#drakevember

[felismors]

THE END OF DRAKE: YOU ARE (NOT) THE BEST I'VE EVER HAD

PROLOGUE TO THE EPILOGUE

The final album of Drakevember. Published intentionally after midnight on December 1st, Chile time. This whole thing was an experience. One that I'd love to replicate with a lot more time if possible, instead of procrastinating doing anything until the last week of the month like a total dumbass. I've learned a lot about the way that I approach music, and managed to get back into the habit of taking notes while listening to the album, or the second I get the chance directly after. Drake's discography is a mess, largely mediocre with some standouts on both ends of the quality spectrum. I see myself reflected in it. I look at the cover of Certified Lover Boy and think about the fact that if I was given a selection of horribly expensive designs, I would probably also pick the funniest, most horrible one possible for an album with that little effort put into it, and that makes me realize that Drake, much like I, is a human person with a heart. One that he tries to show to the world with his music. But he also has a shitload of money, so I don't respect him and he needs to die.

full list on rateyourmusic

[drakenationxo-blog]

real shit.

[felismors]

DRAKEVEMBER PART 9: A dead tired review of Certified Lover Boy by Drake

via rateyourmusic

this album sucks so much ass dude i literally fell asleep for like a solid minute on N Too Deep i'm not even gonna bother with proper punctuation for this one because i am writing this shit at 4 am and i am dead tired and this album did NOT help this album is literally so boring i had to open up tiktok and dual wield so i wouldnt fall back asleep which i think is kind of impressive in its own way. congratulations aubrey youre not good at this also Way 2 Sexy is impressively ass god DAMN i cant believe that song not only got past quality control but also CHARTED ON THE YEAR END HOT 100

SCORE: 1/5

don't listen on spotify. for your sake.

[felismors]

DRAKEVEMBER PART 15: A short review of Care Package by Drake

via rateyourmusic

I was very shocked to see that a Drake album from 2019 was this good, until I did a small amount of research and learned that this album consists of unreleased tracks from 2011 to 2015. I might be overrating it due to how low my expectations were for any Drake album past 2016, but this was pretty great! It being a compilation does make it feel less curated and structured than the average Drake album (which is already saying a lot), but the music itself is peak Drake! Also, wow, that album cover is almost as bad as Certified Lover Boy's!

SCORE: 3.5/10

listen on spotify

[felismors]

DRAKEVEMBER PART 8: A thoroughly impressed review of Take Care by Drake

via rateyourmusic

First Drake album to actually hit me in a way that I thoroughly enjoyed. It might be because I went through a bunch of his boring, lazy albums beforehand, but it definitely feels really good to listen to some actual quality stuff after those.

This album has absolutely classic tracks like Take Care and Marvin's Room, which I'm not gonna be contrarian about. They're both amazing. The only track that I'd say isn't good is Practice, which I found lame enough to pause after.

During this pause I listened to a high-effort mashup of Jay Eazy's Mega Man and Want You Gone from the Portal 2 OST as a palate cleanser, which made The Ride and absolute classic The Motto hit even better.

If I heard this album when it came out, I'd definitely be looking at Drake as an artist to keep my eyes on, but knowing what he released after it, it'd just be setting myself up for disappointment.

SCORE: 4/5

listen on spotify

[felismors]

DRAKEVEMBER PART 4: A largely uninterested review of What A Time To Be Alive by Drake and Future.

via rateyourmusic

Nothing particularly remarkable on any side. Future is largely uninteresting to me in most contexts, and putting him next to Drake doesn't really do anything for me. It's like mixing two differently flavored seltzer waters and ending up with one still very diluted flavor.

There are moments on this album where Drake tries to sound aggro as to not sound like a total bitch in front of Future, and he just absolutely does not pull it off. It's hilarious. Big Rings is hilarious.

Aside from the usual experience of second hand embarrassment when Drake tries to get some street cred from a rapper seen as more "hardcore," this album is mostly unremarkable. I wrote in my notes that I thought some of the beats were cool, but I absolutely cannot recall what they sound like, so clearly they weren't interesting enough to linger.

