The à-la-carte artist: How Drake uses variability to provide each fan with a unique experience
With several monikers under his belt — 6 God, Aubrey, Drizzy and now Certified Lover Boy — Drake continues to solidify his stamp on the music industry.
For the release of his sixth studio album Certified Lover Boy, Drake and his team also heightened anticipation for the release by employing a geo-specific marketing strategy that combined mystery and reveal to encourage people to check out the album, even if the reason they were tuning into the album was not exclusively because of him. Many took to social media to document the approach (sharing billboards in their respective cities) and marvel at Drake’s continued marketing prowess.
Regardless of whether people liked CLB (critics’ consensus: “meh”), they wanted to listen to it as soon as it was released. With over 740 million on-demand streams in the U.S. in its first week, CLB debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and took up nine of the top ten slots on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. On Spotify — which made CLB available on-demand to both free and premium subscribers — the album boasts the title of biggest 24-hour debut; on Apple Music, not only does Drake hold the spot for most-streamed artist in a day and most-streamed album in under 12 hours for 2021, but three songs from CLB are now the three biggest 24-hour song debuts ever on the platform.
The common theme among all of these shattered records? Beyond illustrating the amount of anticipation for the album, these stats highlight Drake’s unique ability to grow, maintain, and catalyze a diverse fanbase over an extended length of time, in a way that seems to produce exponential commercial success.
Sustaining such a large and global fanbase in the height of competition for attention, Drake has mastered the art of interchanging between the micro and macro to provide a diverse palette of content to ensure that each fan consumes and experiences him differently. By employing a strategy centered on individualizing the fan experience — just as any music streaming service would do — he is able to leverage digital content accessibility (i.e music, videos, memes) to make him the ultimate “à-la-carte artist.”
This article will explore the numerous pillars of Drake’s marketing framework, breaking down how the rapper uses consistency and feedback loops to iterate on a diverse artist offering in real time. The common thread in Drake’s hyper-personalized mass marketing over time is having the conviction to tap into niches and smaller audiences. Most artists of his stature would deem the time-versus-reward equation not significant enough to invest in niche markets — but this is where Drake is able to double down in growing his fan loyalty. The multitude of ways a consumer can experience Drake allows for people to compose their fan allegiance by constructing and building on the elements of his catalog and brand that matter the most to them. By exercising conviction when it comes to embracing different, up-and-coming cities, artists and genres — and, yes, feuds — everyone likes Drake for their own combination of reasons, and therein lies the magic: No combination is ever the same.
I. Embracing real-time consumption trends and shifts
Every artist who has released music in the last two decades has had to adapt their strategy to account for the ever-changing ways in which listeners discover, share and interact with music. Few artists have been better at this than Drake.
In many ways, Drake has kept his strategy simple, while always prioritizing maintaining some sort of direct-to-fan relationship (i.e. OVO tumblr, OVO Sound). Namely, Drake takes a relatively passive approach by studying how people experience and identify with his music, then implements this natural feedback in real time by accelerating what has already proven to work. Regardless of the platform or specific project, Drake optimizes for increasing his content’s opportunity for virality.
Luckily for him, Drake’s acting background organically lends well to this strategy, as he is not afraid to try new things even if they lead to jokes at his expense. Let’s take a look at how he has adapted to these shifts:
A. Deepening dialogue: Drake provides the content, but lets his fans choose the conversation
Rewinding back to the height of COVID quarantine in spring 2020, Drake captured significant mindshare in pop culture with the release of his single “Toosie Slide.” I am almost 100% sure that anyone who has listened to even a bit of Drake’s discography would agree that “Toosie Slide” is a relatively mediocre song. With that said, how do we explain its astronomical commercial success? According to TikTok’s 2020 music report, “Toosie Slide” topped the list of “The Fastest Songs to Reach One Billion Views,” earning that status in a mere three days. For comparison, the second song on the list, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP,” took two weeks to earn the same billion views.
Drake had found viral success back in 2018 with the “In My Feelings” dance challenge, which was based around the rapper’s eponymous single on Scorpion and popularized on Instagram by social media influencer Shiggy. Following this virality, Drake decided to leave nothing up to chance with “Toosie Slide.” To increase the chances of a dance catching on from day one, Drake went ahead and put the steps for the dance directly into the song’s lyrics: “Right foot up, left foot slide.” While there is nothing special per se about a song that has lyrics explaining the accompanying choreography, Drake further optimized for success by ensuring the dance was simple and that virtually anyone could do it, increasing the chances that people actually would.
Moreover, six days before “Toosie Slide” was officially released, Drake commissioned Atlanta-based influencer Toosie to post an official preview video on Instagram, featuring a custom-made dance based around the calls-to-action in the lyrics. On the official release date (April 3), Drake posted the official music video for the song featuring the star himself participating in his own challenge in his Toronto mansion, encapsulating the relatable feeling of isolation that many of his fans were experiencing. By mid-June, the hashtag #ToosieSlide had already garnered 5.7 billion views on TikTok, reflecting the insatiable human desire for communal participation at the time.
