Skye Allen Vs. Drake

posted in: Features • Urban

In our latest edition of Vs., we’re taking a look at Detroit-based rapper Skye Allen and putting him up against Canadian rapper Drake. Drake has built up a huge fan base in recent years due to his strengths as both a smooth R&B singer and a skilled rapper. During the course of one song, Drake can spit a hard biting verse, and then turn around and sing a smooth hook; the perfect recipe for pop success. Skye Allen possesses this same versatility and that sets him apart from the sea of up-and-coming, young rappers. On his track “Raise Ya Lighters,” Skye demonstrates his skills with a smooth R&B hook in the chorus, singing “so raise ya lighters, higher, to light the sky up.” The chorus is simple, but well sung and catchy, not unlike anything you would find on a hit song by Drake. But between the catchy choruses, Skye goes off on a few verses of some highly technical rap. With a varying flow that switches speeds at the drop of a dime, and plenty of inter-syllabic rhymes and changing rhyme schemes, it really is impressive that one artist can be a technical rapper and a great pop singer.

And his talent doesn’t stop there. Unlike Drake, Skye Allen produces all of his own music. This ability allows him to create extremely cohesive songs that are more than just a sampled beat with rapping over it. Skye’s beats are influenced by a lot of the producers who typically work with Drake. He uses relatively slow beats with an eclectic mix of electronic keyboards and modulated guitars. His style mixes modern hip hop with downtempo R&B to highlight his skills as a rapper and singer.

Skye Allen’s lyrical content is also very different from that of Drake. Drake got his start as a child actor and has been a relatively big celebrity for awhile. This is reflected in his lyrics, which typically deal with money, partying and women. Skye, on the other hand, deals with more socially-conscious lyrical themes. His track “Proper” deals with a number of different subjects, including the war in the middle east, the recent economic recession and poverty in the inner city. With lines like “we need some guidance but this recession time got us jobless. Looking for the change that Obama had promised,” and “How ‘ could I tell ’em go to school when those is gettin’ shot up, and they ain’t got no papers or books to read out of. And they ain’t got no staff or class to be proud of their education, so street life seems like it’s the right destination,” Skye shows an intelligence and wisdom beyond his mere twenty-one years. And being only twenty-one years old, he has nowhere to go but up.

Be on the lookout for Skye Allen’s new project, From Left Field, coming soon!