Why Drake is the most meme’d rapper of all time

Drake is everywhere: the supermarket, the club, the gym, the car, the radio, starting fights with AI. If you live in a metropolitan area, you cannot escape him, especially in the US and Canada.

In an interview earlier this year with fashion designer Recho Omondi, Yasiin Bey, the artist formerly known as Mos Def, was asked whether he thought Drake’s music was hip-hop. Bey answered that, to him, Drake was “pop”. The two categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but Bey ends up describing Drake’s music as “music to shop to”, “music they play at Target”, which anecdotally is not incorrect. It’s this ambient versatility which has led Drake to occupy this unique cultural position, at once one of the most streamed artists on the planet, one of the most hated, and one of the most meme’d.

This phenomenon is known as ‘drakeposting’ – a term which emerged on 4chan in 2015 following the success of the rapper’s hit single “Hotline Bling”. To explore the concept further, last October I hosted a conference called Sixposium, the first-ever academic symposium on Drake Studies. Scholars, writers and critics, from the UK, Canada and America presented papers dissecting Drake’s mysterious ubiquity from a theoretical angle. Designer Anna Gorham gave a genealogy of “Drake as babygirl”, chronicling his progression from your typical TikTok ‘Aritzia Girly‘ to his ultra-kawaii portrayal across the memescape. Elsewhere, podcaster Nicole Tremaglio analysed Drake’s new poetry book and his Instagram captions. None of the speakers agreed on his appeal, which, to me, is the beauty of Drake.

Beyond just his sheer presence across the musical landscape, part of Drake’s meme appeal is his vulnerability – he’s a rapper in his feelings. We see our emotions through his words – think the mass appeal of sensitive tracks such as “Somewhere between I want it and I got it” or the unforgettable “I only love my bed and my mama, I’m sorry”. As we struggle to untangle the convoluted jungle of our own emotions, Drake’s music provides an easy outlet, which is exactly what makes him so relatable. Popular memes like Drake Reading A Book with the caption, ‘Bro Did You Just Seriously Talk During Independent Reading Time’ and Drake Mirror Selfie reflect this performative yet vulnerable sentiment – as one viral post puts it, “he’s so petite and fertile.”

But this isn’t a coincidence. Drake is fluent in internet-speak. What other superstar rapper drops pouty front-cam selfies on main or follows up the launch of his album by posting a dozen hentai images on his Instagram Stories? The most recent example is Anita Max Wynn, a female alter ego that he unleashed in a Kick livestream for his partnership with the gambling company Stake. The rapper showed a cap with a cartoon character and the name “Anitta Max Wynn,” which he explained is inspired by his love of gambling. This fast became the subject of a viral TikTok sound, in which users would lip sync to Drake saying ‘Anitta Max Wynn’. He then launched an unofficial website for Anitta Max Wynn, as well as a crypto coin, $Wynn, in her honour. Perfect meme-bait.

On closer inspection, this thirst for connection can be heard in his lyrics, too. As writer and designer Sarah Chefka noted in her Sixposium analysis of “Best I Ever Had”, the rapper’s breakout hit, Drake creates lyrical traps for the audience to see themselves in the lyrics. He begins the song with a direct address to his female audience – “You know, a lot of girls be/ Thinkin’ my songs are about them.” Another speaker, Reese Richardson, a PhD candidate from Northwestern University, used natural language processing to analyse the entirety of Drake’s lyrical canon. He demonstrated that across all his songs, the most recurring words was “You”, appearing over 5,000 times and in over 99 per cent of songs. The most obvious example of this are the opening lines of “Hotline Bling” – “You used to call me on my / You used to, you used to” (the accompanying music video also became a viral reaction meme). 

Perhaps this is why we feel compelled to post memes about Drake and turn his lyrics into Instagram captions. He addresses the listener: you. Drake memes go viral because we never have to ask who they’re for. In his own words, “This is not to get confused, this one is for you.”