5 Years Later: OVO Sound As A Label Haven’t Achieved Much Beyond Drake’s Own Success
Earlier this month on December 4, the label OVO Sound had it’s 5-year anniversary. The label spearheaded by superstar Drake came into fruition through the Toronto native inking a deal with Warner Bros. The deal didn’t affect his deal as a Young Money/Cash Money Record solo artist, this imprint deal just allowed Drake to expand his OVO brand with his co-founders Noah “40” Shebib and Oliver El-Khatib and expand they did. Over the years, the trio have added artists to the label, but in the five years since creating the label, not much has been achieved by the artists signed by the label.
Back in 2012, just months before creating the label, Drake and new artist to the scene, The Weeknd had been turning Toronto upside down and showing the world, what Toronto had to offer. Both artists had a massive 2011 with The Weeknd coming out the shadows, releasing three tapes, “House of Ballons,” “Thursday,” and “Echoes of Silence.” Drake on the flipside released his highly successful sophomore album, “Take Care” with heavy help coming from The Weeknd in the form of two official features, “Crew Love” and “The Ride” and writing credits for “Shot for Me,” “Good Ones Go” and “Practice.” In all of this success, a bond was created by both artists, this bond being titled, “OVOXO.”
This bond was supposed to be strong enough for The Weeknd to sign with Drake’s upcoming label. Drake had co-signed The Weeknd, brought him out for OVO Fest 2011 and 2012. The Weeknd helped Drake with Take Care, this was supposed to mean something.
In an interview with Sway in the morning, Drake said about a deal, “As far as on paper, it’s all being worked out, but it’s not really what counts anyways. What counts to me is the fact that the affiliation is so known, and that’s all I really care about. I want to continue being involved in his career and vice versa and keep making music together, because you take songs like “Crew Love” and “The Zone,” that’s what people wait all night to hear, [Drake] said, “We’re definitely a family,” he added. “It’s definitely a Toronto thing, that’s not changing at all.”
Yet, on September 11, 2012, The Weeknd decided to sign with Universal Music’s subsidiary Republic Records and released all three of his mixtapes in a bundle called, “The Trilogy” with three bonus tracks. And subsequently, because of this, things did change between Drake and The Weeknd. Since 2012, Drake and The Weeknd have only been on one song called, “Life For” on The Weeknd’s sophomore album, “Kiss Land.”
Now with all the music they had been making prior, this has been a massive shift in work ethic between the two and with The Weeknd wanting to be a superstar on his own, Drake looked towards his own future and created his label, but has continued to fail to build someone up like he did for The Weeknd.
When it comes to the signings, In the five years the label has been active, the label has signed PartyNextDoor, Majid Jordan, ILoveMakonnen, Roy Woods, DVSN, Baka, Plaza and OB O’Brien. Excluding ILoveMakonnen because he left the label in 2016, all of these acts have had dismal success on their own.
Because when it comes to the RIAA with the acts on OVO, PartyNextDoor has three plaques for three different singles, but Drake assisted on two of the singles with “Recognize” and “Come and See Me.” Roy Woods has one plaque, but again it’s a Drake assisted single with “Drama.” The other active acts like Majid Jordan, DSVN and Baka have no plaques. Baka’s successful single, “Live Up to My Name” has writing credits from Drake.
When it comes to new act to the scene, Plaza, he is currently going through The Weeknd blueprint that OVO seems to keep copying time and time again. First, nobody really knows who you are, there’s an air of mystery then slowly, but surely the curtain opens. They’ve done this with every act on their roster. Now even though the records don’t sell, the plaques don’t get racked up, OVO artists do go on successful tours.
The acts that have toured, Roy Woods, PartyNextDoor, Majid Jordan and DVSN have all gone on successful tours and continue to do so, but if their records don’t really start to sell, and the plaques don’t get racked up, they will all be stagnant performing at the same venues, never eclipsing their own success.
This is a problem non-signee The Weeknd was facing post-Kiss Land. The Weeknd expected the album to take him to another level, it had the Drake stimulus package in a feature, but it stumbled. What The Weeknd did next is something that OVO does, but backwards. Republic Label head Monte Lipman said that in 2014, The Weeknd asked them to help assemble some hits. One of the ideas that was handed to him turned into him being featured on Ariana Grande’s, “Love Me Harder.” This song went all the way to number seven on the charts and subsequently opened the door for the superstar we have today in Abel Tesafye.
Meanwhile, in OVO, a way that Drake has continued to be successful is by getting hits from his own acts and not the other way around. In fact, in an interview with The Fader, no longer signee ILoveMakonnen said after being signed, he asked for help from the label, he said, “Can y’all tweet out my mixtape? Can I get production? I’m just over here in prison, am I in prison?”
The irony of the situation is that on the song, “Charged Up” Drake has the lyric that goes, “I see you niggas having trouble going gold, turning into some so and so’s that no one knows, but so it go, come live all your dreams out at OVO, we gon’ make sure you get your bread and you know the ropes.” Not a single artist on OVO that dropped an album has gone gold in the past five years, only Drake has gone gold and platinum.
Now on the flip side, you can say the artists on the label have gone on successful tours, Roy Woods, PartyNextDoor, Majid Jordan and DVSN have all gone on successful tours, but in terms of real accolades, if PartyNextDoor and Majid Jordan kept their work and weren’t in some OVO sweatshop and not handed their hits to Drake, maybe, just maybe, they’d be more successful.
The Weeknd gave Drake “Crew Love” and “The Ride” and has writing credits for “Shot for Me,” “Good Ones Go” and “Practice.” Take Care solidified Drake, but it wasn’t until after Kiss Land where The Weeknd became a star. It’s because of this that many say that The Weeknd not signing with OVO is the reason why he’s become as successful as he is. Even to a certain extent, The Weeknd believes this too.
In an interview in 2015 with The Rolling Stone he said,” I gave up almost half of my album. It’s hard. I will always be thankful — If it wasn’t for the light he shined on me, who knows where I’d be. And everything happens for a reason. You never know what I would say if this success wasn’t in front of me now.”
In 2012, OVO created their label to expand the OVO brand, but over the years, in the acts they’ve signed and the success that has come, the only person who truly has expanded and has become really successful has been Drake, so in the next five years, things need to start changing, so this label can really grow and expand like it should have been in the first place.