B. Pioneering the next evolution of the comedian/rapper relationship
Drake has a growing track record of identifying emerging talent and partnering with them to create content. We will touch on his history of doing this musically later — but to home in on one specific application of this behavior, Drake has slowly been pioneering the evolution of the long-standing relationship between musicians and comedians.
Many rappers have sampled standup in their songs and incorporated comedic skits into their visuals (e.g. Kanye and Lil Pump using Adele Given’s Def Jam Comedy standup for “I Love It,” and J. Cole sampling Richard Pryor on “Brackets”). Drake has ushered this relationship into the new era through his warm embrace of internet comedians. Most notably in his work with Shiggy (who helped promote the “In My Feelings” challenge) and Druski (who was featured in the video for “Laugh Now Cry Later”), we see Drake’s ability to partner and create with new-age comedic talents whose short, nuanced comedy is often widely shared on social media, increasing the reach and elasticity of the rapper’s creative output. By partnering with comedians to intersect his music with content, he is able to grow how fans engage with his music beyond listening alone.
C. Creating conversations around his content
In his 2019 Rap Radar interview, Drake touched on his desire to create conversation-driving content by confronting the obvious or addressing the elephant in the room. The internet was flooded with memes after Chris Brown’s single “No Guidance” featuring Drake came out, with the core of the content being shared highlighting the Drake and Chris Brown “dance-off” in the official music video — a moment Drake had deliberately pushed to create with Chris Brown to poke fun at their previous beef. In his Rap Radar interview, Drake tells B.Dot and Elliot Wilson:
I told Chris, yo if you want this video to have the impact, we can’t just shoot some sh*t where we are trying to look cool. We’ve got to address the issue at hand, it has to be, it has to feel, it has to have that SNL element to it. It has to. I promise you that it will be watched 100x more if we just both admit that this is happening.
Drake’s desire to create content poised for discussion, even without absolutely knowing what folks will gravitate to, allows him to ensure that fans are actively consuming his content through interaction versus just passively. By priming content for engagement during a time where the barrier to participation is relatively low (i.e sharing a meme, creating a dance, making a tweet), fans don’t feel the pressure to engage with everything but rather the Drake content that feels most relatable to them.
II. It’s all in the timing
Taking a closer look at Drake’s marketing tactics, his strategic genius lies in his penchant for nailing the right timing.
Ask people to describe a year using music, and you will find people stating the songs that were popular that summer. The always debated “Song of the Summer” is so much of a conversation that Billboard and Rolling Stone both have lists that span decades on the topic.
While he does not always achieve a 100% hit rate, Drake seldom misses the opportunity for an at-bat when it comes to participating in a record that has the potential to dominate the cultural conversation. The best part about having a song included in the “Song of the Summer” conversation is that it produces a high yield for a relatively low amount of work. Without the heavy lifting of going on tour or releasing an album, one heavily distributed song can maintain an artist’s cultural and musical relevance, while simultaneously keeping fans satiated.
But being “of the moment” alone is not enough. Compound interest is often not discussed when evaluating an artist’s music strategy — but in a world of increasing music accessibility on streaming services, prioritizing a discography that has a high potential to compound over time is the name of the game (just ask Mariah Carey). Looking beyond fan benefits for a moment, the larger an artist’s catalog, the higher the probability that it will exponentially increase in value over a shorter amount of time. Not only are fans discovering previously released music as part of their process of learning about an artist they were unfamiliar with, but the music can also be repurposed for a multitude of other uses, such as sync licensing for films and games. The compounding effects of back catalog have a significant impact on emerging and established acts alike, and are one of the main reasons why institutional investors increasingly see music catalogs as a highly valuable asset class.
Over the past decade, Drake has been able to reap the benefits of compound interest by placing a high value on nostalgia — creating music that is timely yet elastic, due to fans attaching feelings and experiences to certain records when they revisit his music. Through consistency and discipline in building his music catalog while simultaneously growing and sustaining an engaged fanbase, Drake is able to optimize for the maximum ROI for records he did years ago, pushing the envelope on their anticipated shelf life.
In August 2019, the rapper released a compilation album of songs that he had recorded years ago at the infancy of his career, titled Care Package. Boasting an announcement on Instagram and coinciding the release with the start of his ninth annual OVO Fest, Drake was able to evoke nostalgia for his older fans while providing new fans with additional content — all with relatively limited musical output (aside from the 2020 mixtape Dark Lane Demo Tapes, Drake did not release a new studio album between 2018 and 2021). The commercial success practically fell in his lap, with the compilation earning him No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, giving him his ninth U.S. No. 1 album in his career.
III. The power of the hometown hero: A localized approach
I am frequently amused when talking to many people raised outside the U.S. to learn that the bulk of their U.S geography knowledge comes from American rap music. From Atlanta and Compton to Houston and Fayetteville, residents in these local U.S. cities can all boast a sense of pride in the way artists champion their hometowns in their music.
Drake has introduced a duality to this dynamic by focusing on garnering the benefits of geo-specific loyalty in numerous cities in addition to his own. This approach has allowed him to solidify his position as a hero for his own hometown of Toronto, while simultaneously becoming a de facto evangelist for many other cities.
