Draking Bad

...you know what...I can't

You know...for all of the talk about Drake being manufactured and fake and effectively...created to blow up, I can't imagine that many people thought that he would reach this level of success.  What level of success, you ask?  In 2012, Drake made over $20 million, 6th among hip-hop artists, moguls, etc.  The 5 above him read as a Who's Who of contemporary hip-hop; beatmaker and product peddler Dr. Dre, shit-talker and label head Puff Daddy, label head and hip-hop king Jay-Z, beatmaker, artist, and overall madman Kanye West, and Lil Wayne, Drake's boss.  Say what you will about the hip-hop produced by those individuals, but they are all very successful.  For Drake to be among them, even for a year, is simply amazing for a Canadian child actor.  Regardless of how you think he came to prominence, he really is a hip-hop success story.  And if you've ever watched his interviews with people he chooses to open up to, he really does seem like a decent individual.  I have no hate for Drake.

That being said, clearly I am out of the loop here. I've heard that everyone from random Twitter users to Bomani Jones to fucking Big Ghostfase likes this album.  I'm hearing it's his best work ever...I'm hearing he isn't doing as much singing...I'm hearing the bars are harder...all of this stuff.  Look.  I liked So Far Gone. I loved that shit.  Going back, I liked Comeback Season and I liked a lot of his pre-Thank Me Later features.  However, even with all of that...Nothing Was The Same is more of the same Drake.  He blurs the line between rapper and R&B artist.  He cries about old relationships.  He cries about current relationships with family members.  He is a very good rapper when he raps, but that's ~55% of the time.  Like I said before, I like Drake as an artist.  He has released some very good work (somehow neither of his albums qualify as such in my opinion) and it's obvious that he's a very talented individual.  I've always said that his talent at utilizing soundscapes is close to unmatched; the only artists I can think of who are at his level at creating works with a consistent sound are Rick Ross, Kendrick Lamar, and A$AP Rocky.  Kendrick uses 40 as well, so that's understandable, and Ross happens to be able to utilize a lot of different sounds and still sound at home.  A$AP Rocky really is the only other rapper I can think of whose sound is fairly uniform and who sounds good while utilizing it.

Now to me, Take Care is Drake's best studio album.  Is there a lot of singing?  Yes. Is there a lot of whining?  Yes.  However, the soundscape crafted by 40 and Drake is spectacular.  Maybe you don't like Nicki Minaj or Rick Ross, but...both "Make Me Proud" and "Lord Knows" are at the least good.  "Lord Knows" may have been the best beat of 2011, to be perfectly honest.  If you can't forgive "Practice," I can understand...that was an atrocity.  There are a number of pretty bad moments on Take Care.  Even with all of those...I still have it as his best official studio album.  Again, maybe I'm just missing something, but anyway, let's get to NTWS.

As I stated before, despite the title Nothing Was The Same, there is nothing dramatically different between Drake's product here and on prior albums.  There IS an improvement in the rapping...he really is a very good rapper, and there are new flows on this album that remind you that he IS still quite young, and he is dedicated to improving himself as a rapper, despite seeing himself as more than a rapper.  There are some pretty good moments on here; from a rapping standpoint, both "The Language" and "Too Much" are high points.  Even when he slips into his comfort zone of pseudo-R&B (which actually, now that I'm thinking about it, is actually closer to what I'd consider R&B than the shit that I can't even listen to from Trey Songz, Chris Brown, etc.), there are moments that don't disappoint; "Wu-Tang Forever" (despite the title) and "Hold On, We're Going Home" fall under this category.  However, one of the things I've always said about Drake is that he never releases "bad" music.  If you rated every song he's done from Thank Me Later onward from 1-10, you come out with A LOT more in the 6-8 range than you do the 1-3 range.  On this album, he puts out some poor shit...I never want to hear "305 to My City" or "Own It" again in my life.  Sonically, the album is a rehash of the sound that made Take Care so easy to listen to, but done less effectively.  Like Rick Ross, the sound that was fresh a couple of years ago has gotten fairly played by now, and from an artist who has spoken frequently on wanting to do things differently and constantly evolve, it's particularly disappointing.

For a 3rd album from someone who wants to be in the Kanye West conversation for best overall catalog, this is a subpar effort.  Compared to Kanye, Drake was already playing from behind; College Dropout and Late Registration are classics, Thank Me Later was a disappointing debut and Take Care was a solid sophomore effort.  He falls further behind on album 3, as Graduation, despite my misgivings, is a pretty good album and better than Nothing Was The Same.  The sad thing is that Drake really is talented.  Even though he can't sing, he does recognize how to harmonize, he's a very good rapper, and the combination of he and 40 really does work excellently in general.  However, even with all of that in his corner, this is the second disappointing album that he's produced out of 3 attempts.  That's not a good success rate, especially not for someone with his resources and skill set.  I listened to an interview recently during which he basically said that Kendrick, despite putting out an excellent debut album, would have to make multiple great albums to be considered a great artist.  In my opinion, Drake has yet to craft an album as good as good kid, m.A.A.d city, so what does that mean for his aspirations?



