After a nine-month wait from its original announcement, Toronto’s own, Drake, has finally released Certified Lover Boy. This album has been teased for months but it wasn’t till a week later after Kanye released Donda that Drake would finally publish the album. This conspiracy bounced around on the internet for weeks that either did not want to drop first and that’s why both albums were delayed. Eventually, that rumor was twisted into both wanting to release on the same date similar to when Kanye and 50 Cent released their album on the same day back in 2007. Nonetheless, neither of those came true as Certified Lover Boy was released last Friday, three years since Drake’s last album, Scorpion. Between the two albums, Drake also released some albums supplied with filler tracks and no real conception to a real album. Care Package and Dark Lane Demo Tapes were loaded with already released tracks where the low quality and effort are apparent. These albums almost seem like placeholders just to keep fans entertained. Though, there are some quality tracks between the two. I personally enjoyed 5 am in “Toronto”, “War”, and “Demons” but everything outside of those tracks is mainly rudimentary and underwhelming.

Certified Lover Boy held a significant spot in Drake’s musical career even before it was actually released. Drake has yet to release an above-average album with significant quality since If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late was an album where Drake let it all out, including verse after verse where he really shares a piece of his mind with confidence and character. It was also backed with great production from major producers such as PartyNextDoor, Boi-1da, and 40. But since then, the pedigree from Drake’s more recent records has been declining. What a Time To Be Alive and Views are average at best. Future and Drake seem like a great duo on paper, but their execution was lackluster. While some bangers like “Digital Dash”, “Jumpman”, and “Big Rings” reach expectations for the duo, the rest of the album is fairly forgettable. Views follows a similar path in that Drake starts to do more pop rap vocals and production and moves away from his more lyrical rap background. There’s still plenty of decent flow throughout the album. But it starts to become more cheesy and corny rather than a concept that can actually be related to listeners. “With You”, “Controlla”, and “Grammys” are still solid tracks but the album doesn’t elevate his discography in any way. More Life offered an opportunity for Drake to redeem himself after two very average projects.While  More Life did include more elements of trap and R&B while also sticking with his guns having pop rap and dancehall. But just like the others, More Life is underwhelming. He includes a lot of weak British rap aspects that simply miss the mark for what British rap actually is. Scorpion isn’t any better. It’s easily the worst of the four with messy production and extremely basic lyricism and flows. The bottom line is that this is an important mark in Drake’s career and it’s crucial this album doesn’t miss the target.

With over an hour and a half of music, Drake provides fans with a ton of music after the three-year layoff of original album content. On paper, as always, Drake does an excellent job assembling great artists to be featured on Certified Lover Boy. Popular names in today’s rap industry like Lil Baby, Lil Durk, Travis Scott, Future, Young Thug, and 21 Savage all have their own appearances. But Drake also brings one some new people he doesn’t work with that often. Kid Cudi, Project Pat, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, and Ty Dolla $ign are all different artists that Drake hasn’t worked with nearly as often, if at all. Especially with the Kid Cudi feature, this is a sign that they have seemed to squash their beef that’s been going on for years now. Drake also brings the legendary Jay-Z for a feature as well. This could become a rare fantastic duo with two of the biggest artists in rap right now. Also, Drake assembled his usual crew of producers including 40, Metro Boomin, TM88, PartyNextDoor, OZ, and many others. So on the surface, it looks like Drake did a great job assembling people who he and others felt would bring the highest degree out of this album as possible.

However, that’s not entirely true once the final product is promulgated. The first two tracks are enjoyable. Both “Champagne Poetry” and “Papi’s Home” are filled with a ton of soul features on top of Drake sharing a piece of his thoughts. Drake on “Champagne Poetry” shares how he is unfazed and unbothered by all the drama that’s been surrounding him for the last handful of years. While “Papi’s Home” includes a lot of self-boasting about how he’s at the top of the rap game. However, the Nicki Minaj appearance, not feature, is completely unnecessary and adds nothing to the track. “Girls want Girls” brings the most strange line to the album with “Yeah, say that you a lesbian, Girl, me too.” But his vocals throughout the entire song are dull. Lil Baby does save the track with some serious rapping on his feature. The same can be said with Lil Durk on “In the Bible” where Durk basically carries the track once his verse starts. “On Love All” , neither Drake nor Jay-Z live up to the hype that his song had on paper before coming in. Travis Scott’s feature on “Fair Trade” is probably the least impressive as he stays on a slow progression until the very end where he drops a few solid bars.

