Is Drake really the master of his own memes?

When Drake released For All The Dogs in October, it was clear that the multi-time Grammy winner was choosing “homies over hoes.” The album — a critical dud — was viewed by critics and fans alike as Drake’s mediocre attempt at courting the Andrew Tate alpha male crowd.

Yet what came out of an album meant for “all the dogs” was a series of memes in which Drake was treated as the guy with the least amount of bark in him. For context, after the release of For All The Dogs, TikToks emerged making fun of Drake’s delivery on the song “IDGAF” featuring rapper Yeat. The jokes highlight the “overly excited” and “zesty” delivery of Drake’s line, “Money for fun.”

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The Yeat/Drake memes are not unusual. Drake’s entire internet persona is built around his perceived corniness — he’s emotional, he speaks about his feelings, and he morphs into a new ethnic identity every time he drops a new album. It’s kind of cringe, but it’s kind of the point.

Drake’s ‘cornball charm’

As a biracial, Jewish man from Toronto, Drake is a far cry from the stereotype of what rappers are supposed to be. In popular culture, rappers are supposed to be hard and tough, like your DMXs, Pusha T’s, and Biggie Smalls — they’re perceived as gang-affiliated dope boys. But Drake is just a soft and corny dude. He’s always been like that from the start (it’s no surprise he was a child actor), and it’s made him an easy target for social media for decades. And part of Drake’s appeal seems to be that he’s in on the joke.

“Drake and his OVO camp have been meme maestros throughout his career, beginning from the days when he was the first rapper to get caught performing ‘freestyle’ raps on Hot 97 with Funkmaster Flex from his Blackberry device,” said Dalton Higgins, a Toronto-based professor and author of Far From Over: The Music & Life of Drake. “Fast forward to today, and I suspect there’s a part of his team’s marketing focus to create art that is meme-friendly.”

Thus, the irony of the release and aftermath of an album marketed “for the boys” by someone the “boys” think is kind of a joke raises some larger questions: Is Drake truly the master of his own memes, or is this just an example of how popular culture has been emasculating light-skinned Black men for decades now?

‘Light-skin men be like’

For decades, there has been a certain pop culture perception of Black men based on the color of their skin. Historically, the understood popular portrayal of Black men in Hollywood began in 1915 with D.W Griffith’s notoriously racist film The Birth of A Nation. Black men, played by white actors in Blackface, were portrayed as unintelligent and sexually aggressive animals — reinforcing damaging racial stereotypes and contributing to the racist imagery that has persisted in Hollywood to this day.

Building on the legacy of early cinema, the entertainment industry has long perpetuated a colorism bias, often favoring lighter-skinned Black individuals over their darker-skinned counterparts. This bias manifests in the casting of light-skinned Black people deemed more desirable or complex, while darker-skinned Black individuals are frequently relegated to roles that reinforce negative stereotypes or are less central to the narrative. This reflects a broader societal bias in entertainment that equates whiteness with superiority and desirability.

It’s why we joke that the only roles for Black women in Hollywood only ever go to Halle Barry and Zazie Beetz and can be accurately summed up in this throwaway bit from The Boondocks:

All of this is to say that we perceive light-skinned men more favorably than dark-skinned men. In a 2014 study on the comparison of skin tone discrimination of African-American men, the authors found that “dark-skinned men have been stereotyped by African Americans and Whites as being ‘bad boys’ and very dangerous.” The study continues, stating that there is a belief that darker-skinned Black men are more manly, with research suggesting that they are “idealized as ‘alpha’ males, possessing heightened masculine characteristics, such as dominance, strength, virility, and confidence.”

So, where does Drake fit into all of this?

Naturally, if society views dark-skinned Black men as dangerous and the exemplar of masculinity, it’s reasonable to assert that the opposite is perceived of light-skinned Black men. There’s an entire meme economy stereotyping the “effeminate” ways light-skinned men act. In the Black community, light-skinned men are portrayed as “cute” and more in touch with their emotional side. Hence the seductive faces and exaggerated movements on some TikTok memes you might see.

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And to his credit, Drake is the type of guy to have a meme for everyone.

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“It’s pure marketing genius in 2023. If we were living in a pre-TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram Age. I would say that the Drake’s memeification process would elicit the opposite effect: shame, embarrassment, scorn, derision,” Higgins said. “But with there being less of an emphasis on artists releasing qualitatively sound rap material, by most accounts, any artist with a gimmick and strong marketing can achieve Ice Spice and Drake levels [of success].”

It’s a testament to Drake’s ability to remain relevant and, ultimately, what makes the irony of For All The Dogs so funny. The album struggles to resonate with an audience that has never seen Drake as more than just a soft, corny guy, demonstrating that, at this point in his career, Drake is just a parody of himself.

Drake has never been in control of the ways social media makes fun of him. But he knows how to use it to his advantage, especially in an age where everyone is one viral TikTok sound away from a hit. He may not be the master of his own memeification anymore, but it still works in his favor.