When the album arrived last night, Drake described Certified Lover Boy as “a combination of toxic masculinity and acceptance of truth which is inevitably heartbreaking.” That’s a baffling combination of words, but I’m pretty sure it means that Drake spends the album bitterly bitching about exes while presenting the barest veneer of self-awareness, as if to take the edge off of that bitching. In fact, Certified Lover Boy might be an album about Drake’s comfort zone. I cannot say the same for Donda.ĭrake never once leaves his comfort zone on Certified Lover Boy.
A few listens in, and it’s already clear that we’re going to be hearing these Certified Lover Boy songs again and again in the months to come. It’s impossible not to compare them, and yet it’s not close. Both albums have come out, with plenty of advance pageantry but no advance singles, within one week of each other. They’re both crowded with guests, and plenty of those guests show up on both albums: Jay-Z, Lil Baby, Kid Cudi, Lil Durk, Travis Scott, Ty Dolla $ign.
They’re both full of moody synth tones and fake humility. Donda and Certified Lover Boy are two overlong blockbuster-rap statements from two of rap’s aging overlords. Without mentioning his name, Drake returns to the subject of Kanye West again and again on CLB, mainly to remind West that the two are not peers and to issue cryptic threats: “I could give a fuck about who designing your sneakers and tees/ Have somebody put you on a Gildan, you play with my seed.” Because of release-date proximity, Drake and his old frenemy Kanye West reignited their old cold-war feud. Then he pushed it back, releasing a bunch of stopgap singles that (of course) became massive hits. Drake announced the album almost a year ago, making a trailer video and shaving a stupid-looking heart into his hairline.
Drake does not have more slaps than the Beatles, but he’s closer than anyone would like to admit.įrom a distance, the rollout for Certified Lover Boy looks like one bungle after another.
He somehow figured out how to turn passive-aggressive simpering into stadium spectacle, and you could probably rap along with a two-hour set of the man’s hits through sheer osmosis. Drake himself is eager to remind us of this: “When I signed my first deal, that shit came through a fax/ That should let you know how long I been out here running laps.” Even if you cannot stand Drake - a position that I understand, even if it’s not one that I hold - then you have had to contend with him if you have any interest in engaging with popular music. You can never tell with this guy.ĭrake has arguably reigned atop rap’s A-list for more than a decade, longer than anyone else in history. Here, Drake puts all his silly self-pitying bullshit up front: “Career is going great, but now the rest of me is fading slowly/ My soulmate is somewhere out in the world, just waiting on me/ My chef got the recipe for disaster baking slowly/ My heart feel vacant and lonely.” Maybe that’s a power move, too. The song is six minutes of high-pitched croons and self-lacerating humblebrags it’s the kind of thing that Drake used to use as an album outro. But “Champagne Poetry” also works as a display of Drake’s colossal cornucopia of resentments and insecurities.
Still, Drake’s use of that sample is the musical equivalent of opening your summer action movie with a global-destruction CGI setpiece, especially since, thanks to that sped-up effect, it really does feel like we’re hearing a Beatles sample.Įven without a direct Beatles sample, “Champagne Poetry” works as a vulgar display of power from a man who recently claimed to have more slaps than the Beatles. Drake’s song “Champagne Poetry” is really built on a sample of a sample of a cover the song’s co-producer Masego used sampled the 1972 Singers Unlimited cover of “Michelle” on his own 2017 song “ Navajo.” “Champagne Poetry” simply tweaks the “Navajo” beat. In September of 2021, Drake began his new album Certified Lover Boy by using a chipmunk-soul sample of the Beatles’ “Michelle” to talk about his cashmere knits for the nighttime boat ride and his friend Oli with the first edition parked up roadside.