Drake is coming off a public beef which culminated into Kendric Lamar performing the song of the year during the Superbowl halftime show. So, the question becomes where does Drake go from here. To be honest I believe that due to lack of public rap battles with names of this stature attached it’s easy to overreact and say things like Drake should retire from music. Something I do agree with is that Drake name, and raps do feel a little different.
Before this battle Drake carried an aura of invisibility. It feels like Kendric took that away. Will the vibe of Drake ever be the same, I don’t know. Drake is a big enough artist that as time goes by and releases more music that this whole thing slowly fades in the background. At the same time though, this was a big enough battle that the aftereffects could be unshakable. It does look like Drake has a plan to shake the stench of the beef.
On Valentines Day Drake dropped a collab R&B album with Party Next Door. The album “Some Sexy Songs for You” taps into the opposite of what the beef was about. This was intentional on Drake’s part. This is because ever since “Not Like Us” came out Drake hasn’t had as much fan support as usual. This album allows Drake to tap in with his female fanbase which will build momentum for him when and if he decides to go back at Kendric at a later date.
If you strictly looked at reviews of the album on the internet, you’d probably think this is one of Drake’s worse albums. This is the best Drake album I’ve heard since 2018. This is the case because of the timing and fit of the album. Before I go on let me say I’m not a Kendric or Drake guy. In fact, I like J. Cole more than both of them but that’s for another time.
Obviously with Valentines Day being on a Friday, it gave Drake a perfect opportunity to put something out. It was also smart of him to make it a collab with Party Next Door because they’ve been doing songs together for a while now, and fans have been wanting that combination to put more music out.
A criticism of this album could be that it’s very long, 21 songs is a lot but I’m assuming he’s did that so he could have as much room as possible to take the project wherever he wanted. Overall, I like the first half of the album a little bit more than the second half. This is because on the second half it felt like Drake and PND were being more experimental, but evening with that being true it was still pretty good. I don’t think this is the final act from Drake.
As good as this album is it’ll probably be remembered as a steppingstone to something bigger. For Drake things aren’t the same, this year will help decide if anything for him will ever be the normal.
