ABOUT: “E- PICK ”
“E- PICK ” is a weekly Saturday post on www.mckoysnews.com, where Amber Crowl (Radio Personality, Host, Writer and Activist) discusses happenings in Jamaican Music, Entertainment Topics and Cultural Ideas. Amber welcomes your questions and comments on Mckoy’s News. and you can send e-mails to irieamber@gmail.com.
WELCOME TO THIS WEEK’S E-PICK. IN THE SPOTLIGHT THIS WEEK IS CANADIAN RAPPER DRAKE AND HIS LOYALTY TO JAMAICAN DEEJAY ARTIST POPCAAN
Criticism continues pour out on social media after Drake’s second album drops without a proper feature for Dancehall artiste Popcaan. Now, both artistes have been showing support for each other for roughly 3 years now and last time Drake put out an album he disappointed fans of the Unruly Artiste when the popular song “Controlla” did not appear on Drake’s album. Instead a sample of Beenie Man’s voice was used on the same “Controlla” track and fans saw it as a snub for Popcaan. Since then Popcaan has still continued to show support for Drake and they seem to still have a pretty solid friendship.
Now here comes Drake’s second album in 3 years and fans seem to have thought that Drake would feature Popcaan this time. Well, no he didn’t and the subject of Drake’s loyalty has come up again. To add fuel to the fire, fans of African Artiste WizKid are on social media expressing the same sentiments about Drake after WizKid dropped a video for his song with Drake and the canadian rapper was not in the video. So is Drake’s loyalty to be questioned here or is it his business ethics? Could it be that the fans are, and have just been jumping to conclusions about his loyalty to Popcaan without thinking to themselves that maybe Drake and Popcaan have made no business agreement to be featured on an album?
I think that this is a classic case of social media blowing things out of proportion and fans who have their own expectations are now disappointed. Whether the artistes led people to believe that there would be a feature or not, that still doesn’t say that both artistes agreed on anything to do with an appearance on an album. To make matters worst Popcaan and Drake keep the intrigue going by still showing each other support on social media, with no mention of anything to do with the album. This has only let more people in suspense and it really just goes to show that fans should not jump to conclusions about artistes’ business deals nor should they develop any expectations of their own about the artistes thoughts, words or actions.
Some people say that Drake only got close to Popcaan to learn Jamaican slangs and speech so that he could use them on his album, which by the way is filled with Dancehall vibes and his attempts at sounding Jamaican in his songs. Well all I know is that if both artistes are comfortable with their friendship then the public needs to let go of their expectations and let them be. Time will reveal if Drake is truly a friend to Popcaan and someone who is here to expose and enlarge Jamaica’s musical styles, instead of exploiting it for only his own personal gains.