How Drake’s remix run made him inescapable

In the rap game, collaboration is often a business partnership as much as it is a true creative endeavor. When you’re on the come-up, securing the right co-sign can be vital in introducing you to new audiences or cementing your credibility. When you’re already established, the artists you work with — particularly the emerging artists you chose to endorse — also influence how the public perceives you. A guest verse from the right legend can put you over to a new audience; but if you’re that legend, it might be a way of putting yourself over by borrowing a younger artist’s clout and riding their coattails. Few rappers have leveraged their clout as a valuable commodity in the same way as Drake, who frequently rides a thin line between transaction and collaboration, or inspiration and appropriation.

Drake’s early projects were full of features from certified veterans like Bun B, Jeezy, and T.I., giving him a sense of authenticity he might not have had otherwise and balancing out his softer voice with gritty Southern bass. The critical and commercial acclaim of Take Care pushed Drake into another echelon of artists; he now had enough clout of his own to spread the love to other rappers not yet on his level of mainstream success. But the perceived benefits run both ways — when you’re a pop star, it’s easy to lose touch with reality, but collaborating with bold new voices like iLoveMakonnen and Migos before they were household names made Drake seem like someone with his pulse on the culture.

It was in that post-Take Care era that Drake’s features started to feel like part of a more intentional strategy to shape his image as an artist. Compared to a workhorse like 2 Chainz, who recorded a verse for seemingly anyone who asked in the early 2010s, Drake was much more selective. Guest appearances on “Poetic Justice” and “Fuckin’ Problems” and his remix of “Tony Montana” helped anoint Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky, and Future respectively as the next generation of hip-hop main eventers. “Over Here” and “Recognize” introduced PartyNextDoor as a potential pop star to watch, while cultivating his distinctive mystique.

In my mind, though, it’s the remix of Migos’ “Versace” that marks the beginning of a very particular moment in Drake’s career, one might have been the height of his cultural influence: the remix run. By hopping on the breakout single from the rising Atlanta trio, Drake put Migos over to a larger audience, while also reinforcing his own image as a curator with his ear to the streets.

The trend continued with iLoveMakonnen and MetroBoomin’s “Tuesday,” positioning Drake at the heart of the “New Atlanta.” While Fetty Wap had already scored a viral hit with “Trap Queen,” Drake’s “My Way” flip was generally perceived as an altruistic co-sign, and an indicator that the New Jersey artist might have more to offer than just a one-hit wonder. These remixes might have been helpful in terms of initial exposure, but the unavoidable specter of Drake inevitably began to overshadow the original creators: the conversation and anticipation was more about where Drake might unexpectedly show up next, instead of the talents of a singular artist like Makonnen.

With the debut of OVO Sound Radio in 2015, there was a shift in Drake’s approach to remixes, as he began to use them as a way to extend his reach abroad. Like a multinational corporation diversifying into new territories, he branched out into Afrobeat on the Skepta-assisted version of Wizkid’s “Ojuelegba.”

In the years since, Drake has continued to strategically use remixes to align himself with certain scenes, or pass himself off as an insider welcomed in every city. Blocboy JB was practically unknown before Drake showed up on 2018’s “Look Alive,” but the song only benefited his career to a point — five years later, JB still has to stand there doing karaoke to Drake for two minutes before he gets to his actual verse on his biggest song. In hindsight, the track served more to build up Drake’s connection to his father’s hometown, around the same time he started sampling Memphis underground tracks on songs like “Nonstop” and “No Friends in the Industry.” His 2019 remix of “Ela E De Tipo” from baile funk performer MC Kevin o Chris saw Drake channeling his best Diplo and setting his sights on Brazil as his next target for appropriation.

Though these surprise viral remixes were at first seen as a benefit to the original artists, they began to feel more vulturous than virtuous, a slick way of taking someone else’s work and rebranding it as a Drake track. Increasingly, it seemed like the people whose songs were being remixed weren’t entirely happy with the outcome. Amid the Drake and Meek Mill feud of 2015, Houston’s Sauce Walka fired his own shots at Aubrey with “Wack 2 Wack,” on which he called Drake out generally for biting from Houston rap without giving back, and specifically for ghosting the Sauce Twinz on a promised remix of their song “2 Legited 2 Quited.” The diss only made a minimal impact, but it showed how Drake’s scene-hopping continued to rub artists the wrong way.

In the years since his brief signing with OVO Sound, Makonnen has been open about his strained relationship with the label and its boss. Fetty Wap left the “My Way” remix off of his debut album, and shared in a 2021 interview that he was frustrated with how it went down. Wap claims he actually requested that Drake remove his own verse from the remix, so Remy Boyz member Monty would get the shine. Of course, Drake didn’t do that, and any relationship between the two seems to have ended. While the “Versace” remix might have been a boon to Migos’ status, it’s hard not to feel like they probably would have made it regardless of Drake’s early co-sign. Other former Drake remix-ees struggled to find similar success as pop stars — Makonnen has since struck out on his own as a defiantly independent voice, while Fetty Wap is stuck taking checks from the likes of 6ix9ine and Teresa Giudice from Real Housewives of New Jersey.

It’s not actually uncommon for rap remixes by major artists to be unlicensed or otherwise unauthorized by the original artists involved — producer Young Chop was rightfully irate after Kanye West altered his beat for the “I Don’t Like” remix, without asking for permission. But hurt feelings became a consistent pattern with Drake remixes.

When “Hotline Bling” first dropped in 2015, it was originally billed as “Hotline Bling (Cha Cha Remix),” though the parentheses were quickly dropped and any connection to DRAM’s song “Cha Cha” was thoroughly denied. “Hotline Bling” wasn’t entirely a remix of “Cha Cha” — their beats just sounded eerily similar, despite drawing on different samples — but the connection between the two songs was fairly apparent, and DRAM said he felt his creation had been “jacked.” Drake tried to have his cake and eat it too, acknowledging the influence in his FADER cover story that year but downplaying it as a borrowed dancehall “riddim” rather than a straight-up remix/

“You know, like in Jamaica, you’ll have a riddim and it’s like, everyone has to do a song on that,” he 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.”

On one hand, there is probably sincere adoration for these styles of music; as much as he’s a culture vulture, Drake is also just a giant rap nerd, who constantly tries out new flows and imitates other people’s voices for the fun of it. But in hindsight, Drake’s somewhat shady relationship with remixing other artists’ work serves to underline so many of his own worst traits as a thoroughly corporate artist. Rather than engaging with new voices and younger artists as genuine collaborators, the Drake industrial complex approaches them like products whose designs he can copy, with marketing strategies to be borrowed and clout to be mined.