, and thus normalises the already existent sexualisation and fetishisation of LGBTQ+ people.
I feel so strongly about this! The lyric implying Megan thee Stallion was extremely insensitive and regressive. As a black woman, Meg has to deal with misogynoir from media, and Drake as one of the most famous music personalities in the world. Minor comments that he may not think twice about greatly impact the thinking of teenage boys who make up the majority of his fanbase. The misogynistic backlash that this generated for Megan was overwhelming, and despite the fact that Drake is very active on social media, this line was never addressed by him. Claiming that Drake is a feminist to me is very problematic because it appears to be performative. Drake hasn't experienced sufficient backlash against the damage…
The fact that most raps and songs revolve around bi*ches , hoes and objectifying women in every way possible is not really talked about . Singers like Weeknd , drake , Eminem etc have composed many songs from the male gaze perspective , lyrics devaluing and sexualising women as they are sexual objects for male desire. But once in a while , they stand up for women rights and suddenly they get all the praise? I think it hits every woman very hard when a MAN is a feminist or stands up for them because that isn’t really the norm. Suddenly , women feel acknowledged , like someone has been listening to how they feel and as I sa…
I understand where you are coming from but I think the reason why he is getting praised is because we live in a misogynistic society and seeing men stand up for our rights (especially if they are extremely famous rappers), stands out. Female artists are always standing up for women rights but it isn’t a big deal because they are women. But if men do it, it’s extra special. This is really stupid but I think it’s true. In reality, all these rappers are very derogatory towards women. All their songs are about disrespecting and sexualising women which is one reason I hate rap music.