DONDA VS Certified Lover Boy: The Review

The Drake and Kanye beef was a feud I never saw coming, but it has been brewing for a long time. From wasted studio time to stolen beats to inappropriate comments about wives, and more, it’s time to let the music do the talking.

DONDA

Kanye West released his tenth studio album DONDA on August 29 after a series of listening parties and a teeth-clenching weeks-long rollout. The album was a dedication to his mother, Dr. Donda West whose death has clearly impacted Kanye in more ways than one could have imagined. Continuing with Yeezy’s Christian rap ventures, DONDA is a solid body of work with no profanity and beautiful religious lyrics and themes.

Standout tracks like “Jail” featuring Jay Z, “New Again” featuring Chris Brown,”24” featuring the Sunday Service Choir, and “No Child Left Behind” featuring Vory and the Sunday Service Choir all speak to Kanye’s history of public and private slip-ups and his faith that no matter what the public believes, God has the final word. One of my favorite qualities about a Kanye West project is the number of features Kanye utilizes to tell his story, and DONDA does not miss the mark. Kanye has enough star power and credibility to bring out the best in any artist and that was clear on DONDA. I heard some of the best verses that I have ever heard from artists like Lil Yatchy (”Ok Ok”), Baby Keem (“Praise God”), Fivio Foreign (“Off The Grid”), and many more. DONDA also introduced hip hop fans to new artists Vory and Shensea whose features decorated the album with melodic vocals and unique flows. There’s nothing like a Kanye West project to bring out the best in an artist whether old or new.

DONDA, however, is by no means a perfect album. Truthfully, the album is too long. Some of the tracks on the album could have easily been cut, and no one would have noticed. For example, every song after “No Child Left Behind” is simply a new version of a song already featured on the album with just different featured artists. Instead of Jail featuring Jay Z, Jail Pt. 2 features DaBaby. Quite frankly, no one asked to hear a “part 2” of songs that were already fine with just their original versions, and I stop listening when the album gets to the repeated tracks. Another pitfall of the album is that the album feels like Kanye did not make it with himself in mind. It feels like a compilation of songs that Kanye made for other artists and he decided to add a verse to the tracks after they were done. As a project dedicated to the late Dr. West, I would’ve liked to feel Kanye’s presence a little more on the project.

CERTIFIED LOVER BOY

Certified Lover Boy was released on September 3, only a few days after DONDA. The highly anticipated project from Drake dropped and the Internet exploded with tweets and Instagram captions of standout lyrics and remakes of the Certified Lover Boy album cover. Certified Lover Boy showed that Drake is truly the King of the Internet, and no one can take that away from him. According to Drake, the album is “a combination of toxic masculinity and acceptance of truth which is inevitably heartbreaking.” The point of the album is for Drake to play into this persona of being the vulnerable lover boy rapper that all the girls love and all the men can relate to no matter how cheesy or toxic. Standout tracks on the project include “Papi’s Home” featuring a sample of “Daddy’s Home” by Montell Jordan and a surprise appearance from Nicki Minaj. “In The Bible” featuring Giveon and Lil Baby is another track that has caught the attention of many. The song is Drake rapping to a girl who claims to be religious about her hypocritical ways of judging him for his sexual past and tendencies. “Way 2 Sexy” featuring frequent Drake collaborators Future and Young Thug serves as the album’s single release and is a club anthem and Instagram caption library for listeners. The very simple track is sure to make your shoulders move and have you naming all of the things you are simply too sexy to be tolerating. My personal favorite tracks on CLB are “No Friends In The Industry,” “Yebba’s Heartbreak” featuring Yebba, and “Get Along Better” featuring Ty Dolla $ign. The project is a textbook Drake album with corny lyrics, emotional tracks, and a few hard-hitting cuts that remind you that Drake has proven himself as one of the greats.

Like DONDA, Certified Lover Boy also misses the mark in a few areas. I noticed that Drake’s features tend to outshine him on this project. Features from Lil Baby (“Girls Want Girls”), Jay Z (“Love All”), Project Pat (“Knife Talk”), and Tems (“Fountains”) all make listeners wonder what the song would sound like without the contributions from Drake. I think that’s a problem on an album that was delayed for months and expected to compete with albums by other top artists. Another pitfall of the project is that I think Drake missed an opportunity when it came to communicating the theme of the album. Certified Lover Boy should have been an album of R&B cuts and sing-song raps that Drake has made so popular, but we barely get any of those. The project was unfortunately underwhelming, did not feel cohesive, and could have been improved with the right team of people to help Drake to keep the focus on the lover boy persona that he has built.

Have you listened to Certified Lover Boy? Have you listened to DONDA? Do you agree with my thoughts? Comment your thoughts and which album you prefer!