Do you remember Kidz Bop? That peppy choir of ten-year-olds who turned early 2000s pop songs into grade school sing-alongs? That’s the one. A recent backyard dance party with my nieces and nephews acquainted me with their latest anthology. The verdict? They’re as weird as ever.
To be honest, I couldn’t really tell that the first few tracks on the album were Kidz Bop covers. They sounded identical to songs I’d heard on the radio. Maybe I'm getting older. Maybe pop stars are getting younger. One thing's for sure: the line between pop and Kidz Bop is getting blurrier. Just like the line between pop and hip hop.
Enter Drake.
I could hardly believe my ears when my nephew skipped to the next track on Kidz Bop 38 and on came the beat for “God’s Plan,” the first hit off Drake’s latest album, Scorpion.
It’s not a total surprise that the rapper who ushered pop songwriting mechanics into hip hop is now being subjected to pop music’s most reductive machinations. In 2015, Drake admitted to collaborating with a team of ‘ghostwriters’ who help create not only his lyrics, but his flows: the unique vocal styles and cadences for which he is celebrated. In other words, Drake is making rap songs the way pop singers are making pop songs.
Up until this point, a rapper owning up to this type of songwriting was at best taboo and at worst the end of their career. Hip hop, in ways that no other genre can claim, is rooted in lyrical authenticity. It is an art form, and by extension a culture, built on the idea that the person with the cleverest lyrics, the quickest wit, and the most original mind will triumph. To confess that other people are responsible for your creative output was akin to branding HYPOCRITE across your forehead.
Drake has changed all of this. He didn’t just survive the scandal of being outed for using ghostwriters, he normalized it. He lost little to no credibility in the public eye, and has since risen in stardom and record sales, rap purists be damned. He has forever altered what it means to be a rapper.
With the arranged marriage of rap stars and pop song engineering in place, and with Drizzy's latest album scoring a record 7 songs on Billboard 100's Top 10 list (surpassing the Beatles), it couldn’t have taken long for Kidz Bop to come knocking.
So what happens when Drake gets Kidz Bopped? For one, that signature low, guttural voice is replaced by a chorus of 6th graders on the cusp of puberty. More interesting to me, though, are the lyric changes. While “God’s Plan” is largely void of curses, changes were still made. The most noticeable is in the chorus, which, when sung by Drake, goes:
Bad things
It's a lot of bad things
That they wishin' and wishin' and wishin' and wishin'
They wishin' on me.
In Kidz Bop speak, that becomes:
These things
It's a lot of these things
That they wishin' and wishin' and wishin' and wishin'
They wishin' on me.
“Bad things” are “these things.” Why? Perhaps Kidz Bop has an anti-bullying agenda. Of course, saying "these things" begs the question, what things? Apparently context is collateral damage when making hip hop songs palatable for 8-year-olds.
Another change plays out like this:
Drake: Don't call up at 6 AM to cuddle with me.
Kidz Bop: Don't call up at 6 AM to talk here with me.
Even cuddling goes to the chopping block when Kidz Bop gets involved. One could argue the above changes suggest Kidz Bop views their music through a moral lens (or perhaps a Puritanical one), but then you'd have to contend with the fact that they thought it was OK to cover “Timber” by Pitbull.
Here's my burning question: who does the rewrites? Are there Kidz Bop staff writers? Demo tapes? Is there an approval board? If so, does it include Drake? It's probably one lonely guy in a cubical with deadlines hanging over his head and instructions to purify all lyrics as quickly and as dispassionately as possible, but still... what goes on in his head?
Luckily, not all of Drake’s lyrics need to change. In fact, one line that remains unaltered stands out as the perfect fusion of Drake and Kidz Bop. Perhaps it is what they have been working towards all this time: a line that speaks equally to the 20-something womanizer and the 10-something teenybopper:
Drake/Kidz Bop: She said ‘Do you love me?’ / I tell her, ‘Only partly. I mostly love my bed, and my mom. I’m sorry.’
Drake means many things to many people. Early on I loved him because he brought vulnerability into the forefront of hip hop in a way few rappers had. Lately I’ve grown skeptical, as his vulnerability has started to feel exploitative and his celebrating of women patronizing. Yet he continues to extend his presence to an ever-widening audience (in March he played Fortnight with the game’s most popular player, a crossover ploy that surely increased his fan base). Somehow everything he does only amplifies his fame, fortune, and credibility.
“Imagine if I never met the broskies,” he ponders late in “God’s Plan,” reflecting on his posse of producers and vocal engineers responsible for perfecting his signature style. Kidz Bop tweaks this line to celebrate their own posse, who, incidentally, have joined the ranks of those who have touched a Drake track. “Imagine if I never met the KB!” they cheer. Imagine, I do.