“U 2 Sexy” is catchy at the least but it adds legitimately nothing to the overall theme of the album. This track would have been much better left off to be its own individual single for dancing videos rather than waste a spot on the album. Future on the chorus and Young Thug’s little contribution don’t add much either. The only real highlight is that Drake was somehow able to bring Kawhi Leonard onto the music video to make an internet meme at best. “TSU” takes a different twist when Drake chooses to start rapping more. But the track brings nothing significant as it’s just Drake rapping about his support for a struggling stripper. It causes more controversy than positivity as not only was R. Kelly credited as a writer but Drake’s whole past with the narration of this song makes little sense. It’s not until “Pipe Down” where Drake finally shows some passion in his verses discussing a weird relationship with another woman.

“No Friends in the Industry” is another rap-oriented track where he includes a lot of disses directed towards Pusha T and Kanye West. Although the context seems fabricated as he actually does have friends in the industry. One being Future at the very least when they came together to make What a Time to be Alive and many other singles. But I’ll pretend that this is just for show from Aubrey since it does actually bring some first-class production. “Knife Talk” with 21 Savage and Project Pat also has its positives. 21 on the chorus and in the intro is dark and fits the role well. Project Pat’s verse is high quality. “Get Along Better” has a solid blend of rap and R&B sounds but stays one-dimensional for the rest of the way. Lil Wayne and Rick Ross bring a banger track with heavy drums on “You Only Live Twice” that make a rare appearance, but are a highlight on the album. The track almost gives the same vibe and motivation as from “Take Care”. My favorite track is easily “IMY2” with Kid Cudi. The chemistry instantly hits from the start and Drake and Cudi do a great job bouncing off each other. Cudi’s vocals are also fantastic. It’s cool in general to see these two squash their beef and finally make a track together that’s of high quality.

Overall, I would give this album a 3.8/10 with my favorite tracks being “Papi’s Home”, “No Friends In The Industry”, “You Only Live Twice”, and “IMY2”. As of now, this is currently one of the most underwhelming albums of 2021, along with Culture III. The production on most of these tracks sounds like it was made on GarageBand. And while there is nothing wrong with that, Drake, OVO, and Young Money Entertainment have their connections to some of the best producers and engineers in the world. Yet somehow this is the final product they create? Something is missing with that. It is baffling that some of these tracks with extremely weak and cheap elements yet still end up being approved by builders at the top of the industry. It seriously seems that Drake is simply uninspired to make a conceptually thoughtful album. Not only that it’s shown everywhere on the album but even in the cheesy and corny cover art. Drake’s lyricism doesn’t add much to the album either as he still continues to share his average singing melodies with a lot of different emotions. A handful of these tracks don’t really improve until the feature eventually comes on. In fact, almost all of these features are better than the vocals Drake brings to the table. So at least some credit has to be given to Drake and his team to assemble these verses from well-known artists. When it comes to Drake’s own work scattered throughout Certified Lover Boy, it especially starts to die out quickly. I’ll also give credit to the beat switches on Certified Lover Boy as I enjoyed how they at least brought new life to the tracks they were included on. Sadly, at the end of the day, a lot of these tracks don’t add much when looking at the grand scheme of things.

