The New (Jewish) Face of Rap - Drake

[IsraelForever]

This guy has been getting a lot of press lately.  He's become a very big success. 

From: http://www.forward.com/articles/128794/

By Devra Ferst
Published June 16, 2010, issue of June 25, 2010.


Music writer Jon Caramanica said it right in the New York Times on June 8: “Biracial Jewish-Canadian former child actors don’t have a track record of success in the American rap industry.”

But Drake (born Aubrey Drake Graham), a 23-year-old half-black, half-Jewish gifted rapper from suburban Toronto, is proving Caramanica and us wrong. The rap star, whose debut album, “Thank Me Later,” debuted June 15, has already made big waves in the hip-hop community and has built a strong fan base. In fact, a free show scheduled for the same day in Manhattan was canceled after thousands of fans showed up and a melee erupted.

Drake, who was raised by his Jewish mother in Toronto, attended a Jewish day school and celebrated his bar mitzvah. “I went to a Jewish school, where nobody understood what it was like to be black and Jewish,” he said in a June interview in Heeb magazine.

But Drake left the Jewish suburb of Forest Hills and his Jewish school after getting his start at 14 on the Canadian Television Network teen drama “Degrassi: The Next Generation” as Jimmy Brooks, a wheelchair-bound basketball player. While filming the show, he recorded two amateur mixtapes on the side and, in 2008, hip-hop star Lil Wayne invited him to join his tour. The two collaborated while traveling, which led to Drake’s third mixtape, “So Far Gone.”

The title song, with the promotional help of Lil Wayne, reached the No. 2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and garnered Drake two Grammy nominations in 2010, making him the first rapper to be nominated without producting an album.

Drake’s music has been singled out for his thoughtful, personal lyrics and his undeniable vocal talent, and it has given him the opportunity to collaborate with rappers like Eminem and Jay Z, and even with indie rock artists like Peter Bjorn and John.

And despite his stardom in a music genre that is rarely linked to Jews, Drake has continued to self-identify as Jewish. A December 2009 Vibe magazine cover showed him wearing a diamond studded chai necklace.

[TheCoon]

Good for him for staying Jewish, though he hangs around with Lil Wayne who has some of the most filthy lyrics in rap.

That said, he is absolutely horrible. He has no flow or rhythm at all. If you compare him to a really good rapper like Tupac Shakur, Notorious BIG or Eminem, he is absolutely trash. Good rappers can make their lyrics flow with the beats. They change their tempo and their voices don't sound the same all the time. Drake is simply monotone and he sounds like he's droning over the background music. I can't for the life of me understand how he got famous like this. Lil Wayne is the same thing. Absolute dogshit trash.

[IsraelForever]

Yes!  I should have added how absolutely dreadful he is.  In fact, I was wondering how on earth, out of all the miserable and rotten rappers there are, all of sudden he became so famous???

[muman613]

I hope we learned that the wisdom "Our enemies enemy is our friend" is not a good axiom.

[takebackourtemple]

half-black, half-Jewish

1. The two are not exclusive of each other.
2. There is no such thing as half Jewish.

[muman613]

half-black, half-Jewish

1. The two are not exclusive of each other.
2. There is no such thing as half Jewish.

true, either you are born from a Jewish mother or you are not... If not you are not Jewish.

[IsraeliGovtAreKapos]

half-black, half-Jewish

1. The two are not exclusive of each other.
2. There is no such thing as half Jewish.

true, either you are born from a Jewish mother or you are not... If not you are not Jewish.

And the color of skin is irrelavent.

[angryChineseKahanist]

All rappers and rap supporters should be put on trains.

[Ari Ben-Canaan]

Music writer Jon Caramanica said it right in the New York Times on June 8: “Biracial Jewish-Canadian former child actors don’t have a track record of success in the American rap industry.”

