Certified Lover Boy, DONDA, and the Joys of Ignoring Discourse
The fight between Drake and Kanye West is a pointless waste of time, but that doesn't mean the albums themselves are as well.
“Yeah, you say that you a lesbian/girl, me too”.
This was the very first thing I learned about Drake’s new album, Certified Lover Boy, when I woke up the morning after it dropped. I went to bed the night before a bit unsure about this rollout. There was no lead single, but I actually respected that Drake left out his three previous hits off the album instead of tacking them on as pointless bonus tracks to bloat the streaming count. But the cover art consisting of rows of pregnant woman emojis in various colors was ridiculous to me, especially after Kanye released an album with no cover at all. Both moves were offensive to me as someone with a passion for creativity and artistic expression, and I was genuinely bummed out that two supposed kings of music would resort to such uninspired covers to personify their new music. Not to mention the tracklist posted two and a half hours before the album dropped had some very… odd titles. My friends and I were making and sharing fake playlists for fun after a particularly obvious fake went viral, and I remember one of the tracklists had a song called “Champagne Poetry”. What a silly title, I thought. That sounds like a parody of a Drake song rather than an actual title. The tracklist was released and “Champagne Poetry” was the very first song on the album. Huh. I was also raising an eyebrow at the title “Girls Want Girls” with Lil Baby. A very specific phrase that pretty explicitly implies that the topic of the song would revolve around lesbians or at least queer women that Drake and Lil Baby want to sleep with. That can’t end well, I thought. Finally, I had learned earlier that the supposed lead single, or at least the song with the video, was a collaboration with Future and Young Thug with the rumored title, “Too Sexy”. Turns out, that made the album under the name “Way 2 Sexy”. Wouldn’t it be funny if they sampled the Right Said Fred song of a similar name, I thought?
I wake up the next morning. I see the lyric brought up in my Discord chat, followed by the confirmation that Drake, indeed, sampled Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy”, but it wasn’t even the single propositioned on playlists. No, it was the lesbian song. “Girls Want Girls” ended up breaking the record for the most-streamed song debut of all time on multiple streaming platforms. The song where Drake proclaims himself a lesbian for the sake of sleeping with a woman who by definition cannot be interested in him.
And all I could do was laugh.
My feelings on Drake have shifted a bit since his peak in 2018. Back then, I was an avid chart watcher who cared too much about music and the way people listened to it. It was a very lonely year for me, admittedly, so a lot of my life that year revolved around listening to a lot of music and getting caught up in the discourse. Unfortunately, music discourse in 2018 was hell, and trying to get a genuine conversation out of reactionary people on Twitter in the middle of the Trump presidency was impossible. One of the more annoying and persistent discourses that year came from Drake, who had such a chokehold on the Hot 100 that you genuinely could not avoid him. Everyone loved Drake, except the people I associated with. Most people just listen to Drake at parties or genuinely love his music and persona as the unstoppable king of hip-hop (mainstream anyway). But every Tuesday I went online to watch Billboard update and show me what the hottest songs are at that given week. Most of them were Drake. And I got tired of Drake REALLY fast. To the point where it even took me a while to fully embrace his good songs that year like “Nice For What” and his verse on “SICKO MODE”. I just hated seeing him everywhere, made all the worse when Scorpion turned out to be a double album with very few memorable songs, but a cavalcade of hits that we’re only now starting to see matched with Olivia Rodrigo. It sucks when the biggest, defining album of that year… sucks.
But after Scorpion ended his run and Drake’s release method became more sparse and less dominant on the Hot 100, the more I found myself easing up on him, and even getting excited for whatever he put out next! “Money In The Grave” was his only major success story in 2019 (as the main artist at least), but it was a really good song that showed a darker and more menacing side of Drake that I wish we saw more often. He followed it up with a more lowkey release in 2020 with Dark Lane Demo Tapes, which honestly wasn’t that bad if you accepted it as an album of rejects. Especially when the real victory lap came about with “Laugh Now, Cry Later”, one of the best songs of Drake’s career and one that launched the now thriving success of Lil Durk.
