A mug of steaming liquid rests between palms as eyes race along a chain of tabbed Chrome results. I’m about to delve into the most prolific case of Hip Hop ghostwriting since Rapper’s Delight. Grab a coffee – you’ll want to join me for this.

Context:

We all know being a good writer doesn’t get you a deal with Dr Dre. By this point in life, I’ve pretty much given up any ambition of becoming a rapper. I’ve got a regular office job, family, commitments etc. that all mean I’m getting to the point where a career in rap has dipped beyond the horizon.

That being said, I’m still writing every day, listening to hip hop and following the main blogs and youtube channels.

Drake’s in my personal top 5 (which goes something like 2pac, Eminem, Jay-z, Drake, Tyler the Creator). Rewind to summer 2015 when the Ghostwriting allegations about Drake came to light. I was shocked; genuinely in awe of the information. At the time, I didn’t think anyone had writers. Granted, I knew Eazy-E didn’t write, which was public knowledge. He was the ‘face’ of NWA, the credibility for their gangsta image, so he didn’t need to write. They had Cube for that.

I knew Dre and Puff used writers, but again it was public knowledge and these guys were producers first and foremost. I would never dream ‘real’ lyricists used writers. When rumours broke about Stic.man and Jay-Electronica writing for Nas for Untitled I just passed it off and didn’t give it a second thought.

Back to 2015; the Quentin Miller references dropped, and I was shocked yet also excited. Drake is one of the best writers in the game. All rappers have got favourites, and try to emulate them when making a song. If a bullet pierces Drake’s armour and drags him a little below the clouds it has the effect of giving aspiring writers like me a leg-up.

I didn’t interpret the allegations about Drake quite the same as everyone else. I’ve thought deeply about the matter and this is my theory on what happened:

I’ll just add the caveat that this is all conjecture, and I’ve got absolutely no authority or ‘inside’ information about the matter. None. My thoughts on the ghostwriting allegations when it happened and in the first few months after, in no particular order, are thus:

IYRTITL was an underwhelming album, coming as it did 2 years after NWTS (Nothing Was The Same)

Drake suggests in a song on the records that he has money problems with his label, Cash Money (read ‘Birdman’). Wayne is also going through money problems, so I assume Drake isn’t being paid correctly

J-Prince also came out later and basically said to a bunch of producers, ‘don’t mess with Drake’, and he includes Birdman in that bunch. Bearing in mind Drake and Baby had no public beef, why would he say this, unless something was going on behind the scenes?

Drake was under contract for a certain amount of albums with Young Money (YM) and if Baby was withholding money, and making things difficult behind the scenes, it makes sense Drake would want off the label. Therefore – wouldn’t it be a good idea to fulfil the YM contract as soon as possible, releasing quickly made sub-par content and saving the classic material (he was working on ‘Views’ at the time) for his own OVO label/re-negotiated contract

The album title ‘IYRTITL’ was weird – it came across as a shot at his label, especially the way it dropped unexpectedly and unannounced, and these rumours (listed above) were swirling around at the time

All of this being said – if I was in Drake’s position; wanting out of my contract, one solution to get quickly free would be: Hire a writer and bang out a few quick low-quality albums that fulfill obligations, re-sign with another major, such as Beats, for $20 M, with a greater profit share, and release my real ‘masterpiece’ on the new label. Makes sense right?

One other thought I had, and I go back to my first bullet point: IYRTITL was underwhelming, and if Drake was getting help with writing, that help wasn’t improving things. Anyway, his classics, Take Care, and NWTS, were written with his own pen, weren’t they, so any help he received with IYRTITL wouldn’t taint the reputation of those?

I didn’t love any of the reference-leaked songs from IYRTITL with one nagging exception: ‘Know Yourself’. Know Yourself was probably my favourite on the whole album. When I heard the Quentin Miller reference it knocked me for 6. It was one good song out of a bunch of 4, out of a career of countless hits. I let it slide – for the time being.

Joe Budden

Joe Budden kept digging at Drake on his SoundCloud podcast: The Weeknd wrote Take Care. I’d never previously paid attention to that rumour. The Weeknd sang background vocal on a couple of Take Care songs and was credited for that, right? That was normal in Hip Hop writing credits. Abel hadn’t actually ‘written’ any of Drake’s parts per se. Had he?

In research mode, I dug deeper searching “Take Care and the Weeknd”, unearthing a Rolling Stone interview from a few years back.

Abel has 5 writing credits on Take Care – Drake’s sophomore effort. He basically said he had a bunch of songs for HOB (House of Balloons) and Drake took them for Take Care. That means Drake took the beat, kept the chorus, and re-wrote the verses – I assume. This is Abel:

“I was hungry… I was like, ‘Dude, take anything. I gave up almost half of my album. It’s hard. I will always be thankful—if it wasn’t for the light he shined on me, who knows where I’d be. And everything happens for a reason. You never know what I would say if this success wasn’t in front of me now.”

Drake tweeted about the ghostwriting rumours in November 2017 to a fan attempting to engage him with the same accusation:

“Abel Tesfaye CO WROTE on ‘Shot For Me’ and ‘Practice,’ obviously was featured on ‘Crew Love’ and ‘The Ride’ and that’s it. There’s 20 songs on that album … don’t try me.”

This list of 4 songs misses out ‘Cameras’ (for which Abel has album credits) but that was a forgettable interlude which is why Drake neglected to mention that (I’m guessing).