The best thing I got from this album was the moment when I heard the lyric "I wake up on a daily basis..." and laughed so hard that a few people on the subway cart I was standing in were looking at me. Thanks, Future.

SCORE: 2.5/5

listen on spotify

[felismors]

DRAKEVEMBER PART 2: A pleasantly surprised review of Nothing Was The Same by Drake

via rateyourmusic

After starting with Honestly, Nevermind, it was kind of a shock to hear a record from back when drake was still trying! This album has a lot of pretty remarkable moments that I really appreciated. It has a lot of classics, like Started From the Bottom and Hold On, We're Going Home, that I loved since I heard them on my run-throughs of the yearly hot 100s. His singrapping feels purposeful and full of determination. He gets genuinely emotional at points! He seemed like a closed book on Honestly, Nevermind, which I suppose is natural for a dance album, but it still was a pleasant surprise to hear the contrast. I also liked the title drops. They perked my ears up. HOWEVER! This album still has some pretty harsh drawbacks. The main one is that this album was made while the "loudness war" was still going on in pop music. It's very compressed and loud, something pretty common in pop before 2015. I had to lower the volume after a few tracks stabbed me in the soul with the compression. There's also the whole "good girl" bit that he does a few times, that I suppose is not inherently bad, but it definitely gave me enough skeevy vibes to feel actually uncomfortable at points, especially on Swangin. Overall, pretty good pop rap album! I miss when Drake actually tried at all.

SCORE: 3.5/5

listen on spotify

[felismors]

DRAKEVEMBER PART 16: A spaced out review of Comeback Season by Drake

via rateyourmusic

This album felt longer than every other Drake album I've listened to, and that's saying a lot considering some of their runtimes. The music isn't bad, per se, but it's so mediocre and there's so much of it that it just becomes tiring. The bars are an improvement over the ones on Room For Improvement, and they're not as derivative of Lil Wayne as they are on So Far Gone, so that's a point in its favor, though. The one track that stuck with me is City Is Mine, which has a beat that had me in shock with how incredibly fucking goofy it is. I beg you to listen for yourself. I'm gonna be thinking about it all day.

SCORE: 2/5

listen on youtube

[felismors]

DRAKEVEMBER PART 14: A relieved review of Room For Improvement by Drake

via rateyourmusic

If So Far Gone was undercooked, this is completely raw. Drake is clearly just starting as a rapper, not even having Lil Wayne's style to bite, and on a lot of the tracks he's paired up with a more talented rapper, so he ends up paling in comparison. There are some moments where the bars he's spitting might as well be "My name is Aubrey and I'm here to say..." And it's honestly a little bit charming. But not enough to make me think it loops back around and becomes good. More like a pug being malformed enough to be pitiable but not pitiable enough to be cute. The beat selection, however, is (with a few exceptions) pretty great. I'm reminded of Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor, which isn't surprising considering he has a remix of Lupe Fiasco's Kick, Push on this album, something that made me smile the second I heard the beat. I probably should've started here instead of doing everything in a completely random order, shouldn't I?

SCORE: 3/5

listen on youtube

[felismors]

DRAKEVEMBER PART 13: An unkind review of So Far Gone by Drake

via rateyourmusic

This album certainly sounds like it's from 2009, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It really varies from track to track if it's embarrassingly dated or wonderfully aged. This album in general has Drake's worst bars. He clearly was a rookie when he made this, even if he was Lil Wayne's protege. He's lacking in technique, and I'm not the biggest fan of Wayne in general, so when Drake apes his style, It doesn't really appeal to me at all. I really like Let's Call It Off, the indie rock-y melodic hook by Peter Bjorn and John on a Drake song is something that feels like getting a glass of water thrown in your face after suffering through a 40 degree celsius afternoon of a discography, but most of the tracks don't match that level. This album is like eating an undercooked deep-fried chicken breast with really good seasoning. It does taste pretty good, but I wouldn't want to finish it in most cases because I don't want to get salmonella, which in this metaphor means getting my algorithm permanently ruined by Drake.

