Aubrey Graham Conquers an Industry by 24 — “Light Up”

This is a long post so don’t feel oblig­at­ed to read it. This post is an expla­na­tion of why I find great val­ue in the song I chose.

Aubrey “Drake” Gra­ham admired musi­cal tal­ent Jay‑Z for over a decade before final­ly land­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to col­lab­o­rate with the renowned hip/hop artist on his debut album “Thank Me Lat­er”. On May 26, 2010, “Light Up” — the tenth song on an album which debuted in June of that year — was leaked to the pub­lic. While Jay‑Z would pro­vide insight to a young rap­per in a cut­throat indus­try, Drake’s verse stuck out. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to talk in the first per­son in this blog­post but I’m going for it. Below is a link to a live per­for­mance, tak­en at the Apol­lo The­atre in Harlem, NY from 2010. This is how rap music should be performed.

Drake begins the song claim­ing, “I been up for four days, get­ting mon­ey both ways, dirty and clean I could use a glass of cold spades.” This essen­tial­ly means Drake does­n’t sleep, he grinds, he makes music and he in turn makes mon­ey. Right now at this cur­rent moment in my life I don’t real­ly sleep much either, there just isn’t time. I do school. I work my jobs. And I record. And I’m not great at that yet but I’m improv­ing quick­ly. I was up until 5am Fri­day night record­ing after an 8 hour dou­ble shift. So while I’m not liv­ing it at near­ly the same lev­el and might nev­er achieve that lev­el I hear what Drake is say­ing. Any­body that’s work­ing hard at some­thing in their life, that’s tak­ing a risk, devi­at­ing from the norm and invest­ing in some­thing — they find them­selves in a posi­tion to relate to these lyrics. The abil­i­ty to con­nect to an artist’s lyrics are fun­da­men­tal to suc­cess. Here is an mp3 ver­sion of the composition.

Per­son­al­ly I don’t release 90% the music I make right now because it’s not great and that’s all I want to be — great. I don’t want to be known as the UConn kid who had major flaws and then improved. Peo­ple local­ly know who I am but I am irrel­e­vant out­side of this area — it’s not my time yet not even close. I think I have 400 songs writ­ten on my phone and while that isn’t an exact num­ber I swear it is far from an exag­ger­a­tion. Some of these have been record­ed and oth­ers will be in the future but most serve one sim­ple pur­pose — bring­ing me clos­er to what one day can be. I talk music about it a lot if you haven’t noticed. I prob­a­bly annoy a lot of peo­ple who don’t know me. And it’s okay. I would­n’t have it any oth­er way because my endeav­ors mean that much to me. It’s what I breathe for. I need to get bet­ter and will do any­thing I can to do so.

Drake lat­er says, “I keep think­ing how young can you die from old age. They always say nobody’s work­ing as hard as you. And even though I laugh it off, man, it’s prob­a­bly true. Cus while all of my clos­est friends out par­ty­ing I’m just here mak­ing all the music that they par­ty to.” Hon­est­ly, these short, rel­a­tive­ly straight­for­ward rhymes cap­ture every­thing I’m feel­ing right now. I’ve had to stop going out, etc, liv­ing the col­lege life, in order to pur­sue what I’m pur­su­ing. I’m begin­ning to lose friends for it because of my lack of avail­abil­i­ty. It sucks but if they can’t relate to what I’m putting in maybe it’s best we don’t remain friends. Drake cap­tures this ide­ol­o­gy per­fect­ly in this song. I’m at a point in life right now where some peo­ple think I’m full of exple­tive and oth­ers see what I’m attempt­ing to cre­ate, see my ambition/ability to inno­vate and respect it. Pres­sure exists and it’s fun­ny — I keep think­ing how young can you die from old age.

