Drake Stole My Whole Flow Bar for Bar
As some of you may have heard, Drake announced the upcoming release of his first poetry book and new album “For All the Dogs” available via QR code. Sound familiar anyone?
In April 2023, I released my debut poetry chapbook on love, lust, and heartbreak “& Also With You" which is a multimedia poetry book filled with 72 pages of photos, lyrics, and poems processing the last 8 years of my romantic life, and at the end of a book? A list of resources, including a playlist that you can access via (you guessed it) a QR code. Now, can I actually prove that Drake saw my idea and went and copied it? No. That’s probably not what happened (but if it is ChampagnePapi tell your people to run me my check). This project was probably in the works over a period of time. Still, what interests me about this conversation most is the direction in which artistic expression, particularly for poets and writers, is going.
When I released my book, I was deeply invested in capturing the feeling that poetry gives me and I knew for me, poetry was more than black words on a white page, so I began to really examine what it looks like to engage all of a reader’s senses when they engaged with my work and that’s how I came up with the idea of my “mixtape” chapbook, a multimedia exploration of love, lust, and heartbreak. You can read more about how the book came to be here. After its release, I was having a conversation with my friend Monique who is in the music industry, and she mentioned how for years she had been noticing this trend of artists moving towards projects that expand across genres and mediums and I had created a project that captured that movement really well. When Drake announced his project, I was like damn I’m so glad I took a risk on myself and released this project despite all my doubts and roadblocks because I have a pulse on the way culture is shifting, I know and love my artforms, and what I was creating needed to be seen and heard. Does Drake’s new project capture the shift of culture and heart of poetry well? I haven’t read the whole thing so I can’t say, buuuttt what I have seen hasn’t moved me, and what I can say is some renowned poets ain’t feeling it either.
I’m not interested in gatekeeping what is/isn’t poetry. I know that would be me reproducing the same harmful mechanisms that institutions would use to delegitimize me as a poet (and so many other amazing poets) since I don’t have an MFA. However, I do think there is something to say about poetry being a discipline and art form that deserves rigorous engagement and study of the practice, both what has come before us and what is happening now. Poets immortalize human emotion, poets question the status quo, poets challenge injustice, poets excavate their hearts on a platter for the public to consume just because we love the art form so much, poets expand culture and help you imagine what is possible, poets are more than black ink on a white page. For Drake to enter this poetic arena as an artist, who for better or worse, has been a major influence in pop culture, means something and I knew there was a more important thread to be pulled on here:
Your friends, community, and local artists are creating the art that your heart is so hungry for. Often, the ideas that change the art world as we know it live in our brains trapped by imposter syndrome and a lack of resources. When we can, and do, take the chance to make the art we want, we are often doing it better, with more soul, and fewer resources. Poetry is not meant to get reduced to the next capitalistic cash grab, and neither is the rest of the art we create. So what does it look like to support us in the same way that you would support a person and brand like Drake? It looks like sharing our projects, a like, comment, streams, and subscribing all count towards platforming art that you love, word of mouth still goes a long way. Don’t wait until something you like is “popular”, like what you like and stand on it. Buy and fund our projects. Don’t look to AI to do what we can do. Send us grant-funded opportunities to apply for, book us for your events, attend our workshops and our shows. Allow us to experiment with our voice, allow us to evolve, to hope, to dream beyond our means. Listen to what we have to say. Most importantly, don’t forget that the “Drakes” of the world started out just like us, small, unknown, hungry, and ready to shift culture with our art.
