The New York Times is catching major heat after claiming that Drake is the pioneer of the singing rappers. In an article written by Jon Caramanica titled, “Rappers Are Singing Now. Thank Drake,” the writer detailed Drizzy’s influence on rap over the last decade. He also said that Drake is the reason artists are now combining rap and singing.

Caramanica tweeted about the article and said, “For our end-of-decade package [I] wrote about how Drake turned rapping into singing which no one thought would work and is now the utter and total norm.”

“Drake’s So Far Gone mixtape — released in February 2009 — marked the arrival of new path: singing as rapping, rapping as singing, singing and rapping all woven together into one holistic whole. Drake exploded the notion that those component parts had to be delivered by two different people, and also deconstructed what was expected from each of them. His hip-hop was fluid, not dogmatic. And in so remaking it, he set the template for what would eventually become the global pop norm,” the article read.

The article was met with much backlash on social media. One user tweeted, “Weezy dropped Lollipop as the lead single for C3. Kanye dropped 808s. Day N Nite blew up. All this happened before So Far Gone. Jay even dropped DOA in 09 telling rappers to cut out all that singing. Rap was making the shift to melody being mainstream years before Drake blew. You can heap A LOT of praise on Drake. Can say he’s had the longest run on top in rap history. Can say he’s the rapper, or even the artist, of the decade. But you can’t give him credit for spearheading the movement of making melody mainstream in rap. Rap was already headed there.”

Another person said, “You can’t honestly be serious…like Ja didn’t get ridiculed for singing on the hook, like Nelly didn’t do a whole damn country song with Tim McGraw, like @phontigallo’s whole career hasn’t been about this or that Drake directly BIT Phonte’s whole style…y’all need to research!”

Check out The New York Times writer’s tweet below.