SCORE: 2.5/5

listen on spotify

[felismors]

DRAKEVEMBER PART 12: An unsurprised review of For All the Dogs by Drake

via rateyourmusic

Another bloated album. This one has tracks on both ends of the quality spectrum, which at least makes it interesting compared to the previous few, even if it's still largely mediocre. Gently, featuring Bad Bunny is absolutely horrendous, but in an absolutely hilarious way that makes me unable to truly hate it. I choked on my grapefruit slices when I realized that Drake's enchantment table-ass mumbling was supposed to be Spanish. On the other side of the spectrum, and also right after Gently on the tracklist, is Rich Baby Daddy, which I would honestly say is one of Drake's best songs. The beat selection on this album is pretty good. Aside from that, it's just kind of another feature-length Drake album for the pile.

SCORE: 2.5/5

listen on spotify

[felismors]

DRAKEVEMBER PART 11: A lukewarm feeling review of Thank Me Later by Drake

via rateyourmusic

This is a very dated album, but even if that's not really a positive descriptor at all, I do still feel like it's dated in a nice way, in a way that my too-young-to-remember-when-this-came-out brain appreciates, especially after going through as much of his discography as I have at this point. Hearing Drake still having energy, still having a certain hunger in him, is wonderful, but not to the same degree that hearing him on Take Care was. He's not nearly as refined, or even aware of his individual identity on this record, and he spends most of it aping Lil Wayne's flows when he's not doing his R&B bit, but he manages to pull it off in a pretty decent way. The album commits the mistake that most Drake albums make of being bloated to death. This album did NOT need to be an hour long, but at least it has some bangers. Find Your Love is the one truly remarkable track, that production is still absolutely crazy. I wish more stuff sounded like that these days. Also, the album cover sucks ass, but with the knowledge that this man chose the cover for Certified Lover Boy, I guess I can't hold his past self to very high standards either.

SCORE: 3/5

listen on spotify

[felismors]

DRAKEVEMBER PART 10: An unamused review of Dark Lane Demo Tapes by Drake

via rateyourmusic

BORING! Another boring Drake album. It's mixed particularly badly, but aside from that it's largely unremarkable, with even the Chris Brown and Playboi Carti features fading into the background for me. Toosie Slide is the most cynical attempt to create a TikTok hit I've ever seen. It sounds like a Fortnite dance.

SCORE: 2/5

listen on spotify

[felismors]

hearing drake actually try with his music is so crazy, i've listened to a few albums of him after he got lazy and the difference between Take Care and the stuff after it is absolutely insane.

it's definitely gonna inflate my rating because of the amount of garbage i strutted through before getting to it, but i guess i'm more for rating the experience i got and the emotions i felt rather than any kind of "objective" measure of the art

[felismors]

DRAKEVEMBER PART 7: A messy review of More Life by Drake

via rateyourmusic

Another mediocre album! What a shocker! The only song I really have anything to say about is Passionfruit, which is actually one of my favorite hits of 2017.

Taking a point off because my phone mysteriously decided to close my Spotify app in the middle of this album while I was walking on the street, so I had to take it out and open the app again in the mildly dangerous part of town I live in.

There's still like three more feature length projects to go. I don't think I'll be the same woman I was when I started by the time I'm done with this.

SCORE: 2/5

listen on spotify

[felismors]

DRAKEVEMBER PART 6: A short but revealing review of Views by Drake

via rateyourmusic

Drake still had some energy in this one! Most of the tracks were boring, but they were boring in a way that made the two remarkable tracks, Hotline Bling and Too Good sound good enough for me to give it a point up. At around the midway point of this album, I started regretting procrastinating Drakevember as much as I did, and I think that regret is only gonna grow with each passing day of Drakevember.

SCORE: 3/5

listen on spotify