Man up, Drake

Drake needs to decide if he's a total badass who's too good for a record deal, or if he's just another pussy who takes orders from the TIs. There is no in between.

He got caught in a lie the other day, when he told the Fader magazine that he doesn't fuck with Universal Motown, his deal is with Universal Republic; then I guess someone had to call and explain to him that, even though he signed with Universal Republic, whatever that is, he's now with Universal Motown. So shut the fuck up.

And he did. Not only that, but he went on MTV and apologized for having the sheer balls to talk shit about his tall Israeli benefactors. The fuck?

Drake was pissed at Universal Motown boss Sylvia Rhone, because he auditioned for her a few years ago, and she told him to keep it moving. He'd better stick with his career as the handicapped (and kinda black) kid on Degrassi Junior High.

He was probably especially pissed, because he expected there to be some sort of lightskinted kinship between the two of them. It just goes to show what little he knows about race relations here in the US. The last thing a light skinted black woman needs around is a light skinted black man. His hair might be a little bit better than hers, and that's why she told him to go the fuck on somewhere.

But now that he's poised to be the next big thing, she sees the error of her ways. It says in Billboard that she's been going around telling people she discovered Drake. Only thing is, he was signed to some other bullshit subsidiary of the same major label everyone else and their grandma is ultimately signed to. So she went behind his back and had him transferred to Universal Motown.

I wonder if she bought Drake from some white guy in exchange for a case of Heineken, like my boo Kate Hudson in the movie Almost Famous. Or was that even necessary? It's not like the people who really own these labels really give a rat's ass if Drake is on Universal Republic or Universal Motown. The money will still end up in the same account. It might be better for Drake to be on Universal Motown, since the name Motown suggests black people, and Drake obviously needs to look as black as possible.

You can see why Drake would be pissed off at some shit like this. He thought he had a deal similar to the deal they give you over at Koch, or whatever it's called these days, where all the label does is manufacture and ship CDs. Once they take their cut, for whatever that cost, you get the rest of the proceeds from album sales, plus complete ownership of your masters (as if that last Sheek Larouche album will be worth jack shit 10 years from now).

The first clue that Drake's deal was a bit different from what you might get at Koch or somewhere was when they gave him a $2 million advance. He should have known, when they started talking that kind of money, that they wanted something in exchange. If Drake didn't know that they could just randomly put people any ol' person in charge of his career, as if he worked for the online department at XXL, who knows what else he signed over to them. They must have had someone explain this to him the other day, before he went on MTV and apologized to Sylvia Rhone.

What kind of shit was that anyway? You don't have to issue a televised apology when you curse out your boss at White Castle. You don't even lose your job. Trust me, I should know. And people who work at White Castle actually need that $200 a week. There were times, a few years ago, when I ate nothing but White Castle for months at a time, because they let you eat for free, and I needed any extra money I had for alcohol (gotta have priorities). If I had the sheer balls to tell a 50 year-old white woman to take a mop and shove it up her ass, I'm at a loss for why Drake is on TV apologizing. to Sylvia Rhone.

50 Cent never would have done anything like that. Fiddy Cent stays talking shit about Jimmy Iovine in songs and on the radio, throwing roid rage fits in the Interscope offices, and what have you, and you don't see him having to apologize on MTV. Fiddy Cent can't put out a new album soon enough. Literally. That's because Fiddy and Jimmy both know that, whenever Fiddy does drop another album, it's about to be Jimmy Iovine's payday, even though he hardly contributed anything to it. If Jimmy Iovine doesn't like what Fiddy Cent has to say about him, probably the most he could do is put Fiddy's recording career on hold, which would just be payday interruptus.

Similarly, I'm pretty sure Drake could have refused to get punked by Sylvia Rhone, without having his career put on hold. Sylvia Rhone is just the lightskinted black woman they put in charge for PR purposes. I doubt there's any way she could interfere with the release of such an important album, for the sake of her own ego. There's way too much money riding on it. The TIs would probably get rid of her before they got rid of Drake. If the same thing that happened to Drake happened to me, I would have issued a statement to MTV, but it wouldn't have been anything like the statement he issued.