Notice Drake says ‘co-wrote on two tracks’. Reading between the lines, and looking at the Quentin Miller example – I’m going to assume this is Drake taking Abel’s reference track and re-purposing it for himself. Still, that’s only 2 songs, from a formidable album. Shot For Me is one of the standout tracks on the album though… OK we’ll let it go.

The thing is, I couldn’t let it go. Someone would revisit the ghostwriting subject and I’d do more digging. After research and deliberation, I uncovered a lot of evidence that points to ghostwriting being rifer in Hip Hop, especially in regard to the 6 God, than imagined.

Drake’s Ghostwriters

The following is my analysis of Drake’s ghostwriters (ones I could uncover) from an outsider’s perspective. I’m not going to go into the ins and outs and the whys and wherefores behind my research – all of these names are floating around if you take care to find them (i.e. Google).

I’ll reiterate – this is conjecture, I don’t have proof of the accuracy or validity of these writers (with the exception of Quentin Miller); this is me reading rumours, reading the rappers’ responses, and reading between the lines:

Nickelus F – Drake sourced Nickelus F (“My little brother, Mark”) from Myspace and included him on his ‘Room For Improvement’ debut mixtape. Nickelus claims he wrote Drake’s verse for ‘Goin In’ feat Lil Wayne.

OVO Hush: Hush has extensive writing credits across NWTS and TC. He’s a high-quality rapper from Parma, Toronto, and featured with Drake on the diss song to Aristo ‘Good Riddance’ from pre-Thanks For Nothing fame. Also known as Young Tony (from 2005 mixtapes) he had a big name for himself in the 6. Drake has been on the record to say he gets ‘advice/words’ from Hush. I think Hush writes lines for Drake, and has been since Take Care, and in some cases, possibly verses.

Kenza Samir: Drake admitted she co-writes for him. I think she gives him phrases or lines, rather than writing verses.

Abel Tesfaye (The Weeknd): I think Abel wrote the ‘singing parts’ of the 4 tracks on TC that he’s credited for. (So, to be clear, I think Drake wrote the ‘rap’ on Shot for Me’.

Quentin Miller – You know the story, this one is the only ‘validated’ example of the above.

PartyNextDoor: Party has written for Drake, but I can’t with accuracy say exactly what parts of which songs. I’m assuming his writing credits and features on albums extend his own ‘sung’ parts.

Mo-G: Mo-G (Toronoto rapper from Regent Park) was co-signed by Drake in 2016 on the hit ‘Summer 16’ (“Mo-G with the dance moves”). Mo-G called out OVO records co-founder Oliver El-Kahtib for not paying ghostwriting credits. These rumours eventually dissappeared (instagram posts of Mo-G calling out El-Khatib were subsequently deleted) and the rumour (from Hip Hop website forum sections) is that he was paid $12k for writing credits on three songs. I think this accusation is a long shot, as far as ghostwriting goes. It’s not clear he wrote explicity for Drake projects and his gripe was with OVO rather than Drake. He ended up in hospital shortly after all this was cleared up, though, so it’s clear somone wanted revenge.



Poverty: Poverty is the rapper who shared a prison cell with Dennis Graham and rapped over the phone with Drake when Drizzy was 15 or 16 years’ old. (“I used to rap on the phone, one of his friends doing life” – You & The 6). I don’t think Poverty actually wrote Drake verses, but he certainly gave inspiration to an early Drake and probably helped craft some of the ideas on Room for Improvement (Drake’s debut mixtape).

Conclusion:

Rap is not (as many rappers claim) like sport. It is an art form.

It is also, however, highly competitive, and stuffed with financial incentive.

There has been much debate in the industry about ghostwriting – is it valid? Is it ‘cheating’? I won’t go into detail, but I’ll give my two cents on the matter:

Essentially the use of ghostwriters for a rapper is analogous to Lance Armstrong and the cycling blood-doping scandal. If you’re using writers in secret (i.e. it’s not public knowledge and you’ve never admitted it) then yes, it’s cheating. If you make it public knowledge, then that’s completely fair play.

Either way, the use of Ghostwriters doesn’t detract anything from the music, and despite everything I’ve just written I don’t discredit Drake in any way, shape or form. As much as he’s used other writers, he’s also been the pen for other artists, including (as far as we know) Dr Dre and Rita Ora, and probably others.

Yes, he’s used Ghostwriters secretly, and gone against the ethics of a ‘real’ emcee. Can Drake write his own songs? Yes. Is he still a good writer? One of the best. Would he be in the position that’s he’s in today without writers? No. Are they the only force propelling Drake to the top of Pop stardom? No, they’re not. He also has OVO 40, Boi-1da, major marketing dollars, a Lil Wayne co-sign, and backing from other major industry players. All of this is in addition to a huge OVO team whose jobs and livelihood depend on keeping Drake at number one. This is the new version of ‘major label’ backing: Crew Love.

Is this new industry set-up positive or not? I can’t say – it just is, so accept it and move on. The industry’s been corrupt since conception, and today’s standards are nothing new. The important thing I take from this is as follows:

If the Hip Hop industry is built on talent alone, to be successful within this game all you’d require is profound lyrical talent . This axiom served as somewhat of a kick in the teeth; resounding proof, as if I needed any further, that I lack the requisite talent to ‘make it’.

If, however, the industry is built on diverse teams of writers and producers whose collective talent directly influences your chance to succeed, and that fame is cultivated from the work of those with who you surround yourself, then talent alone is not enough.

Further; industry success can’t be based solely on credibility. It is a system; designed by those at the top and suited to their needs. Although this appears daunting, even unreasonable to some, I prefer to look at success as follows; any system can be gamed.