Earlier this year he released Scary Hours 2, an EP of three songs that had no real connection to the first Scary Hours EP which featured “God’s Plan” and that one song where he accidentally compared himself to Hitler, but were all genuinely great songs where Drake teased his big return and is willing to embrace whatever happens next in his career. At that point, I was genuinely excited to see what Drake’s next album, given the admittedly stupid title “Certified Lover Boy”, would bring to the table. Maybe Drake is more focused this time around, making effortlessly great songs with that feeling of being a king in a sea of adoring fans. The lower stakes after Scorpion might mean Drake softens his need to get #1 hits and flooded album bombs all the time, making songs that don’t need to be amazing but are still exciting enough to become defining landmarks of the year.
What we got instead with Certified Lover Boy was an album I both expected and didn’t expect from Drake. The album itself doesn’t give you any major surprises. There’s no instrumental or flow that Drake hasn’t tried before and there’s no thematic element that makes the album more than just another Drake album (on the surface at least… but I’m getting ahead of myself). If you’re going into this album already disliking Drake, you’re not going to get anything new out of this. Something very evident in the reviews that have popped up for this album, panning it for being overlong, derivative, and very cringy in spots. It’s not like these reviews are wrong, to be fair. A decent amount of these could have either been cut or deserve more inspired instrumentals. But it’s the cringy part I want to focus on. When critics aren’t lamenting the fact that Drake can and already has gotten away with a lackluster project for simply being the biggest artist in the world who can’t fail, most people are making fun of this album. Whether it’s for “Girls Want Girls” and that hilarious lesbian line, the general absurdity of “Way 2 Sexy” (especially with that gloriously cheesy video), the terrible cover art which has already seen plenty of parodies via social media, Anthony Fantano really playing up the memes for this album because his audience of Kanye apologists eat it up and encourage it, the whole album is being treated as a joke, at least on social media.
In a way though, I almost wonder if that was intentional. I’m going to say right off the bat that the following is mostly a theory based on observation and speculation, so don’t take this as the official theme of the album or me trying to say all the bad things about this album are good, actually. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel like Drake knows a big selling point of his brand is that his clueless stupidity is the only thing bringing him back down to his audience. He has a goofy charm that I don’t think gets acknowledged very often that colors his most viral moments. It all started with the “Hotline Bling” video, which I don’t even think is supposed to be funny. But Drake’s dumb dance moves have become so persistent in people’s minds that one of the most popular memes of that decade that’s still being used today comes from this video. Scorpion had its moment of humor with the lead single “God’s Plan”, with this lyric becoming one of the most prevalent mantras of the year;
“She tell me do you love me/I tell her only partly/I only love my bed and my mama I’m sorry”
Drake seemed to kind of notice this pattern by 2020 and began the year with an obvious play for virality in “Toosie Slide”. Which was essentially Tik Tok bait that I guess kinda worked, but it’s still one of Drake’s less celebrated hits of the past couple of years. “Laugh Now, Cry Later” had an even more blatant attempt at virality by trying to make Drake saying “baby” into a meme. It never happened. I honestly can’t recall a single time it was used by someone outside of Drake’s camp. Even DJ Khaled had forced memes with more use than that.
Certified Lover Boy is probably the first time he’s been able to own up to his goofiness on purpose. Mugging it up for the camera and painting himself as this playboy-type sleazeball who loves sex and can’t commit. He’ll make a song about striking out with lesbians, but instead of risking insulting a community of people that up to this point he hasn’t really had any issues with, he comes up with a dumb lyric that most people laugh at. You could get angry at it, but what’s the point? He’s not demeaning lesbians or bi/pan women. If anything he seems to respect their identities while still trying to be the exception to their roster. Is it fetishy? Absolutely. But it’s worth noting that neither he nor Lil Baby seems to go through with it. In Lil Baby’s case, he basically plays the third wheel and ends up begging for them to sleep with him. It’s kind of sad and pathetic, but in a fun way that you can make fun of with friends rather than make a statement about Drake’s internalized homophobia or whatever.
