Drake's Producer Turned Artist Elkan Weighs In On The Kendrick Question

When you climb from behind the boards to the spotlight, the question inevitably comes up: are you riding the coattails of your former mentor, or charting your own path? For Elkan, Drake’s producer-turned-musical artist, that question took an unexpected turn when asked about his listening habits post-Drake collaboration.

Elkan, who produced one of Drake’s biggest hits,“Nokia,”recently spoke about working with the legendary artist on his latest 3-album project. But the real headline came when our camerawoman posed a pointed question: does working with Drake mean you’ve left Kendrick Lamar behind? It’s the kind of question that hints at the ongoing creative tension in hip-hop—as if loyalty to one giant means rejecting another.

The music industry loves these false choices. In reality, artists who respect the craft listen across the board. Working with Drake doesn’t require Elkan to erase Kendrick from his rotation, and his answer to that setup proved he’s thinking bigger than the either-or trap. He’s signed to Big Beat Records/Atlantic Records and has recently released his own track,“Robotic Love,”suggesting he’s building something distinct from his producer past.

What makes this moment worth paying attention to isn’t the manufactured beef angle—it’s what it says about the next generation of artists. Elkan’s journey from producer to artist is increasingly common, and figures like him become the connective tissue between legacy acts and emerging voices. The real question isn’t whether he listens to Kendrick. It’s whether the industry will ever move past pitting artists against each other and let creators simply be multidimensional listeners and makers at once.