Is Troy Ave Better Than Drake?

The rap world is fractured. On different planes, you have a Pulitzer Prize-winning act like Kendrick Lamar and on the other you have energetic and rambunctious figures like Soulja Boy still holding it down for pop-friendly and street-oriented fair. But at the top of the mountain sits a Canadian mogul who has achieved widespread acclaim and fortune to boot. This figure is of course Aubrey “Drake” Graham. With radio-friendly cuts and sometimes velvety hooks and entire songs to his credit, Drake has outperformed the competition for over a decade in terms of sales and skills. But what about the rappers at the other end of the spectrum with lower sales but higher credibility towards street figures? Roland “Troy Ave” Collins represents this bracket of hip-hop artists.

With a slew of mixtapes and full length albums, the smartwork and tenacity of this Brooklyn, New York born MC shines ever brighter against the rapper from the North. So who is better? Drake speaks of making money, losing girlfriends, repairing romantic relationships with these women, fussing with rappers like Meek Mill, making up with rappers like Meek Mill, verbal sparring matches with Pusha T, and the pursuit of happiness. Troy Ave is a rarity in today’s hip-hop landscape. He is a rapper who raps about actually selling drugs, not abusing them. It is this “cocaine chic” brand of lyricism that lends him his adulation. For someone who is charging towards the future, he can look at the trajectory of the careers of Jeezy, Rick Ross, the Clipse, Cam’ron, Jay-Z, and the Notorious BIG for guidance. In fact, Troy Ave titled his work More Money, More Problems (2018), a direct response to the late great Biggie Smalls. Their levels of explicit detail of the coke game found their way at the top of the charts in singles and album sales. Troy Ave has yet to experience this type of crossover appeal. He keeps his mind set on creating honest, mind challenging work that lasts over the years. Drake has a much larger platform and can command half a million dollar shows and hop on anybody’s track and own it.

But what is the draw of a rapper who has skills like Drake to one who has skills and the appeal of being a hustler? In his song, “Streets is a Myth” Troy Ave details how the block is not all that hot, police activity or not. Troy Ave displays a consciousness as a dealer stating “This ain’t 1988 you won’t get rich off selling dope / In New York you gon’ get locked up or get smoked.” This is an observation that has been perpetrated throughout facets of the genre. The route to millions of dollars is not through the illicit manufacturing, distribution, or sale of narcotics. It’s through the focus on learning the craft of rapping that these individuals rise up from modest beginnings by comparison. Drake knows his lane, however. In lyrics from “Versace (Remix),” Drake illustrates that “This for my n—that call up Fernando to move a piano” which is code for Hispanics who distribute cocaine. A piano having 88 keys is a play on “ki’s” or kilograms of the white powder.

In another selection, Drake mines further drug references in his song “Lord Knows” stating, “Get some shake, a brick in the press / And chef it like Mrs. Fields / They're making the cookie stretch.” Here, Drake again is at least honest about never having to deal drugs on the street. But at the same time, to reach that audience that he desperately needs to balance out his ballads, he connects well with lines that both separate and bring together peoples who’ve never even been in the same room as cocaine.

Troy Ave represents the dope dealer’s paradise. He is a little over a year in age compared to Drake but possesses wisdom that is valuable and sets a precedent for rappers coming up in the game. For rappers like Bobby Shmurda and Tekashi 69, who’ve been caught up in legal woes as well as Troy Ave, they should view the latter as a man who could’ve been caught up in a legal system but found a way out but being truthful. His music reflects this, he exhibits a luxury flow, relaxed and confident in his approach. He points out that the pitfalls of the life in the ‘hood but highlights the spoils that come with creating rap tunes. With his bountiful output, Troy Ave solidifies the notion of the hip-hop artist who can weave tales, relate yarns, and best his competitors with lyricism.

Drake has the power (and the money) to knock down most competitors with a slick bar or a catchy hook. Troy Ave relies on his vocabulary and ability to spit lyrics that punch the gut and stimulate the mind. The frenzy over the Canadian rapper from Toronto is due to his overall crossover ability that Troy Ave possesses but has yet to achieve that status. Drake exudes a comfortable position to be in while Troy Ave throws his back against the wall and must fight with every mixtape and studio album for his place among the rap pantheon. What drives Troy Ave is his ability to switch flows, cover varying subject matter, and stay with integrity. For over a decade, he has climbed up the rap ladder to find considerable levels of fortune and fame while expecting these accoutrements to be only icing on the cake. The pastry is his music. It is his outlet like any bluesman who can recount his philosophy on life.

