Certified Lover Boy is Drake’s sixth studio album and at this point in his career, it’s rather difficult to see how he would ever be able to reinvent himself again. Drake is undoubtedly the biggest star in the music industry right now as he continues to shatter streaming records with his massive debuts and CLB is no different as his tenth consecutive chart-topping album on Billboard. Despite the massive commercial success of CLB however, Drake often feels like he’s simply going through the motions of what he’s done a million times before. It’s pretty clear that no amount of controversy will ever be big enough to prevent Drake from being one of the biggest artists in the world and so for the past few years, much of Drake’s output feels like victory laps for himself as he auto-pilots his way through new albums. CLB is indistinguishable from the mediocrity that he’s outputted in the latter half of his career and certainly holds no weight against Take Care, Nothing Was The Same, or If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. As yet another overly produced album with far too long of a runtime in the Drake canon, CLB sounds like a rehash of every concept he’s already done from toxic masculinity to heartbreak to messy relationships.
CLB is exactly the kind of album you would expect from Drake and over the past few years, this has become a rather boring routine. Since the 2015 release of IYRTITL, Drake has rarely experimented outside of his comfort zone for the simple fact that he has no reason to. A few IG quoteables here and there, forgettable filler songs, and a host of guest stars have been the name of the game for Drake’s latest albums. There are moments of brightness on CLB where Drake’s pop sensibilities come in full force on tracks like Way 2 Sexy where a bass-heavy sample of Right Said Fred makes it destined to be an instant club hit. But again, Future’s performance gives the song the push it needs rather than Drake’s sluggish verse. Much like its time/location predecessors, “7am On Bridle Path” at least portrays Drake in a more interesting light as he takes aim at Kanye West and actually attempts to put some effort into rapping. At the same time though, it’s clear the song gives publications exactly the kind of content they want and it’s hard to argue that Drake isn’t doing it purposefully to get more people talking.
Even the best guest appearances on CLB from Lil Baby and 21 Savage feel wasted on Drake’s empty platitudes. On “Girls Want Girls”, Drake rapping “Said that you a lesbian, me too” feels on-brand for him in the worst way imaginable and is an obnoxious end to a solid Lil Baby verse. The other features are nowhere as clean with Jay-Z sounding like a man far too removed from his prime and Lil Durk advertising his girl’s cosmetic business ventures. Many of the guest stars don’t even feel like they’re in the same universe as Drake let alone the same page. CLB sometimes feels like a DJ Khaled cash grab in slotting awkward features together in an attempt to stick on Billboard charts. Yet as we all know, the process never seems to fail for Drake so any thoughts of improving cohesion are immediately discarded.
At this point in his career, it’s hard to see why Drake would mark another shift to sound like he did on IYRTITL when all he has to do is continue to cruise with his image of a “nice guy” built on lyricism about heartbreak and emotional vulnerability. CLB is disappointing but not surprising at all given Drake’s career trajectory over the past couple of years. Everything Drake does is exactly what you expect him to do and at this point, the formulaic approach and resistance to change is a detriment to his newest albums. At the same time though, it’s hard to blame Drake for coasting through the latter half of his career given that his streaming numbers never seem to change no matter what he does. Does Drake have another classic album in him? Probably not. Does he care? Definitely not.
Favorite Songs: Way 2 Sexy, Knife Talk, 7am On Bridle Path