There was no accepted in between on Drake. Talib Kweli, a dude who seemed to not have feelings incredibly strongly on either side of the Drake argument, was having to battle people on both sides of the fence just for his right to be not passionate about the topic. When Pitchfork gave the album an 8.4, 1000 Times Yes immediately tweeted that, if you were confused and disoriented by Pitchfork's review, have no fear, the Drake album sucked. Ryan Dombal was the guy who wrote the Drake review, and fellow Pitchfork writer Tom Breihan quickly took to his Tumbler, drawing parallels between Dombal and Jeremy Renner's character in The Hurt Locker.
The best piece in all of the hoopla was probably from Zach Baron of the Village Voice. He wrote a piece entitled "Why You Hate Drake, and Why You're Wrong About Hating Drake." It's a title meant to be divisive. I approve. The content of the article, though, is equally worth nothing. Baron pulled from a variety of different reviews of Thank Me Later to show something that's best put by his own words:
"[There is a] narrative his detractors have been steadily building for him--here's a guy who is young, rich, and famous, who was so even before he turned to rapping, and yet all he does is complain. The sentiment--how can the record be interesting when he just moans about being rich and having sex with models?--shows up pretty much everywhere."
It's a sentiment that we've held a lot of celebrities to. "You're famous? What do you have to complain about?" And it's become standard practice for these celebrities to sit there and accept that. Any comment implying a less than satisfactory viewpoint regarding their own situation has to include a caveat that goes a little something like, "Of course, I'm very lucky, and that's something a person in my position just has to accept."
Never mind, of course, that the sort of insane single-mindedness to invade the personal lives of famous people has played at the very least an indirect role in the death of Princess Diana, the insane mental breakdowns of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and many others. Never mind that athletes and actors and celebrity commentators have to watch every word they say on Facebook, on Twitter, in e-mails to their friends. They have money. They should get over it.
And if there isn't that caveat, if a celebrity does dare complain about their status, the pencils are sharpened and the pens inked, ready to take that person down a peg or two. Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak was almost universally derided in that fashion, and Baron points out the similarities and differences between West and Drake in his piece.
But this sort of aversion to affluence goes beyond celebrities. It spans all those who are upper-middle class or higher. It's the emotion behind sneering phrases like "East Coast elites" and "Ivy League bourgeois." It's the reason why we love to see the Bernie Madoffs and Martha Stewarts of the world imprisoned. There's something in those of us who don't have money that loves to see the misfortune of those who do. And if those who do decide they're going to complain about it, well, they're the minority and their voice gets drowned out pretty quick.
On an even smaller scale, Vampire Weekend suffered from many of the same reactionary gestures. These were Ivy League kids complaining about their lives on the college campuses we'd never get to visit, much less see every day. In our minds, they wore ascots and sweater vests, Banana Republic and Ralph Lauren. They were, um, drinking horchata looking psychotic in their balaclavas. And the fact that they didn't mind owning up to this image gave the impression that they were maybe flaunting it, that they were both sick of and in love with their lifestyle.
None of it was true, of course, but it informed a lot of the nose-in-the-air, "I can't relate to these white collar kids" reactions to their music. If they had seemed poor, Ezra Koenig's lyrics would have seemed more like those of San Francisco band Girls, a longing wish for a better life. Girls' "Lust For Life", for instance, includes the line "I wish I had a beach house". But Vampire Weekend had that better life, their songs may as well have taken place at a beach house beyond Girls' imagination. And they were still complaining.
In the piece on Drake, one of Baron's most interesting points is actually a parenthetical. "Let's admit," he writes. "While we're at it, that there are in fact major downsides to being 23 and famous and having your every move scrutinized, criticized, and dissected."
The problem, however, is that such an admittance goes against human nature. In American society, money is used so much as a measuring stick for worth that those who don't have money are almost by necessity made to feel inferior to those who do. The only way for these people to reassert their feelings of self-worth is to find other flaws in those who have money, and it's the motivating factor why we love to see these people fall. It's a justification that, despite the presented societal notion, we are at least in some ways superior to these people.
The problem is that this creates an unnecessary divide between people in this country. It leads to an animosity that cannot be undone. The cliche phrases "money changes everything" and "money is the root of all evil" both come to mind here. There's an forced disconnect between those who have and those who have not. Despite that, the problems and complaints of those who have are still valid, and still affect their lives in meaningful ways. To discredit that is to discredit the complexity and nuance of the human condition. To discredit that is worth of its own scorn.
Or, as I tweeted back in June, "Complaining about people complaining about being famous is the new complaining about being famous."
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