It also seems like Drake is still unable to let go of the beef between him and Kanye West/Pusha T. He even added an entire track dedicated to hoping he could finally get his revenge after Pusha T severely exposed him with “The Story of Adidon”. The tracks, which are “No Friends in the Industry” and “7am on Bridle Path”, don’t nearly bring that same kind of punch and it seems like Drake is too focused on this issue rather than on his own life. The only worthy wild bar is Drake responding to Kanye dropping his address when he says “Give that address to your drive, make it your destination. Instead of just a post out of desperation.” Is exposing someone for having an unplanned kid and choosing to hide him going to sting? Absolutely. But there are way better ways to handle it rather than trying to rehash the past on his own albums. He only digs the hole deeper for himself as he continues to draw attention away from his own creation and continues to take shots at the drama that is now over three years old to this day. While all this drama might not be the exact reason for Certified Lover Boy’s flaws, it can definitely be seen as an influence.

Drake’s goals have audibly changed since his peak after he released If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. Specifically, as of late, releases like “U 2 Sexy” and “Tootsie Slide” show his intentions for making a mainstream song with low production and lyricism. Songs like these end up becoming common sounds on Tik Tok where they recently integrated a way to include streaming sales and numbers to those songs being used. This creates another form of revenue with the app blowing up in popularity. Albums like So Far Gone, Thank Me Later, Take Care, and even Nothing Was the Same distinctly project the hustle and motivation in Drake’s race to the top through his clean, flexible, and genuine art. But since reaching the top, Drake seems well aware he can make any kind of song for his fans and they’ll still stream the life out of it to reach No. 1 on the charts. It’s as if Drake’s motivation and inspiration to make higher quality albums as he did earlier in his career is dead. The chances have been given plenty of times and it has now been five straight albums where the effort is clear to be inefficient.

Drake is an important reminder that numbers only go so far at the end of the day. While Certified Lover Boy will continue to shatter Drake’s own streaming and sales records set by Scorpion, that is no mask for the true objective quality of music across all genres. Popularity doesn’t equal quality. There are plenty of popular artists reaching No. 1 on the charts but, their music may not even stand to some of the less commercial artists never even reaching the charts once in their careers. It is important that this concept is known because it has led to a major disparity between high-level and low-level quality artists due to the explosion of streaming and chart numbers. Fans are often misunderstood that these high-ranking songs and albums automatically mean they’re fantastic albums. That isn’t always the case and Certified Lover Boy is a prime example. Drake’s next move is unclear as ever after a long wait for another underwhelming album like Certified Lover Boy. But it is very likely from this point forward that this is the kind of music we will see Drake be publishing for the rest of his musical career.

After more than a year since its original announcement, Kanye West, now legally known as Ye, has finally released the highly anticipated album Donda. Of course, the process for this album to be released was filled with nothing but drama, but that is simply how Kanye will roll for any album release. Leading up to this album, fans were treated to four separate listening parties, each followed by an expected release that Kanye didn’t follow through on. Three of the four LPs were exclusively streamed through Apple Music. This was a new concept to all music fans, as this is not something we’ve seen for the lead-up of a highly anticipated release. The listening parties took place in Las Vegas, twice in Atlanta, and Chicago to end. The first listening party in Atlanta sounded like a bunch of rough draft tracks assorted together with a lot of work still needed to be done. The second one sounded much more put together. There was more of a progression through the album and with the help of Mike Dean and others, it sounded much better mixed as well. More tracks were played during LP2 as well. The third LP brought some controversy with not only having Marilyn Manson and DaBaby on stage but also the features he chose to add and remove. Nonetheless, fans were finally blessed on Sunday with an album more than a year later after its initial scheduled release date.

Since late 2019, Kanye West, has been expressing his love for religion and even went as far as to make a Gospel-themed album, Jesus is King. While this didn’t fly for fans who’d hoped for another banger album like The Life of Pablo, there were still some decent tracks to remember like “Selah”, “Everything We Need”, “On God”, and “Use This Gospel”. But at the end of the day, when comparing this to the rest of his discography, this is easily his worst album. But the biggest question from this would be whether Ye would continue the trend of Gospel-themed music or go back to his older styles from Ye and The Life of Pablo. Another big question would be the return in quality. Jesus is Kingis a fairly forgettable album for most fans. So would Donda finally bring the return to the peak of the hip-hop industry that Ye has been left out of for almost three years now with barely any new music?