In 2018, Toronto marketing and branding consultant Gordon Hendren stated that Drake was responsible for 5% of the city’s tourism economy, or $440 million at the time. “Why? Because he’s helped rebrand the city,” Hendren told VICE News. “He’s kind of made himself the same as Toronto.” I believe it, as someone who was greeted with an enthusiastic “Welcome to the 6” after telling a Toronto immigration officer I made my first visit to the city to come and see Drake perform.
Beyond Toronto, Drake has also incorporated localization and regional targeting intentionally into his songs and marketing — from songs like “Houstalantavegas” and “November 18” (both of which reference Houston and were featured on his 2009 album So Far Gone), to music video shoots in Kingston and Memphis, to features from other hometown heros on records where the regional inspiration is clear (e.g. incorporating Big Freedia into the opening for New Orleans-inspired “Nice for What”). More recently, Drake employed this localized approach on an even grander scale with the latest rollout for Certified Lover Boy — buying out billboards in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, Houston and Lagos, with tailored previews of featured artists on the album from each city. The callouts ranged from explicit (“Hey Atlanta — Slime, Pluto, Savage and Baby are on CLB”) to more subtle (“Hey New York — The GOAT is on CLB”).
In his Rap Radar interview, Drake stated that this strategy has helped solidify his relationships with cities by expressing his “admiration and love” for local rap scenes, “because it is such a big piece of all my realization that this was happening,“ in terms of his initial recognition as a rap artist.
IV. Hip-hop’s chameleon: Embracing different genres as an A&R strategy
In his Rap Radar interview, Drake expressed the motivations behind his chameleon-like reputation for releasing records in multiple different genres, from rap and R&B to dancehall and Afrobeats:
Songs like “Best I’ve Never Had” are not enough to satisfy the palette. You want more, you want to tap into different things and I think I am probably the biggest case of that where I’ve left no genre untouched at this point.
Just like with regional targeting, Drake is not afraid to try and embrace new styles of music, in an effort to further segment parts of his audience and increase their engagement through content that feels specifically directed to them. By taking a collaborative and admirative approach when entering new genres, he has been relatively successful at fending off a lot of the “culture vulture” criticism that accompanies this kind of behavior, although many commentators still feel like that label is warranted.
While the answer to the question of whether Drake is a “culture vulture” is subjective, there is no doubt that the rapper’s embrace of different genres has consistently and objectively exposed these genres to new listeners. For instance, Nigerian Afrobeats artist Wizkid celebrated becoming the first African artist to be certified gold as a featured and lead artist in the U.S. as a result of his Drake-assisted single “Come Closer,” which had sold 500,000 units by the end of 2020. The pair later followed up on the momentum by collaborating on “One Dance,” which went on to become No. 1 in 15 countries and solidified Wizkid as the first Nigerian artist to chart the Billboard Hot 100. Addressing Afrobeats in his Rap Radar interview, Drake stated: “I do think that genre deserved to get more popular ,and I am very happy that I was able to even be part of that conversation.”
In order for this strategy to be successful, an artist has to be talented at determining and partnering with the sounds and artists that are best poised for success — a skill that Drake seems to have perfected over the years.
The above graphic speaks for itself — but looking at the history of new artists Drake has supported, it is evident that he has parlayed his popularity to provide artists with a resource even greater than cash: Social currency. From an emerging artist’s perspective, the catalytic quantitative and qualitative effects of landing a Drake feature is well documented, but more importantly, the relationship is mutually beneficial rather than one-sided in favor of the celebrity. These features and cosigns allow Drake to share the experience of being an “early adopter” for the segment of his fanbase that has already discovered the emerging artists, while also extending his long-term music relevance for more casual fans who may warm up to these newer artists further down the line.
This strategy is also a low-stakes way to experiment and iterate on different flows so that he can double down on the ones most popular. As Drake told Rap Radar:
“People question why all of a sudden you are switching your accent and making this type of music. It’s not that — it’s just at the end of the day, I can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again, because one, you will get used to it, and then you’ll be over it.”
In conclusion: The conviction to draw a line in the sand
The underlying trend connecting all these tactics is that just like any savvy brand, Drake is a master at segmenting his fanbase. From 2009 to now, the rapper has been deliberate about showing appreciation for a wide variety of different segments of his audience across genres, geographic regions, art forms and social platforms — prioritizing a marketing strategy that provides each segment with a variety of content designed to increase their engagement and allegiance over a longer period of time. Most importantly, he does this targeted outreach with the same love and admiration that those same fans employ when it comes to him.
By doing this, Drake is consistently pushing himself out of the gray area that plagues mega-popular artists whose continued success eventually begins to be attributed to them being “too big to fail.” He continues to push the limits of what is possible during the peak of competition for attention, leading to him breaking his own top records and compounding his dominance.
Already having enjoyed a decade-long run, many ponder whether Drake will be able to maintain this momentum. My hypothesis is that he absolutely will, because at the core of his career is elasticity and malleability, which perfectly positions him to exercise fluidity to guarantee that he is on the top of whatever wave comes next.