https://thecycle.media/haters-are-a-drakes-best-friend-e28b568028de#.3o9atecxx

Haters are a Drake’s Best Friend

For the past twenty years or so, there’s been a default rapper image: a swirl of drug-dealing, violence, and most importantly, being “hard.” Always gotta be hard.

Enter Drake.

Drake is none of these things. He’s the most emotional, goofy, introspective rapper ever to grace a mic. From day 1, his detractors have called him soft, his music effeminate, his swag corny. And the more noise the internet mob made, the more Drake gave them to hate on. He literally doubled down on himself.

People say Drake is a bad singer: Drake sings more.

People say Drake is just a R&B vocalist: Drake raps.

People say Drake is a huge basketball Stan: Drake becomes the Toronto Raptors’ ambassador and ultimate fanboy.

People say Drake is a goofy failed child actor masquerading as a rapper: Drake goes on Jimmy Fallon and acts goofy as hell, talks about being a failed child actor, and masquerades as a rapper.

When Drake got into a well publicized beef with rapper Meek Mill, he destroyed his adversary by turning his own softness into a lethal weapon, rapping: “You’re getting bodied by a singing nigga.” Drake dismantled Meek — a strong rapper who happens to be the embodiment of the traditional rap stereotype — by referring to himself the way his haters do.

Haters love creating memes that make fun of Drake. What does Drake do? He makes his art more meme-able. He designed the Hotline Bling video to be memed, and it was, over and over. And the more memes that were created, the more popular the song became…and the more everyone appreciated Drake, haters included. Hater judo!

Prior to the release of his new album Views, Drake leaked its cover art, in which he sits alone atop Toronto’s iconic CN Tower on a dark, emotional evening. Drake knew what would happen. Immediately, people began to take little Drake off the tower and place him pretty much everywhere, from the moon to Roger Goodell’s podium in the NFL Draft. There was a microsite, live 24 hours after Drake dropped the album art, dedicated to letting people put little Drake anywhere they wanted. People spent weeks celebrating an album they hadn’t even listened to yet. And actually now that the album’s out, people aren’t sure what to talk about. Musician Drake is nothing compared to Internet Drake.

His peers are taking note. Beyoncé is selling Boycott Beyoncé t-shirts, getting way out in front of the internet backlash against her (amazing) Black Panther-inspired performance in the Super Bowl halftime show. Kanye’s I Love Kanye is a song in which Kanye becomes his haters, shrewdly amplifying the endlessly reiterated criticisms of his art and persona.

Today, embracing your haters makes you more popular. Your detractors become the engine of your personal brand, the gas that sets the internet on fire, giving you its undivided attention. Your advocates become superfans, and your haters begin loving the process of hating you.

This modern, internet-savvy approach to Hater Management stands in stark contrast to the days when celebrities had no means to speak directly to the public. Back then, conventional wisdom was that the path to commercial success was through cultivating a public image as pristine and guarded as the White House.

But that’s ’90s PR, dawg. Now it’s 2016, and when it comes to handling the haters, nobody’s doing it better than Aubrey Graham.