After months of delays, Drake finally blesses his fans with the release of his sixth studio album, Certified Lover Boy. Now, as we do with every album, after a couple of listens, social media will heavily critique every little thing about this album causing a debate from the masses. Afterwards, the ranking of his projects take place leading to more conversations. For the sake of this review, I’m going to not do that and just discuss this album solely.
After the first listen of CLB, I can right away come to the conclusion that there has been many incarnations of this effort before we reached the final result. Marvel would be happy to film this as I feel like we have reached a Multi-verse when it comes to CLB. The phenomena behind Drake is that we already know he’s a multi-faceted talent that can rap sing and mix different genres. You now have to look beyond those realms into the mindset into making this album and from the looks of it, he’s fed up. With relationships, his son and his lifestyle among all of the topics he would discuss on Certified Lover Boy, it’s his ongoing feud with one time friend, Kanye West that takes the limelight.
When it comes to opening and closing an album, Drake continues to perfect the formula as Champagne Poetry & The Remorse are clear standout tracks on the album. The consistency shuffles back and forth a lot as I find Drake combined his first version of the project consisting of R&B-driven tracks with the newest version of heavy-hitting Hip-Hop tracks. Many fans can see the confusion as one would expect a certain type of album from first listen based on the title. The features on the album as advertised in his unique Billboard rollout complement the album effortlessly as they gave what I expected them to give for each collaboration. There are songs on Certified Lover Boy for everyone to enjoy. Led by his hit single, ‘Way 2 Sexy’, I can see a lot of these songs heating up the Billboard charts for the rest of 2021 and into 2022. As an avid Drake fan, I thank the Canadian rapper for being an influential part of my writing and continuing to create music that will get their fans talking. For some people, this album might not rank at number one of your Drake projects, but you cannot deny that Certified Lover Boy is a great album. Check out his sixth studio album now on all streaming services and click the link below for a surprise.
Reggie Johnson is a poet reigning from Cincinnati, Ohio. Starting at the age of nine, Reggie has been writing poetry through their love of music and life experiences. He has 9 books now available on Amazon. You can follow him on Twitter @r_d_johnson and on IG @rdjohnsonwrites.