The tracklist itself is filled with 27 songs filling up about an hour and 49 minutes worth of music, the most on any album in Kanye’s discography. But what is most impressive about this list is the people Kanye was able to bring in to create this album. Legendary producer Mike Dean is credited with helping out on a number of tracks, including staying with Kanye in Mercedes Benz Stadium to help complete the album. But other well-known names such as 88 Keys, 30 Roc, BoogzDaBeast, and Digital Nas also received their own credit as producers. What’s more impressive are the features Ye gathered. Similar to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and The Life of Pablo, Ye grabbed artists from many different subgenres and popularity to make it all come together. While some names are artists he’s worked with before, he also includes some new names in his family tree. Some names include Playboi Carti, Travis Scott, Don Toliver, Baby Keem, Kid Cudi, Fivio Foreign, Lil Durk, Young Thug, Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine, Vory, Lil Yachty, Jay-Z, Lil Baby, The Weeknd, Roddy Rich, Jay Electronica, and many others. This list on paper is incredible and this also raises the expectations for Donda.

Donda Chant is a short and simple intro but the meaning behind it is incredible as the rhythm of the chant is in sync with Donda West’s last heartbeats. A heavy-hitting intro that sets the tone immediately for the rest of the way. “Jail” was a symbolic track after LP1 when fans were shown a reunion of Ye & Hov after previous legal issues. But Jay-Z’s verse deserves credit for some creative wordplay and even pushing the line rapping about Ye’s “Red Hat”, referring to his Trump phase. The beat is powerful yet simple with heavy guitars, almost sounding like a track from Yeezus with the nonsense toned down. “God Breathed” is another Yeezus sounding track mixed with glorious gospel vocals from Vory. The ending of the track oddly went on too long without anything but the instrumental playing, something that could have easily been trimmed. “Heaven and Hell” packs an insane boom-clap beat that’s an instant head-nodder with a bit corny but creative rhyme schemes from Ye. My personal favorite track is “Jesus Lord” without a doubt. Kanye’s narration about a story involving adversity, abortion, and oppression really hits hard, especially with the emotional production. Jay Electronica brings one of his best features in an extremely long time with some wonderful creative wordplay that packs a significant punch, “Earthquakes will strike this nation for what Bush did to Rwanda, What the Clintons did to Haiti and Downing Street did to Ghana.” The voicemail featuring Larry Hoover Jr. at the end of the track brings the sensitive emotion to the forefront. It really exposes how the justice system affects generations of families when these problems are prolonged and unsolved.

“Off the Grid” features one of the most impressive and surprising features from Fivio Foreign, whose stock should be quickly rising in the game. His feature remains heavy and consistent throughout the entire duration. It is then followed up by an equally impressive verse from Kanye West where he is rapping heavily, something not seen too often on his later projects. While there are a million different versions of “Hurricane”, the final cut on the album is the best by far. Vocals from The Weeknd are beautiful and fit perfectly with the mixing. Fans have also been treated with another well-put-together verse from Lil Baby, another artist who continues to improve his lyricism every opportunity he gets. Some changes on “Praise God” make the track polished and complete to complement vocals from Travis Scott and Kanye West. But the Baby Keem feature is a bit disappointing. While it is catchy, it’s a bunch of random phrases repeated without much progression until the very end when he finally gets a few bars rolling. I’m not crazy for Lil Yachty’s feature on “Ok Ok” either. While the argument could be made that it’s one of his best appearances when comparing it to the rest of the list, it’s definitely towards the bottom and pretty forgettable. Fivio comes in again and delivers a much more memorable verse for the track. He’s absolutely a top highlight coming out of the album. “Believe What I Say” was a fantastic last-minute add to the album. Production on this track is unbelievable with a great Lauryn Hill sample in the beginning to the Buju Banton dialogue as the interlude. An extraordinary song to vibe to overall.