Drake lat­er says, “Ahh, but I just want to tell the truth. Before one of these haters loads a cou­ple shells and shoots.” Once again this is how I am feel­ing. I was very sick in the fall of 2013 with a throat issue and could not record for about 4 months. I could­n’t real­ly func­tion for four months. I legit­i­mate­ly thought my dream was over, accred­it­ed prob­a­bly to my “severe” OCD, but it was­n’t a good feel­ing being side­lined. I learned from it though and used it to my advan­tage. I came back twice as good as I was before. I’m back in the game now, I feel bet­ter than ever and will attempt to do as much as I can know­ing that some­thing could hap­pen, again — that men­tal­i­ty of play­ing like there’s no tomor­row dri­ves me. (After describ­ing to him an 8 hour ses­sion a men­tal health pro­fes­sion­al once told me, “You record like you have a gun to your head.” — inter­pret that how you want to.)

Gra­ham goes on to say, “Yeah, that’s what life becomes when you’re doing you.” Some peo­ple don’t want to see oth­ers be dif­fer­ent, work hard and be suc­cess­ful. I recent­ly had some­one text me, “Dude you will nev­er be a real rap­per. Grow the (four let­ter word) up, I don’t see how you think you’d pos­si­bly make it.” He backed his claims on the grounds that I’m white and from north­ern Con­necti­cut, a region where no rap artist has ever even made a dent in the indus­try. He told me last week, “I nev­er said you were bad.” Drake is an inspi­ra­tion to me because he was Jew­ish and from Toron­to, Ontario, Cana­da. There had nev­er been a rap­per from CANADA let alone Toronto.

Just draw­ing on past expe­ri­ence I’ve had peo­ple, a long time ago when I was­n’t good, tell me “You’re music is so bad it makes me want to com­mit sui­cide.” I’ve had peo­ple hack my Face­book page and attempt to destroy it. That’s what hap­pens when you’re doing you. Some peo­ple don’t like it and will try to stop you. So you have to do every­thing you can do to win. It’s cool because they can’t do any­thing to make you fail, they can only talk neg­a­tive­ly and hope you trip up. You, on the con­trary, can put in infi­nite amount of work to put your­self in a posi­tion to win. You pos­sess knowl­edge they don’t have. The afore­men­tioned kid can cite the fact that it’s impos­si­ble to make it from here, but does he real­ly know? Does he at one glance, after hear­ing one song, know more than you — an indi­vid­ual who stud­ies the art. If you play it right and pos­sess tal­ent any­thing can be done. Some­times the great­est tal­ent that can be pos­sessed is intel­li­gence. Drake proved that. Peo­ple may root against you from the bleach­ers but you are in the game SO work the count. If you put the work in, and the amount of required work is dif­fer­ent for every­one, you can make “haters” look stu­pid. I’ve done that before just to get to wher­ev­er I am and it’s a great feel­ing, to out will somebody.

Final­ly Drake says, “Don’t get impa­tient when it takes too long. And drink it all even when it tastes to strong yea I got­ta feel alive even if it kills me. Promise to always give you me, the real me.” Drake did not receive recog­ni­tion for his music until he was 22. He had been record­ing since his ear­ly teenage years. And at 22 when Drake “made it” he was con­sid­ered one of the youngest artists of all-time to do so in this indus­try. Essen­tial­ly, as Drake says, things take time. You can’t just walk into being great, you have to achieve it, see and oppor­tu­ni­ty and cap­ture it. That’s what I plan to do. I’m going to Bal­ti­more to record my tape with a tal­ent­ed pro­duc­er over win­ter break and am invest­ing a lot into the process. If it isn’t what I want it to be I will eat the mon­ey (*deal with hav­ing lost it), find a way to make it back and try again next year. Peo­ple will ask “Where is your music Dal­ton?” but I am a per­fec­tion­ist. The tape will have to be great for me to pro­mote it, to put every­thing I have into hav­ing it be heard. I turn 20 on Sun­day. I’m going to try to make it hap­pen soon but won’t get impa­tient if it takes too long. I will drink it if it tastes to strong. Sor­ry to those who read this entire post but I’ve used this blog — which no one will like­ly read thank­ful­ly —  to express my opin­ions. I speak.

-Dal­ton Zbierski