For more than a decade, the Drake Factory has been operating at full capacity — recalibrating the relationship between hip-hop, R&B, and pop; balancing large-scale ambition with granular experimentation; embracing the meme-ification of his celebrity. But in recent years, for the first time, it looks like the machines may be at a standstill. Maintaining the throne is hard work, and the wear and tear was beginning to show.
What Drake needed was an opportunity to freshen up, an opportunity to get rid of old assumptions. It’s the kind of renewal you only find out of hours.
“Honestly, Nevermind,” Drake’s seventh solo studio album, which was released a few hours after being announced on Friday, is a marvel of bodily exuberance: weightless, escapist, and zealous appeal. A fascinating club music album, it is a timely evolution towards a new era for one of the most influential music stars. It is also a Drake album consisting almost entirely of parts of Drake albums that hip-hop purists send to conniptions.
The expectations Drake wants to turn around here, though, are his. For most of the 2010s, hip-hop, and most of the rest of popular music, was modeled around its innovations. Combining singing and rap together, making music that was pop unconsciously without leaning toward the old way of doing pop, Drake has long understood that he could build a new kind of global consensus both because he understood the limitations of older approaches. as if the whole world. is changing.
However, the inflated “Certified Lover Boy,” released last year, was his least focused album, and also the least imaginative: it sounded edgy, tired of his own ideas. In addition, the people who have come after him may have exhausted them as well.
Still, these conditions force innovation, and “Honestly, Nevermind” is a clear axis, something increasingly rare for a pop icon. Drake fully embraces the dance floor here, making house music that also plays the Jersey Club, the Baltimore Club, the Ballroom and the Ampiano. Each of these styles has gone from the regional phenomenon to the attention of the taste maker in recent years, and as the skilled scavenger he is, Drake has harvested pieces and pieces for his own constructions.
Part of the reason this is so amazing is that Drake has made a career out of caresses. His productions, always directed by his longtime collaborator Noah Shebib, known as 40, were compelling. But the rhythms here have sharp corners, they suffer and they puncture. “Currents” includes both the squeaky bed sample that is a staple of the Jersey club, and a familiar ad-lib vocal that is a staple of the Baltimore club. “Texts Go Green” is driven by a nervous percussion, and the build-up of a soul house with the piano towards the end of “A Keeper” is an invitation to release.
This approach turns out to be very suitable for Drake’s singing style, which is thin and does not apply open pressure. He is conspiratorial, romantic, sometimes erotic: he never sings to you as much as he sings in your ear.
Most of the songs are about romantic intrigue, and Drake is often the victim. In some places, this is a return to the era of Instagram subtitles, Drake. “I know my funeral will be lit because of how I treated people,” he sang of the blunt Massive. In the pure “Liability,” he moans, “You’re too busy dancing in the club with our songs.”
But part of the compensation of this album is in the lyrical vivacity: in most of the songs, Drake alludes to things more than describing them. Words are indications, suggestions, light abstractions that seek to emulate the mood of the production. (Also, social media is moving too fast now and doesn’t reward the same kind of emotional aggression of the patient in which it stands out.)
Here are recent precedents for Drake’s election: “808s & Heartbreak” by Kanye West and the more fleet parts of “Yeezus”; Frank Ocean’s flirtations with dance music.
But music like this has always been part of Drake’s grammar: think of “Take Care” with Rihanna from 2011, with her Gil Scott-Heron / Jamie xx breakup. Or the serene hymn of the 2017 “Passionfruit” sunrise (which also featured a sample of Moodymann); Certified Lover Boy’s “Fountains”, a happy duet with Nigerian star Tems, was also in that line, but it seemed to portend that Drake’s next hard pivot would be to Afrobeats, with whom he is engaged for much time. including collaborations with Wizkid.
But Drake opted for club music (the average bpm here is over 100) by building an explicit musical bridge with black and queer musical subcultures. That said, the sweaty, countercultural house music that is gaining influence has also become a staple for privileged music in recent years: it is the soundtrack of the world’s money-making elite, the same in Dubai. and Ibiza than Miami and Mykonos. It is a welcoming music but also innocuous; it is full of meaning and reference, but also soft to the touch.
Drake is in an unenviable position just a handful of pop superstars before: he is one of the most famous musicians on the planet and his fame is based on being a kind of chameleon. But it’s hard for a giant to be agile. However, “Honestly, Nevermind” is the work of someone who is not bothered by the potential to alienate old allies. The last two years have been unraveling and the pandemic has freed artists to do the unexpected by simply removing the old reward structures. (Structurally, “Honestly, Nevermind” is a twist similar to Weeknd’s “Dawn FM” electro-pop experiment, released in January.)
The coronavirus era has also fueled the rise of hip-hop scenes thriving in the virtual chaos of social media. This has become more evident in the rise of drill, which has been focusing hip-hop on big and nerves. Although Drake has played with the drill before, collaborating with Fivio Foreign and Lil Durk, among others, “Honestly, Nevermind” is an anti-drill record. Drake is 35 years old and is no doubt thinking about how to live with his children’s children.
Here he only raps in two songs: “Sticky”, which plays hip-house (“Two sprinters to Quebec / Chérie, où est mon bec?”) And “Jimmy Cooks”, the final song, which includes 21 Savage. , shows Playa Fly and feels like a sharp tail of braggarts after 45 minutes of ecstatic release.
This is the kind of hip-hop wink that Drake’s albums have been showing for a long time, but as he and his fans get older, they may not be the things of his future. Whether “Honestly, Nevermind” proves to be a fake boss or a new permanent direction, it may be an indication that old Drake, and everyone who followed him, is leaving, in hindsight. As a great quarterback, he is throwing the ball where his receivers are already headed, not where they have been.
Drake “Honestly, Nevermind” (OVO / Republic)