“Pure Souls” with Roddy Rich is another top highlight on Donda. His chemistry with Kanye and the beat is shown straight from the jump and it only goes up from there. The vocals followed up by Shenseea are incredible and a phenomenal top to end the track. “Moon” featuring Kid Cudi and Don Toliver is a prime example of pairing features that blend perfectly. Their calm and psychedelic tone make this a top-tier track. “Come to Life” and “No Child Left Behind” combine for an outstanding outro before the Part 2s. “Come to Life” features some of Kanye’s best singing backed behind beautiful piano melodies. “While No Child Left Behind” is packed with lifting vocals from Vory and The Sunday Service Choir that make one feel like they are being lifted up to Heaven. These two tracks create a beautiful way for an album filled with so much drama, speculation, and anxiety to end in the most heartwarming way possible. “Keep My Spirit Alive” features fitting verses from Westside Gunn and Conway the Machine, two of the most underrated artists in today’s industry. Kanye’s wordplay and choice are also innovative. “Who needs practice? I don’t do rehearsals, And I don’t do commercials cause they too commercial.” KayCyy’s vocals on the chorus are solid but there are a handful of other artists who I could see fill this portion much better. All the Part 2 tracks are enjoyable but the highest standout is Ty Dolla $ign’s standout verse on “Junya”.

“Tell the Vision” is the only real dud on the album. Not only was this track already released on Pop Smoke’s most recent album Faith, but the difference between the two tracks is very little. Kanye basically just adds a simple piano melody on top of Pop Smoke’s vocals and that’s basically the entire track. This should have either been left off or remixed much much better. Another feature could have possibly been added or Kanye could have included his own verse. “Junya” is a catchy Playboi Carti toned track with a beat that could have come off of Whole Lotta Red. But there is little significance to the album outside of a solid Carti feature and a bouncy beat.

Overall, I would give this album an 8.8/10 with some of my favorite tracks being “Jesus Lord”, “Off The Grid, Hurricane”, “Praise God”, “Believe What I Say”, “Moon”, “Come to Life”, and “Pure Souls”. The production on this entire album is out of this world. I do wish that Kanye kept Pusha T on the track Donda. His dialogue made an incredible opening track for the album and the replacement ofDonda Chant is better as an interlude than an opening. While there are still plenty of tracks that involve gospel-related sounds, vocals, and verses, religion almost plays into more of a filter on the album rather than the main focus. Of course, no recent Kanye album could go without some corny snippets, but not to the level as the Chick-Fil-A reference did on “Follow God”, it’s fairly acceptable to include some lines talking about Buzz Lightyear and Hertz Cars. Donda also features some of Kanye’s best singing out of his entire discography. The various rap verses that Ye recently added show his passion to revive himself after a lackluster Jesus is King. The energy and heat on each verse will be remembered as some of his best lyricism when it’s all said and done. Kanye does a fantastic job of allowing all the featured artists to have their own spotlight on Donda, with some taking a major advantage,  like Playboi Carti, Fivio Foreign, Westside Gunn, Roddy Rich, and others. Donda also mixes up a bunch of different themes and styles of music, allowing other artists on it to perform in their own zone. But as always, Kanye makes sure to give himself some spotlight as well and not disappointing. All of these factors continue to push the narrative on how Kanye is one for other artists more than himself. While it is far from a perfect album, Donda is a great rebound for Ye’s career.

When talking about some of the most influential artists of all time, there is no doubt that Kanye West is one of the most influential artists still making music currently. But he also isn’t far behind the top tier of artists like Elvis Presley, The Beatles, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, and others when it’s all said and done. Not only does he shatter streaming numbers including Apple Music’s all-time record of No. 1 album in 152 countries and earning the single biggest day of streams from any artist this year on Spotify. I could read 10 more incredible records that he’s simply blown out of the water. What’s even more impressive is that through all the drama endured through the making of this album, more people continued to tune in. The streams from each listening party only went up, each also shattering the record for most people listening to a single Apple Music stream. But what makes Kanye so special is his family tree of artists he’s worked with. Some more than others but Kanye’s willingness and ability to work with artists like Lil Pump and 6ix9ine shows the kind of draw that he has. Everyone wants their opportunity to have a Kanye West-influenced track on their discography. This family tree goes as far to artists he’s completely revitalized in terms of their careers. Playboi Carti, Kid Cudi, and Travis Scott are just some of the RECENT artists that Ye has helped raise their music to reach a new level of excellence and overall improvement. Kanye West is truly a multitool artist with outstanding vocals, lyricism, production, creativity, and formatting. There are not many artists who can include their names on that list. Whatever may be next for Ye, which we all know is remarkably unpredictable, fans will be impatiently waiting for another world-altering album. But for now, Donda will live on as an important staple in Kanye’s discography as his 10th studio album and a magnificent tribute and remembrance of the late Dr. Donda West.