Troy Ave displays the power of the blues on his song “Basic Blues 501” from his mixtape Bricks in my Backpack (2012). “Take a walk to the sto’ / It always gives me inspiration / I see n—piss po.’” There is a grittiness amongst all of the celebration of what life has to offer in the United States of America. What brings Troy Ave to the table of notable rhyme spitters is the fact that he never slouches despite the amount of work that he conveys. Unlike Drake, Troy Ave can actually speak firsthand about the day-to-day operations of mid-level drug dealing. His oeuvre displays the best in broadcasting how a hustler can transition into a legitimate business operation like the music world. Drake never had to make that transition. That’s no fault against him, it’s just a statement of fact. His audience is attuned to the coke rap days that conquered the mid nineties up until the end of the aughts.

Drake’s vicarious stance of the quintessential dope boy (a rapper like Troy Ave) has proven to be beneficial critically and commercially. For those who get the references spouted by Champagne Papi, they are the predominantly active or retired drug salesmen. For those who don’t get the lyrics, they can still bounce to the beat. But with Troy Ave, every bar is a brick and every line is, well... a “line.” The boisterous braggadocio of both artists stem from the early rap legends like DJ Frank Ski and MC Kurtis Blow. In their names they confessed the appeal and lure of the cocaine game in the mid to late 80s. Drake and Troy Ave have been weaned on the lyricism of dozens of rap acts who have infused into their language the code of the streets. Troy Ave has been maligned for being too real. If there is any repetition present in his body of work, it is the fact that he emphasizes how thorough one has to be within the drug business or the business of music.

Troy Ave’s continuous grind is due to his rap skills on the microphone. He constantly evolves from his earliest mixtapes featuring his BSB artists. As a quality rapper, Troy Ave has locked down everything but the top of the Billboard charts. He relies on the respect and admiration that he receives from street figures, children, parents, and anyone from his home borough of Brooklyn, New York. His connections remain with the people that he knew from his days on the block. Drake can relate to his co-stars on the show Degrassi as well as the street people of Memphis, Tennessee.

This is only to state a fact Troy Ave is all street and that Drake can cater to multiple sets of people. But the music is the focus for both MCs. Troy Ave brings to his music a sense of coolness and effortlessness. Drake shares this same quality. Troy Ave channels the infamous drug lord from the film, New Jack City (1991) when he says, “Do it like Nino Brown.” In this instance, he is comparing himself to a fictional character that wreaks havoc on the streets of a mythic New York City. Troy Ave knows the ins and outs of the game to know that kingpins like the invented Nino Brown will end up in one of two places: Jail or dead. That is why he puts so much effort into his wordplay. He positions himself as one of Brooklyn’s finest MCs.

Drake takes his work ethic seriously, as well. He has consistently offered to listening ears the power of living the best life. Troy Ave diversifies his rap portfolio by adding soul samples, crushing instrumentals, and street ready songs. He can say that he’s “carrying a loaded Glock” on “Street Car Named Desire” and then switch it up and say that, in “Life So Good,” he wants to “play chess.” This duality of wanting to protect his assets with a firearm and seeking to engage in the classic game of kings shows Troy Ave’s dichotomy. At once, he is concerned with the trappings of trap life then he yearns to deal with pawns and rooks. Drake has played the rap game on a grand scale. That doesn’t mean that his pen or his tongue or his mind is as sharp or sharper than Troy Ave. It just means that his megastar illuminates in the telescope more than the the light reflected by the bioluminescence of Troy Ave under the microscope.

Troy Ave stands on his square and allows no one to steal his shine. While it may be well-tread land to talk about money, drugs, girls, and all of the prizes that go with it, he’s like the aforementioned rappers who don’t just glorify the shiny side of the life of crime, but where the glitz meets grit. Troy Ave takes his listeners on a journey inspired by actual days of pumping drugs on the boulevard. He can weave a narrative like John Grisham and with as much legal gusto. He is unparalleled in the field of crafting a song and then extending those ideas and last more than twenty projects. His gift of gab is the saving grace that would normally have crack rappers relegated to the trash heap according to today’s hip-hop world. Like rapper Fabolous said, “Yeah, it’s getting spooky out here / All the Nino Browns done turned Pookie out here.”

This where the game is right now. Most rappers want to babble their exploits with abusing Xanax, Adderall, and Percocets and lean. No one wants to listen to coke rappers and their struggle bars about how they made it on the block and now they’re big time entrepreneurs. People want to get wasted on the music that their daddy and older siblings would’ve turned off in an instant. Troy Ave is that exception. His dense poetry is a reminder that the flow can override the content and that the content can still be pointed and poignant. Drake voices for the people that grew up in upper middle class enclaves as well as inner city dwellers. Troy Ave is talking straight to the streets but his message reverberates with enthusiasm across all classes. Troy Ave is the block but he shares with his audience the experience of standing on the corner and lounging in a mansion. Drake tells tales of Bugattis and private jet flights to motivate his listeners to strive for better things. Troy Ave is the poet that can relay tales of darkness transformed into blinding light.