Words.
"...Clearly, crossing over is the new black. Rap doesn't typically embrace cupid-struck rappers, but with Kanye and Diddy and, especially, Drake testing the limits, let's call it progress: giant leaps for rap-kind. Drizzy's mixtape-as-unofficial-first-album So Far Gone, you'll recall, was filled with glistening Auto-Tuned bars and the completely non-rap sounds of Lykke Li and Peter Bjorn and John. We knew what we signed up for. He wore his softie side like a badge; we may not have loved Thank Me Later as unconditionally as Get Rich or Die Tryin', but we mostly accepted Drake's hodgepodge of soul-searching and half-white-people problems because he wasn't embarrassed about it. And because a lot of it sounded so good. So Drake, by managing to balance the creativity of hip-hop and the lure of pop, is the least guilty of switching tunes.
And as it happens, B.o.B. is right: Hip-hop is more accepting of skinny-jeaned rappers with a Coldplay fetish nowadays. And rappers are less concerned with the backlash they risk by preening in the pages of GQ and more comfortable with being themselves, even as they're still discovering who exactly that is. It's a bleak forecast—generic pop-rap overshadowing talent—but circumstances are such that the "official," rap-murking album is the commercial product, while mixtapes and other free fodder—featuring the creative music you actually asked for—are closer to the artist's true identity. Want their old shit? Download their old mixtapes. Or hope that the next wave of mainstream rap debuts—from, say, J. Cole, Wiz Khalifa, or 35-year-old virgin Jay Electronica—feature more conventional rapping. But who's to say they won't reach for the crossover hit themselves? Because everyone wants to be the next Drake."
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