Certified Lover Boy - Drake
Intro:
Drake is a once in a generation megastar, and does not need a long introduction. After dominating the last decade of music, the Canadian artist dropped his highly anticipated album “Certified Lover Boy”. There’s been a lot of mixed reviews/reactions since this album dropped last week. With that being said, let’s get right into the review.
Strengths:
What kind of subject matter can you expect from CLB? Well, there are plenty of relationship-based songs that fans have grown to love from Drake. This album specifically highlights his toxic masculinity, which is amazing when executed well (Ex: In The Bible). He also mentions he child a few times throughout the album. Drake delivers his lyrics smoothly with his well-known sing/rap style he uniquely coined. He even dabbles into some of the more modern melodic rap flows at times.
Lyrically, Drake is still rapping in top tier form when he wants to. There’s a good balance of clever lines & Instagram-ready captions sprinkled in his verses (Ex: chorus on Fair Trade). The song “7am On Bridle Path” features a pretty disgusting rhyme scheme. He obviously raps some Kanye disses too, and they’re honestly pretty great. This album has some of the best R&B melodies/flows that we’ve heard from him a while.
The production on CLB mainly consists of vocal sample beats, similar to his song “Chicago Freestyle”. There’s a lot of the classic, moody & atmospheric OVO sound we all know too well. The song “Way 2 Sexy” samples the classic record “2 Sexy”. It comes together for a silly, yet fun record that could’ve been a lot worse. Feature wise, the singers easily steal the show. Rick Ross, Lil Wayne & Jay Z all definitely have the best rap features in comparison to the others.
Weaknesses:
Personally, I wish Drake had gotten more mature with his subject matter & touched on fatherhood more in depth. While we do know what to expect from Drake at this point of his career, some listeners may be tired of hearing the same repeated subjects: betrayal, trust issues, paranoia, women, his success, etc. At times, his lyrics can feel devoid of any real substance or meaning (Way 2 Sexy sounds like a half-assed verse).
The album is also way too long, and might not age well in his catalogue. This is a growing trend with his newer albums that I am not really a fan of at all. If the filler songs were removed, the tracklist would feel more concise & focused (maybe 14-15 track instead). Additionally, most features weren’t really that special or even needed. And the few that are do tend to steal the show (Ex: Jay Z & Travis Scott).
Lastly, the beats aren’t too similar, but the sample direction leads to slow start to the album. Many listeners complained that the first few songs were boring. Some of these are also just flat out underwhelming; whether it be from being too generic or uninteresting. These are also some of the weakest trap beats we’ve ever heard Drake rap over (Ex: Knife Talk) with few exceptions. His lack luster delivery on some of these don’t help either (Ex: TSU).
Overall:
In the end, I have very mixed feelings about this new Drake album. On one hand it’s definitely not bad & has some really good highlights. But on the other hand, I can’t help but feel like Drake did not give his best effort. Even with that being said, I believe that Drake will be ready with a new & improved album sooner than later (hopefully). Thank you all for reading and be sure to listen to the album yourself with the link below.