“Way 2 Sexy” is about as dumb as the album gets. A Right Said Fred sample, Drake playing several characters including an old, fat jackass with too much self-confidence, Future saying phrases like “too sexy for the trap” and “too sexy for your gang” as if these can be read as anything other than hilariously stupid, Young Thug depicting several calendars while he sings in a squeaky baby voice about how he hopes the tooth fairy will leave him an assault weapon under his pillow… Am I supposed to take this seriously? No, obviously not! But it’s a fun kind of stupid that Tik Tok has already taken to, and Drake didn’t even have to come up with a stupid dance for it!
Some of the comedy of this album also stems from Drake essentially being the butt of his relationships. This one is less intentional, but for an album with multiple songs where Drake fronts about how much sex he’s having, it seems weird to put them next to his usual breakup moans and potshots at Kanye. He’ll say he has no friends in the industry while the album consists of several friends Drake has made within the industry. Granted, that’s not enough for me to dismiss the point of that song entirely. Drake has always had a lack of trust among his peers and how they use his fame and fortune for their own gain. But at this point, Drake is at least aware of it and he learns to keep his distance, lest he commit the same error he made with Kanye.
I was originally going to write a separate piece on Kanye’s recently released DONDA and my complicated feelings on Kanye as a whole, but I promised myself I wouldn’t use this blog for negativity and cynicism so I elected against it. Which makes it sound like I didn’t like the album, but the truth is that I did. For all of its many, many, many, MANY flaws, DONDA is easily the most inspired thing Kanye has made since Kids See Ghosts. Does that make it good? Kind of? It reminds me a lot of The Life of Pablo, an album I always considered messy and unfocused, but had plenty of high points that kept me from ever truly disliking it. And yeah, DONDA has a lot of high points that, though I may dislike and even resent Kanye as a person, I still really enjoy and have come back to since its release! “Jesus Lord” as the centerpiece of the album is excellent, weighing on the stress of Kanye’s divorce, the lives being lost around him, and the lingering trauma of his mother’s death with his most emotionally impactful set of lyrics in years, almost a whole decade. “Off The Grid” is already a furious gritty banger, but ranks up exponentially with the tremendous drill beat switch and Fivio Foreign delivering a star-making verse. “Moon” is a bit on the short side, but the atmosphere and soulful vocals from Don Tolliver and Kid Cudi elevate it to one of the prettiest songs Kanye has ever made. “Jail” had a ton of potential as a triumphant return as Kanye finds himself at rock bottom after the divorce, but relying his faith to pull himself out of the rubble. And there’s more beyond those three like the finalized version of “Hurricane” and the elevating finality of “Come To Life”.
But as soon as I start getting into the album, something stops me and sends me right back into cynic mode. For as good as its best moments are, its bad moments are just as bad. Kanye squeezed in an interlude version of “Tell The Vision” from Pop Smoke’s recent album, and though the original song is actually kind of great, this version is downright insulting. It takes out almost everything in the production except the bare piano melody, and Pop Smoke’s vocals are mixed so badly that I’m not even convinced it was actually mixed. It sounds like he downloaded a shitty acapella version off of Youtube, played around in GarageBand for a few minutes, and called it a day. And this coming from a supposed genius? The best album of the year? The obvious winner against Certified Lover Boy even though Drake would never allow a song this lazy and awful to even exist on a project? Then I remember how many abusers, homophobes, and even rapists appear on the album. I praised Don Tolliver and Fivio Foreign earlier, but both of them have sexual assault accusations lingering over their heads. Not to mention the alternate remix of “Jail” features Dababy and Marlyn Manson, which poisons the song’s original concept and implies that Kanye, Dababy and Manson are victims of some universal damning as they embrace the idea of “going to jail” and their only salvation is fooling themselves into believing God will save them. Dababy’s verse especially is an abhorrent declaration against his haters (LGBTQ+ people who were rightfully mad about his homophobic comments) claiming that by canceling him, he can’t feed his daughter, bullshit that Kanye himself had tried to pull not even two years ago. From there I start to remember that you know what? The album’s not even that good. I named six songs out of the twenty-seven on this album, and a huge chunk of them are okay at best and straight bad at worst. Kanye’s religious ramblings never actually hit a breakthrough and its mostly just fluff you find in other Christian albums. Also I kind of glossed over this but twenty-seven songs!? This album is longer than Culture II! It did the unthinkable! Why is there a sample of The Globglogabgalab in here??? How does Kanye even know what that is?!?!
