Drake’s Music: The Ideal Soundtrack for Your Next Target Run, Says Yasiin Bey”

Yasiin Bey, a highly respected figure in the Hip Hop community, has recently expressed his views on a prominent figure in the current music scene.

In an exclusive interview with The Cutting Room Floor on Patreon, which was broadcasted on Wednesday (January 10), the Brooklyn-born artist delved into the topic of contemporary rap and its key player.

“Drake is pop to me,” he shared with the host, Recho Omondi. “In the sense like, if I was in Target in Houston and I heard a Drake song, it feels like a lot of his music is compatible with shopping. Or shopping with an edge, in certain instances.”

While Bey did describe the music of the Canadian sensation as “likeable,” he and Omondi humorously discussed the concept of music serving as a perfect accompaniment for commercial activities.

“I love this mall!” Bey humorously declared. “They have everything here. This is the new Drake — you hear it?”

Switching to a more serious tone, Bey proposed that music suitable for shopping might lose its relevance during “the collapse of empire.”

“Are we not in some early stage of that at this present hour?” he questioned. “Buying and selling — where’s the message that I can use? What’s in it for your audience?”

In a bold statement, he said, “I’d bet a million dollars on DOOM against Lil Wayne,” expressing his affinity for DOOM’s unique style. “He rhymes as weird as I feel. When I saw that Madvillain record, I bought it on vinyl and I didn’t even have a record player. I bought it just to stare at the album. I stared at it and I just kept going, ‘I understand it.’

“’Cause, you know, I was a teenager growing up listening to [John Coltrane’s] Love Supreme and [Miles Davis’] Bitches Brew and [Charles Mingus’] The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, but I was also rhyming.”

The unfortunate demise of MF DOOM (whose real name was Daniel Dumile) at the age of 49 in October 2020 due to respiratory issues was also mentioned. It was later revealed that he succumbed to angioedema, a rare side effect of blood pressure medication.