After only four years in the spotlight, his aesthetic is buried deep in urban radio’s DNA, his king-making powers second only to his myth-making powers. He’s almost certainly the biggest star in rap and R&B right now.
That elasticity is a big part of the reason Drake finds himself on top of the world this week upon the release of third LP Nothing Was The Same– as far as you can describe a headspace this bleak as “on top of the world.” The sing-songy Toronto rapper has proven he can do it all: from simp to pimp, from gentleman to jerk-off, from gracious mama’s boy to gratuitous party monster, all while slowly but surely nudging rap’s center toward his own burning core of solipsistic longing. His charms are hard to resist - a man of many talents, a man for all seasons, a man who chews up the entire hip-hop landscape and spits it back out in his own image - but after a while, if you’ve still got your bearings about you, you learn to keep your distance from the dude and just let him simmer. By doing so, it uses the copyrighted work for ‘a purpose, or imbues it with a character, different from that for which it was created.Immersing yourself in Drake’s catalog is more than a little like jumping into bed with the guy for one of those torrid affairs he likes to emote about in the endless tear-stained diary that is his discography. In this manner, ‘Pound Cake’ criticizes the jazz-elitism that the ‘Jimmy Smith Rap’ espouses. Through both the alteration of the ‘Jimmy Smith Rap’ and the rest of the rap’s lyrics, ‘Pound Cake’ emphasizes that it is not the genre but the authenticity of the music that matters.
Beyond the text of the lyrics themselves, ‘Pound Cake’ situates its sampling of approximately thirty-five seconds of the ‘Jimmy Smith Rap’ at the beginning of an approximately seven-minute-long hip-hop song in which Drake and Shawn Carter, professionally known as Jay-Z, rap about the greatness and authenticity of their work. On the other hand, ‘Pound Cake’ sends a counter message - that it is not jazz music that reigns supreme, but rather all ‘real music,’ regardless of genre. The message of the ‘Jimmy Smith Rap’ is one about the supremacy of jazz to the derogation of other types of music, which - unlike jazz - will not last. Taking on one element of fair use, it reads, “A work is transformative when it ‘uses the copyrighted material itself for a purpose, or imbues it with a character, different from that for which it was created.’ ‘Pound Cake’ does just that. The order goes into substantial detail in looking at the passage in question, which features Drake and Jay-Z rapping. The decision is unusual, not only because fair-use rulings are rare in songwriting cases, but also because in this era courts are largely favoring plaintiffs in cases like Robin Thicke and Pharrell’s “Blurred Lines” and Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse.” The news was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter. Drake’s song appeared on his 2013 album “Nothing Was the Same.” The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed today that Drake’s use of the 1982 recording “Jimmy Smith Rap” in his song “Pound Cake/Paris Morton Music 2” was fair use of the copyrighted work.
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