Turns out all those pregnant women emojis on Drake’s last album cover might’ve been a hint of sorts.
Nine months after last year’s passable Certified Lover Boy, Drake released his seventh album on Thursday night with only a few hours’ notice. The announcement for Honestly, Nevermind was accompanied by smeary, metallic cover art that made you wonder if the iconic grunge record it shares half its name with would mean Drake—a noted genre chameleon, or thief, depending on how you look at it—would pull a 2010-era Lil Wayne by copping the punk rock sounds that have permeated mainstream pop as of late (a scary thought, but crazier things have happened).
Instead, Honestly, Nevermind is a deep dive into dance and house music that’s much less of a heel turn than people are pretending it is—past Drake cuts like “Take Care,” “One Dance,” and “Passionfruit” have proven his affinity for poolside bops that get people moving. Here, though, the OVO honcho goes all-in on dance music: a genre that’s wildly popular around the world and deeply influential in American pop, but one that most Westerners know jack-all about, which makes Drake’s savviness of his global audience that much more impressive. Ditto for his pick of collaborators, especially the South African DJ and house music innovator Black Coffee, who is credited as one of four executive producers on the album (along with longtime Drake cohorts Noah “40” Shebib and Oliver El-Khatib, and Drizzy himself).
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Black Coffee seems to do a lot of heavy lifting here, considering Honestly, Nevermind emphasizes those house-inspired sonic elements over anything else, including Drake. And really, that’s where the divide for this album might stem. There’s not much happening lyrically—Drake is singing, humming, and crying in the club with his usual sad boy malaise. Anyone hoping for the kind of witty one-liners and zany energy of, say, “Way 2 Sexy” will be left disappointed, bored, or both. Instead, this is “summer in Mykonos” music, packed with songs that breathe and utilize space in a way Drake hasn’t before, despite his love for gluttonously lengthy albums (this one trims the listening time down to a more reasonable 52 minutes...we’ll take it!).
At times, Honestly, Nevermind feels more like a Black Coffee record that just so happens to feature some Drake vocals. And though there are certainly more exciting things happening in dance music right now, approaching it with that mindset means there’s plenty to appreciate here, like the hypnotizing house beat on “Texts Go Green” and the final 45 seconds of “A Keeper,” with its sparse piano line and a skittering dance beat that brightens up an otherwise melancholy track.
If you can make it past the annoying squeaky bed sounds on “Currents” and the paranoid energy of “Falling Back” (truly nothing is more Aubrey Graham than hearing him repeatedly ask “How do I feel?” in a falsetto he just manages to reach), you’ll be rewarded by the album’s stellar middle section, where things really begin to gel and glow. “Sticky,” a bouncy highlight where Drake actually raps (!) and speaks in French, is followed by the album’s longest and most exuberant-sounding track, the aptly titled “Massive.”
That’s followed by “Flight’s Booked” and “Overdrive,” which sound like companion pieces where Drake fights for a “divine bond,” as he describes it on the latter song, featuring an awesome guitar outro. “Tie That Binds” similarly spotlights a Santana-esque guitar solo; in fact, the entire second half of the track is completely Drake-less, featuring only instrumentals and backing vocals. It’s sparse in all the best ways, much like “Down Hill,” another standout track that’s all muted drums and snaps. You keep expecting it to explode into something bigger, but it never does—instead, Drake and Shebib smartly let backing vocalists Beau Nox and Tresor shine.
Things grind to a halt with the weird pitched-down vocals of “Liability,” before giving way to the big finale: the 21 Savage-featuring “Jimmy Cooks,” which frankly doesn’t sound like it belongs on this album at all. Like “Sticky,” it’s pure rap, aka what most of the world expected (and wanted, judging by the Twitter reactions) from Drake. You know that part in The Lion King where the hyenas are begging Scar for food and the villainous lion begrudgingly offers them zebra meat while snarling, “I don’t think you really deserve this?” “Jimmy Cooks” feels like that—a consolation prize for listeners who made it that far in the album, as well as a reminder of sorts: “Hey, remember that I’m still a rapper and I can still do this.”
And yet, that return-to-form finale apparently hasn’t been enough for those who were expecting a hip-hop album and have been cracking jokes on Twitter comparing these new songs to mall music. To that, I can only ask, did you all really want more cringey, TikTok-baiting songs like “Toosie Slide?” Though not a perfect album, Honestly, Nevermind shows us a musical and cultural juggernaut willing to experiment with his sound and to throw his fans for a loop. You can call him divisive, but you can’t call him boring.
