New York Times Faces Backlash After Claiming Drake Made Sing-Rap Popular

The New York Times is getting dragged online after it released an article claiming Drake started the trend of rap-singing.

New York Times writer Jon Caramanica posted an article titled “Rappers Are Singing Now. Thank Drake” which broke down Drake’s influence over the last decade on the music career. And according to Caramanica, Drake is the reason why artists are combining rap and singing now.

“For our end-of-decade package [I] wrote about how Drake turned rapping into singing which no one thought would work and is now the utter and total norm,” Caramanica wrote on Twitter. In the article, the writer went on to say that the Canadian artist is more or less the creator of the style itself.

“Drake’s “So Far Gone” mixtape — released in February 2009 — marked the arrival of new path: singing as rapping, rapping as singing, singing and rapping all woven together into one holistic whole,” the article read. “Drake exploded the notion that those component parts had to be delivered by two different people, and also deconstructed what was expected from each of them. His hip-hop was fluid, not dogmatic. And in so remaking it, he set the template for what would eventually become the global pop norm.”

As you can imagine, the article brought in a slew of naysayers online who dragged the author and schooled him on artists who used the technique before the 6 God. Another one of the critics of the article was “Little Brother” member #Phonte, a catalyst of the sing-rapping style.

“The more you try to erase me, the more that I appear. (c),” wrote Phonte. “I’m thankful to make a good living doing what I do, and awards/accolades never meant much to me. But I refuse to let you motherfuckers rewrite history while the niggas who helped shape it are still breathing.”