Following a pair of Facebook posts earlier this week, Mr. Vegas called in to Hot 97 this morning to talk about the ways Drake borrows from dancehall—and the ways he could give back. “It’s not me taking shots at Drake,” Vegas asserted. “It’s like standing up for a culture that I’m a part of and I’ve been a part of.”
Vegas says that Drake “[turned] Beenie Man into an intro artist, like a hype man” and objects to the VIEWS album credits: “on the records that Jamaican artists are sampled, no one even sees their names.” He then borrows some terminology from Birdman—“If you were really into the culture and into the artists, at least you would have put some respect on [their] names on the album.”
“When a Drake or a Rihanna or anyone who has a big machine behind them—a Justin Bieber—make a dancehall record it goes to the top,” Vegas continued. “When a dancehall record is from Jamaica and we take it to other markets outside of New York, Hartford, and maybe Miami, we have a problem to get it on [radio]. If you are going to come to this culture… put [dancehall artists] on properly and give them an opportunity to create a name for themselves outside of their base market. What is so wrong with giving someone proper crediting?”
Speaking to The FADER last year, Drake addressed incorporating different source materials into his music, specifically relating to the creative process of "Hotline Bling" .
“You know, like in Jamaica, you’ll have a riddim and it’s like, everyone has to do a song on that,” Drake said. “Imagine that in rap, or imagine that in R&B. Imagine if we got one beat and every single person—me, this guy, this guy, all these guys—had to do a song on that one beat. So sometimes I’ll pick a beat that’s a bit, like, sunnier, I guess is the word you used, than usual, and I just try my hand at it. And that’s kind of what ‘Hotline Bling’ was. And I loved it. It’s cool. I’ve been excited by that sort of creative process.”
Watch the clip above. Representatives of Vegas and Drake were not immediately available for comment.
