Every Brother Ain’t a Brotha: Is Drake Guilty of a Hip-Hop Hate Crime?

People have been complaining about the atrocities done in the name of Hip-Hop for decades, and how the rapper of the month has sold out to corporate interests at the expense of the culture. However, when the question becomes, “ So, whatcha gonna do about it?” there is never a definite answer.Perhaps the best example, today, is Hip-Hop’s glamour boy, Drake. The issue here is not the former kid show actor’s lack of “street cred,” nor whether you find his music irritating to the eardrums – but the fact that he drops the N-bomb in so many of his lyrics. Even on his latest track, “Enough Said” with the late Aaliyah , Drake seems to have a certain affinity for the word.

In all fairness, rappers have been saying ‘n*gga’ since the first Hip-Hop park jams, and you would be hard pressed to name one Hip-Hop artist that doesn’t use the derogatory term. But the difference with Drake is – he ain’t Black.

If you look at the Jewish mother rule, if your mama is Jewish, that makes you Jewish. And since Drake’s father is an AfricanAmerican but his mother is a white, Jewish Canadian, that makes him the latter. (I didn’t make the rule, I’m just telling you what it says.) This is also compounded by the fact that you would be hard pressed to see where Drake even identifies with the dark side of his family tree, unless you consider hangin’ out with Lil Wayne and excessive use of the N-word as evidence of his African roots.

Although, one may argue that the one drop rule and the dominance of melanin in his skin may make Drake racially “Black”, that has nothing to do with what that makes him culturally. So, what we are dealing with here is not race but the politics of cultural identity.

Who can and cannot say n*gga has long been debated in Hip-Hop. Latino entertainers like Fat Joe and Jennifer Lopez have gotten by on the “Latino’s are n*ggas, too” argument, and White women like V Nasty and Gwyneth Paltrow, supposedly, have obtained signed ghetto passes from Hip-Hop’s elite, allowing them to use the word. However, it is an unwritten rap rule that, while a Black rapper can use the word at will, a White rapper is subject to a beatdown for even using “nickel” in a sentence without clarifying his statement.

And most white Hip-Hop artists aren’t that stupid. Although, they may hire Black rappers to use the word on their CDs, they will never utter the word themselves.

Case in point is when Dave Mays and Benzino, formerly of The Source Magazine went on a wild, witchhunt to find evidence of Eminem saying something even remotely disrespectful about Black people years back, and came up with nothing really tangible besides a lyric in a long lost unreleased track. But, what if the person has dark skin, but, culturally, is a card carrying member of another ethnic group? Should he be given a pass to use racial slurs without being called on it?Herein lies the Drake dilemma.