? Drake’s new album “Nothing Was the Same” is the most surprising thing since, well, Drake’s last album. The irony of this is that it has very little on the side of surprise. First thing first: “Nothing Was the Same” could have worked if it had cut a few songs and re-worked a few others to place emphasis on the pop-y aspect of Drake’s music. This could have been a fantastic mainstream pop-rap record. Songs like “Hold On, We’re Going Home” and “Too Late” have such brilliant melodies that they hit a perfect blend between Drake’s style and his pop sensibilities. However, this is Aubrey “Drake” Graham’s “vision,” and I guess it’s okay – and therein lies the weakness of the whole LP: it does not impact the listener with anything other than pretty sounds melted with a reverb-soaked atmosphere. That too can be done well – mainstream rap newcomer A$AP Rocky got the majority of his buzz off of tracks which were spacey and simple, in topic and lyric. However, Rocky sounds like he is having fun with the music. Drake just sounds so deadpan in his delivery that, coupled with thin lyricism and motifs, one comes out of the album feeling almost nothing at all. What are Drake’s hardships? Where are they? On “Started From the Bottom,” the album’s lead single, he pretty much says them: he would argue with his parents sometimes, and some of his friends have been fake. Oh – and he did not own a car when he was a teenager, he would borrow from one from his dad. This is not Kendrick Lamar’s “good kid M.a.a.d. city” – there is no background of urban decay or gang violence. Drake is just at some points rapping/singing to some hypothetical adversary, and at all other times courting some hypothetical woman. What is Drake escaping from? Young Money, ironically, has kind of become the rap game’s incarnation of Fitzgerald’s “old money;” they can maintain popularity based on their wealth and past reputation, and they no longer really have to work. Lil’ Wayne spends his days skating and badly rhyming over other people’s instrumentals (see: his awful rendition of “Yeezus’s” “New Slaves”) and Nicki Minaj uses all her skills making pop music for radio charts. Drake wants to seem like he is working hard to make a creative foothold on “the game.” He even raps on the somewhat-lively opener, “Tuscan Leather:” “This is nothin’ for the radio, but they’ll still play it though, cause its that new Drizzy Drake, that’s just the way it go.” Well, no, Mr. Drake – when an artist takes time to truly go outside of the box and surprise people (“Yeezus”comes to mind), the radio does not play it. Drake’s new album “Nothing Was the Same” is the most surprising thing since everything else he has done. Not surprising at all.
