The biggest rapper on the planet, Drake, was booed off stage last weekend at Tyler the Creator’s annual music festival, Camp Flog Gnaw.
Fans at Camp Flog Gnaw were disappointed when the surprise headliner was revealed to be Drake, not Frank Ocean. People in the front rows reacted by booing loud enough for Drake, the Canadian singer, rapper, and sometimes actor, to stop his performance after only a few songs.
This draws attention to the fact that despite being arguably the biggest artist in the world right now, Drake has a very complicated relationship with hardcore hip-hop fans, the likes of which frequent Camp Flog Gnaw.
These fans behaved completely inappropriately. That being said, their disappointment was understandable. Nobody involved with the festival, at any point, gave fans a reason to believe the surprise headliner would be Frank Ocean. However, its an obvious guess as he and Tyler, the Creator work very closely together. Whereas Tyler and Drake have never collaborated musically. Furthermore, Drake caters to a very different breed of hip-hop fans than Tyler, the Creator fans. The two represent two extremes of the hip-hop musical spectrum. Drake is a power-house borderline-pop artist who leverages a large creative team to churn out radio-ready records. Tyler, on the other hand, releases experimental hip-hop written and produced entirely by himself. Consequently, Drake was more of a surprise than fans had bargained for.
I have to imagine this is a very difficult position for Tyler, the Creator to be in. Soon after the incident, he took to Twitter to express his extreme disappointment in his fans. He was understandably upset. He managed to get the biggest artist in the world to perform at his music festival and that still was not good enough for his fans. If I was Tyler and had put all that work into organizing an awesome event for my fans I would definitely be mad at their reaction too.
This story is interesting to me because it highlights the unique position Drake is in. He is the biggest musical artist in the world right now, however hoards of hardcore hip-hop fans still hat him. I think it is because, in my humble opinion, Drake has achieved his level of success by watering down hip-hop and pandering to the mainstream. What’s even more fascinating is how little this affected Drake. He is so far ahead of the rest of his competition that when he started getting booed he was able to simply shrug his shoulders and walk off the stage without thinking about it twice. The next day he took to Instagram to make fun of the fans who booed him. Not only does Drake not care, the mainstream public does not either. They will still listen to his music. Because they have not been exposed to better rappers to compare him to.
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