Rating: 3/5

Standouts: "Wu-Tang Forever," "Hold On, We're Going Home," Too Much"


Random note: Drake also said he's proud of his work with Jay-Z...I really hope Jay-Z isn't proud of his work with Drake.  Two of the more talented artists today continuously put out bullshit.  Nothing they've done together touches any of the high points of Jay/Kanye or even Drake/Wayne.  Stop working together if you're gonna drop bullshit.

#TheReturn

Look at this nigga Gunplay smfh

I won't lie, I've been pretty disenchanted with the rap game recently...it's been difficult to get in a zone to listen to and review music on a consistent basis.  Whereas last year had an abundance of great work, this year has felt...bland, routine, and repetitive.  The Jay album was decent to listen to, but not anything really worth writing about...just more high class raps from a man who seems increasingly bored with rap, despite his interest in it.  The Kanye album was pretty interesting, but between all of the Kim Kardashian news and his fights with the paparazzi, I was honestly almost Kanye'd out.  I listened to it, but it had too many throwaway tracks for a 10 track album IMO.  Long.Live.A$AP. was released so close to the end of 2012 that I basically treated it like a 2012 album, and I dunno...even though while thinking about the albums of this year I remembered some albums that I liked (Tyler's Wolf, Earl's Doris, and Freddie Gibbs' ESGN came to mind), I just haven't really felt inspired to write.

That being said, one of the few rappers that I'll be here for for at least another year is Rick Ross.  Despite his misstep last year with God Forgives, I Don't, his run from Deeper Than Rap to Rich Forever put him in my top 5 contemporary rap artists.  He simply put out a lot of quality work, as did the artists on his Maybach Music label.  While this didn't translate to high quality studio albums (Dreams and Nightmares was a disappointment, as were Ambition and The Gifted, even though I didn't mind the latter as much), my hope has always been that each artist would find a way to reconcile his personal style with the production that you gain access to through working with Rick Ross.

One of the solid points of the Maybach Music run has been the Self Made compilation series.  Overall, they have been very enjoyable, even if Vol 2 was fairly redundant in terms of subject matter and beat selection.  Given how much I liked Vol 1 and Vol 2, along with my respect for Ross as an artist and an exec, it only made sense that I'd give my thoughts on the latest installment, Self Made Vol. 3.

What you did there...I see it.

In an interview with Vibe, Wale noted that while "my album is my brainchild, [but] Self Made is Ross' brainchild," and this is apparent throughout the album.  The airy sounds from The Gifted are largely absent from the album, and the beginning of the album has that Lex Luger-popularized sound along with subjects typical of a Ross project; cars, drug dealing, and a hood lifestyle.  That being said, the tried-and-true method, while slightly played at this point, is still listenable.  "Levels" has been getting play in the streets for a while, and "Stack on My Belt" is basically "600 Benz," which was a solid track.  I could do without the Boosie feature (#KeepBoosie), but "The Plug" was a pleasant surprise, as was the intro by Lil' Snupe, the recently slain 18 year old rapper who was signed to Meek Mill.

While Meek pretty much shares the sound of Ross' street records, there are moments where the album strays into territory occupied by the label's other rappers; "Black Grammys" sounds like it's straight off The Gifted, and "Coupes & Roses" reminded me why I was excited for a Stalley album release.  The obligatory "let's let Omarion get his sangin on" tracks are here, and again, they aren't bad.  Despite having a roster full of rappers, Vol. 3 still enlists the efforts of others, with some surprise features...I'm not sure if anyone was expecting Lupe to be on the album, Hit-Boy makes another appearance, and Fabolous drops some...forgettable bars.  On a bright note though, we get another (increasingly popular) Ric Flair sample on "Bout That Life"...I don't think I'll ever tire of those.

One of the good qualities about Ross is that while he's the rapper who dropped "B.M.F." and "MC Hammer," on the same album he dropped "Aston Martin Music" and "Tears of Joy"; he's got a diverse soundscape.  On Self Made Vol. 3, this works to his favor as he can appear on "Poor Decisions" with Wale and Lupe, "The Great Americans" with Gunplay and Rockie Fresh, and "Stack on My Belt" without any of the appearances coming across as awkward.  Vol. 3 as a whole follows this, despite one of my complaints about it; the transition to the Omarion tracks is abrupt.  The transition out of the tracks jumps directly into the first Rockie Fresh track, which, while dope, isn't what you're ready to listen to after Omarion.  For someone whose string of high quality work made a point of having great sequencing, that was a surprising mistake, but in general, the album flows well.

Overall, the album is a fairly solid work, but nothing too spectacular.  Some of the tracks are retreads of earlier work; "Stack on My Belt" is particularly bad in that regard.  The bangers on here don't match up with "Ima Boss" or "Tupac Back," but I can see "Stack on My Belt" getting some street play.  The quality tracks on here are actually pretty good, even if there aren't really that many of them.  The production is solid, the raps aren't bad, and none of the features step on each other's toes.  All things considered, there are a LOT of rappers on this album (over 10), but Ross has a knack for tying all of these voices together.  When gathering this many rappers for one project, that may be all that one can ask for.

Random other note...the extended "Maybach Music" drop is fucking wack.  Definitely don't need that, the original was that cooked crack.



Rating: 3.5/5

Standouts: "Black Grammys," "The Great Americans," "The Plug"