And yet, I keep seeing Kanye fans go ride or die for DONDA. Declaring this as album of the year and relentlessly shitting on Drake as they feed into this marketed beef completely ignoring the glaring flaws on DONDA because, well, it’s Kanye! His legacy is immovable. He can do something as extreme as associate with alt-right figures, claim that slavery was a conscious choice by black people, brag about the possibility of having sex with another celebrity despite her immense discomfort with him, and not finish this album on time despite the many listening parties he charged money for, giving his audience false hope as the songs they love suddenly change for the worse, overwork his engineers and fire them even when they’re in the middle of an emergency, and he’ll get away with it! Because he already did!
And then I take a deep breath, go outside, and realize none of that really matters.
Okay, well, it does matter. You can like DONDA all you want, but you also have to admit that Kanye’s endorsement of shitty people and the mistreatment of his employees is worth discussing and acknowledging. Good as Kanye was, he shouldn’t be without accountability. What I mean is that my anger towards Kanye stans just isn’t worth it anymore. Whose mind am I changing by listing all that? What am I trying to prove by painting them as delusional? Am I trying to rob them of the music they like out of some moral outrage that’s mostly my opinion? It’s not like Kanye fans aren’t aware of the flaws of this album and Kanye as a person. Hell, a lot of my friends are critical of Kanye while still enjoying the album. And I’ll admit that I’ve gone back to my favorites on DONDA more than even my favorites on Certified Lover Boy.
Which calls into question why exactly I even liked Certified Lover Boy so much. It can’t be spite over the reception to DONDA, can it? I hated Drake just as much as I hated Kanye in 2018. Albiet for different reasons, but since I see more of the Kanye worship side over the Drake worship side, I’m given the impression that Certified Lover Boy was a failure in some sense. Except it’s not, because the album was beyond more successful than DONDA, and the Top 10 will likely consist of entirely Drake minus one or two songs. Hell, on the Rolling Stone charts, the entire Top 20 will consist of Drake except for one song. And it’s at this point when I realize that not only are the fan debates and online discourse completely pointless in the grand scheme of things, I feel like it’s been hindering my enjoyment of both albums.
So what do I like about Certified Lover Boy? I think the simplest answer is that I’m just not as harsh on Drake as I used to be. Drake is a lot looser and less concerned about making himself look good, instead allowing himself to be the clown for a bit. He can loosen up and enjoy the absurdity of being a ceritified lover boy while still trying to sort out his romantic relationships outside of sex. There are a couple ugly moments of Drake’s immaturity on this album, but I don’t think it annoys me as much as it did on Scorpion because part of the point is that Drake can never be emotionally ready to be in a dedicated relationship. He’s too self-centered and worried about external factors like Kanye and his son to really commit to something more serious. And when he lashes out at the girls who do leave him, it doesn’t feel toxic so much as him fruitlessly trying to keep the upper hand which is constantly slipping. Still, at that point the facade of Certified Lover Boy starts to slip a little bit. Andre Gee from Complex makes an excellent point that there should have been more female perspectives on the album. “Yebba’s Interlude” is fine, but I think a female rapper like Megan or even Doja Cat tearing down Drake for his toxic habits would have really given the album a stronger narrative and deeper look into what being a “certified lover boy” really means. In Drake albums we always get the male perspective, or a female story through Drake’s perspective. If there was a way to break that persona, the album wouldn’t feel as catty as it does in spots. So it’s not a perfect interpretation, I’ll admit, but that’s okay. If I thought the album was perfect, I wouldn’t have to justify its flaws. And you don’t have to justify DONDA’s flaws either. It doesn’t erase the fact that it’s easily Kanye’s best album since Pablo, and if you can find your interpretation of it that makes you enjoy the album at it’s best, that’s fine too!
