HMO Issue 07 - This Is Not A Drake Podcast
I live blocks away from the Pacific Ocean where America’s southernmost highway, Interstate 10, ends. If you follow it East, you’ll come across windfarms the size of football fields, stand upon giant granite boulders in Texas Canyon, Arizona, and stuff your face with Culver’s Butterburgers.
Four weeks ago, I packed my bags, my dog’s bags, and our audio library up, so Moxie and I could set off on the great American road trip. We sped onto I-10 and drove three days until we tumbled into bed exhausted. To say that we awoke on a different planet—and not my hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi— feels like no exaggeration.
My first excursion was to return a package at the post office where I was dismayed to realize no one abided social distancing guidelines there. Staff and patrons rarely wore masks. Communal areas for licking envelopes, filling out forms, and borrowing duct tape were just…communal.
I was (and I hope you are too!) used to much more intensive restrictions: a handful of people entering at a time, floor markings guiding separation, processing machines wiped down between uses, hand sanitizer upon exiting, etc.
A week later, a gentleman slipped onto our elevator despite the maximum four-person policy, asking as the doors closed if we minded.
“You’re not afraid of the Wuhan Virus, are you?” He asked.
And as the nation awakened to the call for public and private accountability, I watched as the choice to wear a mask became as political as marching in protest.
In Los Angeles (and as of yesterday, California), you are legally required to wear masks in all public areas—and long before it was required, you were considered an asshole if you didn’t.
In Mississippi, you choose to wear a mask. It’s like plastering your car with a bumper sticker.
Podcast: This Is Not a Drake Podcast
When the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation approached producer Ty Harper about creating a podcast about Drake, he passed at first.
It wasn’t that he was the wrong man for the job. Harper had a history in the Toronto hip hop scene, leading a mid-2000s radio show that interviewed up-and-comers like Drake.
He wrinkled at the fact that the CBC had consistently overlooked stories of local hip hop legends time and time again. He asked:
Why did my national public broadcaster still not have a program dedicated to documenting hip hop history from a Canadian perspective?
Harper advocated for a show that would do very that, and thus, This is Not a Drake Podcast was born. It’s an unpacking of the local Canadian culture that birthed Drake, the rapper/singer, but it’s also a look at how R&B and rap have become so blurred.
In the show’s first episode, Harper explores how the Canadian music establishment disregarded black creation despite success abroad.
Harper’s history in radio really stands out here—sharing what it was like to be a fan of homegrown hip hop in the eighties and nineties. He briefly skims through the types of artists and music that were popular in Toronto at the time. I confess it feels niche, but also exciting to know this music is finally being documented for a global audience.
When Toronto locals turned on commercial radio in the eighties, black communities couldn’t hear anything that represented their demographic reality. And despite official applications to correct this circumstance, black leaders were passed over in favor of country music which commissioners believed would “contribute the most to programming diversity in Canada.”
It wasn’t until 2000 that a station was officially approved to play “a modern-day reflection of the rich musical traditions of black musicians and black-influenced music.”
Flow 93.6 FM became the spark that many black kids like Harper needed to dream of what seemed an impossible reality. Without Milestone Radio—arguably—Harper may have never been inspired to pursue a career in audio or advocate internally for a complex show such as this one.
This is Not a Drake Podcast is going to make a splash. I’m here for it, and you should be too.
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