 

Forgive me if I am ignorant of the subject, but how many "bi-racial Jewish-Canadian former child actors" are there, and how many of them have attempted to get into the American rap industry?  Dozens?  Hundreds?  Thousands?  I lived on the border of Canada for the first 15 years of my life and I have to say that Canadian television is a fairly small industry.  "Degrassi" is really, really lame [most every show involves embracing Leftism, homosexuality, divorce, child abuse, drugs, teenage pregnancy].  It is a show which is quite popular though.  Some of my friends watched it, and a middle school English teacher made students watch it every Friday as part of class [thankfully I was in another teachers class; true story, the teacher who made kids watch this show was eventually arrested for child pornography; what a surprise.].You really need to be suicidally bored to watch the show, and a truly relentless self-hater to watch the 2nd generation version of the same show.  While the "Trailer Park Boys" is a fairly immoral Canadian show as well, all immorality is depicted as behavior not to be emulated [every season they end up in jail, among other things], and is quite funny... Degrassi embraces Leftism and teaches immorality through acceptance.

I can't say I remember this "wheelchair ridden basketball player" turned rapper, but I did have to suffer through the agony of learning all about this new show from my good friend's girlfriend who I went to school with the last time I spent time in my hometown visiting my parents.



DeNazi Junior High



Trailer Park Boys

[muman613]

Canada used to have some SUPERB comedians...

One of my favorite TV shows I would watch every Saturday night after SNL was SCTV {Second City Television}.

It had:

John Candy
Joe Flaherty
Eugene Levy
Rick Moranis
Martin Short
Dave Thomas
Catherine O'Hare
Andrea Martin



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_City_Television

Second City Television (SCTV) is a Canadian television sketch comedy show offshoot from Toronto's The Second City troupe that ran between 1976 and 1984.

Premise

The basic premise of SCTV is that it is an independent television station in the city of Melonville, in an unknown American state. Rather than broadcasting the usual TV rerun fare, the station produces a bizarre and humorously incompetent range of cheap local programming. This can range from a soap opera called "The Days of the Week" ("Monday...Tuesday...Wednesday...these are...the days of the week"), to game shows like "Shoot At The Stars" in which celebrities are literally shot at like targets in a shooting gallery, to full blown movie spoofs like "Play it Again, Bob" in which Woody Allen (Rick Moranis) tries to get Bob Hope (Dave Thomas) to star in his next film.

In-house media melodrama was also satirized with characters like John Candy's vain, bloated variety star Johnny La Rue, Dave Thomas's acerbic critic Bill Needle, Joe Flaherty's wheelchair-bound program manager Guy Caballero, Eugene Levy's swarthy comedian Bobby Bittman, Rick Moranis's bearded video deejay Gerry Todd, Catherine O'Hara's washed up TV has-been Lola Heatherton, and Andrea Martin's flamboyant, leopard-skin clad station manager Mrs. Edith Prickley.

[nopeaceforland]

half-black, half-Jewish

1. The two are not exclusive of each other.
2. There is no such thing as half Jewish.

true, either you are born from a Jewish mother or you are not... If not you are not Jewish.

I'll tell you something, the Torah is a lot nicer than I am. What is "half Jewish" anyway? Either you're fully Jewish or you're not!!!! Can someone be half man/half woman? Not a chance! What did 6 million die for? So things like this no talent moron can call himself "bi-racial"? What a crock. Let the shvugs have him! Just another talentless Wigger.

[takebackourtemple]

Can someone be half man/half woman?

Perhaps if they have two x and one y chromosome they can be. I think they are technically considered male if they have this syndrome. I'm not sure how they would be religiously classified.

The presence of the extra X may be called Klinefelter Syndrome.

Keep in mind that there are genetic defects where some people have both sets of organs. I'm not sure how they are classified in those cases.

[Mishmaat]

Yes!  I should have added how absolutely dreadful he is.  In fact, I was wondering how on earth, out of all the miserable and rotten rappers there are, all of sudden he became so famous???

He played his cards right by creating a buzz in the industry through his mixtapes. Granted, he's a mediocre singer and a sub-par rapper, but he has the presence.