One of the most popular artists from the SoundCloud department, Trippie Redd, has returned with his fourth studio LP, Trip at Knight. This comes as a sequel to his 2018 debut studio album, Life’s a Trip. This also comes as a somewhat quick turnaround to his last album, Pegasus, which was released less than a year ago in October 2020. Pegasus was an album that featured a lot more singing and R&B instrumentals compared to his previous projects. And while it was positive recognition for him to make the change and try something different compared to the common SoundCloud rap sound, there were still a lot of flaws with the album. His singing especially was off by a mile.

Despite being leaked multiple times, Trip at Knight was a highly anticipated album before its release, especially for fans who wanted Trippie to return to a more commonly known style of his. His return to the Trip-themed albums made a lot of fans believe he was returning to the style that got him mainstream recognition in the first place. There were rumors to be a Drake feature, which skyrocketed the hype. But Trippie Redd also released a track featuring Playboi Carti labeled Miss the Rage. This track is a near carbon copy of Carti’s style, but nonetheless, it is pretty catchy. A lot of this all together really made this an intriguing project despite not much excitement from Pegasus.

The first half of the album is actually not too bad. MP5 is a quality emo/trap-rap track with a solid feature from SoFaygo. Holy Smokes with Lil Uzi Vert isn’t an entirely bad track either. But the lyricism starts to get extremely repetitive when Trippie Redd just continues to rap about money. Betrayal brings a lot of controversy after the line that Drake dropped about Kanye West but there’s still nothing special about Drake’s feature of the rest of the track itself. Juice WRLD does have a nice feature on Matt Hardy 999. He and Trippie redd seem to have good chemistry through the entire track. Danny Phantom is easily the worst song on the entire album, but the majority of the second half isn’t any better. Most of this album seems like Trippie Redd is pulling the strong and positive feedback from Miss the Rage and trying to implement that on every single track of the album. A lot of these beats are extremely similar with very minor changes to them but not enough to give them any form of distinction from one another. The only track that has a distinctly different beat is Rich MF that includes two strong features from Polo G and Lil Durk. But they do a lot of heavy lifting on the track while Trippie Redd adds little to nothing.

Overall, I would give Trip at Knight a 3/10 with some of my favorite tracks being MP5 and Matt Hardy 999. I appreciate that Trippie Redd is attempting to try a different style of a rap subgenre by going down more the path of experimental/trap rap. Almost as if Playboi Carti and Lil Uzi Vert had a baby, that’s what the style he is trying to venture into. This might be the style that fits best for him, but the bottom line is that this album is barely palatable. It’s filled with a lot of cheap and basic trap beats that all sound extremely similar, especially in the second half. Meanwhile, the lyrics aren’t any better, they’re just filled with the typical content of money and drugs that mainstream trap rappers repeatedly fall back on. I’d almost prefer the lyrical content from Pegusas despite Trippie Redd taking another different musical avenue that didn’t work out well.

Trippie Redd is still another rap artist who is trying to find his independent sound. While he’s bounced around from R&B to experimental, he still has plenty more to work on outside of just finding his unique place in the industry. Artists like him raise a lot of questions about the status of the industry and who truly deserves the spotlight. There are plenty of artists who have found their own individual form in the business but don’t nearly receive the same kind of recognition through the casual audience of the genre. Nonetheless, Trippie Redd still has a ton to work on before becoming a rightfully respected artist in this industry.