I was originally going to take this review in a very different direction, but I noticed something after two weeks of sitting with DONDA and Certified Lover Boy. I think at the end of the day, I enjoy them both equally. Are they as good as each other? No, I still think Certified Lover Boy is better and DONDA has too many flaws for me to ever consider it an album of the year contender. But I also revisit DONDA’s highlights more often than Certified Lover Boy’s highlights. Still, Certified Lover Boy has way more songs that I like, and I prefer it’s goofy side more than DONDA’s dedication to God. I don’t get mad at moments like the lesbian line on “Girls Want Girls” or the boring slog of “Fucking Fans” because I don’t take the album that seriously to begin with. I got mad at DONDA’s worst moments like “Tell The Vision” and “Jail Part 2” earlier, but both of them have better versions I can turn to so there’s no reason to really linger on it. Why should I linger on this discourse anyway? Kanye vs Drake? Who cares? Both albums are good. And Little Simz made a better album than both of them anyway.
This has been building for years, but music discussion online, particularly on social media, has gotten exhuasting. At some point it stops being about the music and it starts being about how you can present yourself within the discourse. What position you take, whether your opinion is enlightening or challenging to the status quo. Exposing a hidden, dark secret of the art you’re talking about that makes it more than just the art itself. At times it starts to feel like you yourself are creating the narrative of that art and not the artist themselves. And it’s not for a love of that medium or wanting the artist to improve, it’s for the engagement. You can say something immflamatory about a beloved album and get tons of hate clicks and angry responses thrown your way, just to prove that you’re right and lesser people won’t admit it. Or you can get the people around you to egg you on as you find more reasons to dislike the art you and everyone else don’t like. Either way you build some false sense of superiority that doesn’t explicitly say you’re better than everyone, but that’s because it’ll be everyone else who tells you so. This is a harsh analysis of discourse in social media, I realize, but I’m not addressing any group of people so much as I’m addressing the mentality that even I had fallen into in the past few years. And it’s one I see very plainly in the discourse to these two albums. It seems like the people who love DONDA visciously hate Certified Lover Boy for simply being in opposition of the other and vice versa. Especially revolving around Certified Lover Boy which has gotten a lot of bile from Kanye fans and furious defenses from Drake fans. Either way, neither fanbase respects the other at all, and instead of acknowledging that both albums have a lot of similarities in structure and execution, all we get are people getting too hopped up on meaningless discourse. That includes myself. I’m sick of it. I like both albums more the less I think about the backlash to either. At some point I have to tell myself that whatever argument I may have against random people online just isn’t worth it.
I don’t think either album is going to land among my favorite albums of the year. Try as they did, neither Kanye nor Drake were able make a better album than AJR this year (Nah I’m kidding but I’m also not). But I’ll still enjoy these albums in my own time while still being aware of their flaws, within the music or outside of it. If you’re curious, the best songs on Certified Lover Boy are “You Only Live Twice”, “Knife Talk”, “7am On A Briddle Path”, “Way 2 Sexy”, “Get Along Better”, and “Champagne Poetry”. The best songs on DONDA are “Jesus Lord”, “Off The Grid”, “Moon”, “Jail” and “Hurricane”. But I say listen to both albums yourself. See what you get out of each one. Just don’t read people’s opinions aout them on Twitter.