The first lines of the intro to Drake’s second album, Take Care, floating over ethereal piano and muffled rhythmic taps: “I think I killed everybody in the game last year, man, fuck it I was on though/And I thought I found the girl of my dreams at a strip club, fuck it I was wrong though.”
This time around, though, we start off as less his confidantes and more witnesses to his greatness – over wailing Whitney and rattling drums, Drake begins Nothing Was the Same high on success (“This is nothing for the radio, but they’ll still play it though/Cause it’s that new Drizzy Drake, that’s just the way it go”) before crashing into reflection (“How much time is this nigga spending on the intro?/Lately I’ve been feeling like Guy Pearce in Memento”). There’s more nuance on the emotion streaming through “Tuscan Leather” than any track from the last project. Drake’s faults, his worries, his pleads, they’re all buried under boasts about dinners with Tatyana Ali and comparisons to Dwight Howard.
Drake’s one of the most fascinating hip-hop stars in the past decade, because he shot up the totem pole without any nods to the ones at the top – he’s entirely crossed the bridge that Kanye West built. Stars like Kanye and Kendrick Lamar built up their foundations around their multi-lateral appeal (read: classic hip-hop), but that wasn’t Drake’s approach at all. His breakout mixtape, So Far Gone, shoved through trends in forming a project that perfected the ideas strewn across Kanye’s minimalistic, heartbroken R&B album 808s & Heartbreak. Drake’s not famous because he conjures up images of Nas or Jay-Z circa-1995, or even MF DOOM circa-2000. No, he’s constructed his own aesthetic, one of openly projected pain. And now, it’s impossible to pick a list of the most culturally prominent hip-hop artists alive without Drake in the top five – Take Care has gone double-platinum, while racking up the acclaim. He’s officially an event.
But most interestingly, Drake’s been battered with ceaseless ridicule throughout his career – the Facebook page “Drake The Type Of Nigga”, populated with gems like “Drake the type of nigga to eat two gummy bears at a time so they don’t die alone”, has over 170k likes at the time of writing, while there’s an entire Tumblr dedicated to drawing Drake into famous Breaking Bad scenes. And with the approach of what’s sure to be Drake’s most scrutinized project yet, it’s kicked up a few notches. Take, for example, the uproar over promotional single “Wu-Tang Forever”, a song far from a tribute to the legendary Staten Island crew. Much to the contrary, it’s hazy, nostalgic drawling, punctuated by a sharp verse in the middle. The night of its release, Twitter exploded, with even Wu-Tang member Inspectah Deck chiming in to say it “SHOULD NOT wear the title Wutang Forever!” Drake’s cleverer than that, though – for all his infamous sensitivity, he’s an artist that knows how to manipulate bad press. It’s no coincidence that the Toronto man released “Wu-Tang Forever” as a free single alongside the pre-order launch for Nothing Was the Same, and it’s certainly no surprise that all of the Clan’s members have already recorded verses for the remix. Drake’s a much smarter artist than he gets credit for.
And he’s also a much better rapper than he gets credit for, because he’s taking his development as a rapper in leaps and bounds. Take Care was ridden with holes, perforated with punchlines sending entire songs to screeching halts. He’d go on a rip and then let a line like “Don’t make me break your Kevin Hart, boy” slip out, letting his emotional oomph fizzle. Very few such problems here - he’s far smoother and far more confident. If he wasn’t, would he let Jay-Z take two verses on his song? He’s no Kendrick, but this is an artist that’s no longer just “a good rapper who makes great music”, the shelf that Kanye was filed away on years ago. It started with the unusually belligerent and extremely strong promotional single “5AM in Toronto” (“Every song sounds like Drake featuring Drake”). Now? The first bar of Whitney Houston triple-flip intro “Tuscan Leather”: “Coming off the last record, I’m getting 20 million off the record/Just to off these records, nigga that’s a record.” He’s slipping gems like “Get hype on tracks and jump in front of a bullet you wasn’t meant for” while drawing lines between 40 and Martin Scorsese. Just on the first track.
Big difference - Drake is letting himself flow when he raps, something that rarely occurred on Take Care. Crisp. And maybe Drake’s frankness and bluntness when it comes to his personal struggles with fame are, to some degree, ridiculous (really, is fame so hard? I’m sorry, Drake, blot your tears with some Franklins). But it’s also a discussion that not too many rappers either like to have or are good at having. Drake’s an artist that’s so unapologetically human that he’s the subject of ridicule. Don’t get me wrong, any rapper who raps a line like “Next time we fuck, I don’t wanna fuck, I wanna make love” deserves what’s coming to him. But even Drake’s emotionality is sharper and more nuanced. His take-me-back pleas aren’t as self-crucifying and desperate as they were on Take Care – on “From Time”, he’s stating more than asking, “Who better for you than the boy, huh?” Rarely does he completely degenerate into drunken, “Marvin Room” form; he’s more melancholy than ever devastated. Drake’s a maturing artist, and when one’s music revolves around emotion, that’s a big shift to have to accommodate.
That progression is mirrored on the boards – unsurprisingly, longtime-collaborator 40 is almost omnipresent. Drake’s camp is quality across sound borders, whether it’s the deliberate, plinking deep synths of 40 & Hudson Mohawke’s “Connect” or the James Blake clap/drums and atmospheric vocals of Boi-1da’s “Pound Cake”. Top notch polish, except, that’s Drake’s crucial faltering. See, Drake’s been running with the musical equivalent of dissociative identity disorder for a while now, to the point that he’s given a few of them names - Drizzy Hendrix, Heartbreak Drake, Champagne Papi. Up until now, though, it’s just been manifested through versatility. Nothing Was the Same takes it to a whole new level.
To be far, Nothing Was the Same has a far clearer theme than Take Care, and songs like “Paris Morton Music 2” touch on it beautifully – last time around, Drake was on the verge of international stardom. Now it’s all too real, and Drake’s newly adopted motto (“no new friends”) is the most apt way to describe his coping strategy. It’s an excellent theme to build a strong album around - it’s just that it’s painfully infrequent and intercut by (great) songs that probably belong on different albums. The hazy (break-up) bitterness of “Furthest Thing” segues into the cold defiance of “Started from the Bottom”. The paradoxical defiance of “Worst Behavior” goes into lovelorn ballad “From Time”. And “Hold On We’re Going Home”, straight from ‘80s disco electro-pop, comes out of nowhere in an otherwise melancholy album. It’s even worse with songs like “Wu Tang Forever”, where that disconnect manifests itself mid-song – the first verse sees Drake drawling a reflective verse on lost love, while the second’s a lot sharper in its nostalgia (“People like Mazin who was a best friend to me/Start to become a distant memory/Things change in that life and this life started lacking synergy/And fucking with me mentally, I think it’s meant to be”). It’s two different songs, only held together by a interpolation of the Clan’s “It’s Yourz”.
But the key here isn’t that these songs are subpar – some are, but most are brilliant. They just don’t belong here. Drake’s got multiple different sounds under his belt, capable of sliding from charismatic swagger to hazy, drunken confession in a matter of seconds without slipping an inch. His voice isn’t anything brilliant, but he knows how to segue from rap to falsetto at the right times, and he’s a compelling enough songwriter (if a little clichéd and soppy) to carry entire R&B songs. But Drake’s crafted two different, contrasting albums and slyly slid them onto the same CD. One’s a phenomenal rap album, and the other is Take Care on steroids. But they can’t coexist in the way that it’s ordered and presented on Nothing Was the Same without cutting songs and themes off every four minutes. I could list Take Care’s shortcomings for days – cringe worthy lines, filler tracks, Lil Wayne stepping within fifty feet of the studio.
But the one, crucial quality that Drake’s junior doesn’t have is its cohesiveness. Take Care’s a complete project, elevated by its themes and sounds and atmosphere. Nothing Was the Same is alternately love-sick, angry, betrayed, and happy that he’s (we’re) going home – and it has blue skies and clouds on the cover. Drake’s a cornered artist, comparisons to the greats closing in on one side and his growing fame on the other. He responded by making an album brimming with potential but with the fragmentation of Thank Me Later. It’s a problem he’s going to have to address very soon, particularly given that his biggest competitor for hip-hop’s throne (Kendrick) just made the most gripping concept album hip-hop’s seen in a long time with good kid, m.A.A.d city. Drake’s ambivalence with Nothing Was the Same’s structure couldn’t even restrict itself to sequencing and track selection – drugged-out drawls shift into machine-gun raps and vice-versa, complete with beat switches. Drake possesses a multi-faceted skill set unparalleled in his genre, and it’s only a matter of harnessing and focusing it at this point. There’s a reason all eyes turned to Drake in the immediate aftermath of Kendrick’s combative “Control” verse; he doesn’t have to compete on the same rappity-rap plane as much of his rivals.
It’s like Drake operates in his own little bubble. Nothing about his music suggests much industry influence. Sure, he gets his Future Hendrix on in a couple songs, but by and large he and 40 travel in a different lane. It’s as if the two locked themselves in an isolated room in 2011 with 808s & Heartbreak, Pluto, and James Blake to go make an album. Entire songs go by without drums, while Houston’s voice soars into territory that most producers wouldn’t touch on “Tuscan Leather”. And most significantly, all contributors with any sense of “standard” have been eradicated. Most major hip-hop artists operate with better, more polished versions of relatively standard music – Rick Ross isn’t rapping over unique beats, he’s just remarkable in how he approaches them. Drake just went the way of Kanye.* That’s not necessarily a good or bad thing (I would have loved a “Lord Knows 2.0” here). But it’s significant in the change in approach that it signifies. Drake has no interest in running with any producers that don’t match his vision, whether it’s a good one or not – and the few artists on Nothing Was the Same that aren’t directly from the OVO camp have co-production from 40 all over. Drake and 40 (they really are inseparable as a duo at this stage) are taking a step forward into being curators now, transcending mere stardom into iconic status.
It’s easy to forget in the wake of a debut like good kid, m.A.A.d city just how hard it is to craft a polished album. Drake’s one foot in, one foot out now. Half of him’s halfway into absolute stardom, knocking on the door marked “legendary”, but that’s not happening until he makes a career-defining project. Aubrey Graham gave it his all; Nothing Was the Same isn’t lacking for effort. But maybe that’s his problem – overthinking. In Drake’s drive to prove that he hasn’t failed to cement his place at the top, to show that Kendrick hasn’t snatched the crown yet, he stuffed everything good he made into a CD and tried to wave a hand and pass it over as a magnus opus. That’s not enough in one of the most intensely competitive hip-hop seasons in years – forget Kendrick, Drake’s in danger of being overshadowed by Pusha T or Danny Brown’s inevitable acclaim.
Drake might have his solution, already, though. On “Too Much”, between Sampha’s croons, Drake’s insecurity is mounted in a glass case for inspection – he’s telling his girl, “back then they didn’t want me, I’m blessed now.” His boasts here don’t come off as notches on his belt. They’re hesitating, seeking for validation, not approval. His girl’s response? “Take a deep breath, you’re too worried about being the best out.” She might be right.
