I’ve been a fan of Drake since he first exploded onto the scene with his career-definingmixtape So Far Gone, his first full length project featuring [in my opinion] his best music to date such as Successful, Best I Ever Had and Houstatlantavegas. Take Care didn’t quite to it for me and as good as he is at singing, you can have enough of it. With Drake at the height of his career he releases his third studio album Nothing Was The Same. 

Early opinions of Drake’s latest LP are positive, opening track Tuscan Leather showcases the best of Drake’s talents – rapping with confidence; ‘my life’s a completed checklist’, and the beat takes you back to ‘06-‘08 when the likes of DJ Ironik and Kano used to loop the Alvin & The Chipmunks-esque vocals. Following track Furthest Thing is enjoyable and reminds one of Drake’s earlier work, with the criss cross of singing to rapping Drake’s known for heavily featured.

I know I’m something of a minority when I say that Started From The Bottom is a bad song and for me is the worst on the album, an annoying trap beat with an even more annoying hook makes for an incredibly isolated track amongst the rest of Nothing Was The Same. As touched upon, I prefer Drake when he raps with a degree of energy and conviction, not when he’s whinging about his love interests. Lines like ‘next time we fuck, I don’t want to fuck, I want to make love’ rightfully adhere to Drake’s label of being ‘sensitive’ (quote Kendrick), these are the kind of lines that have women over the world swooning, yet for long-time fans such as myself, we just want more of the Drake who dropped lines like ‘Killing all these rappers you would swear I had a hit list, Everyone who doubted me is asking for forgiveness, If you ain’t been a part of it, at least you got to witness, bitches,’

After listening to Nothing Was The Same a fair few times since its release I’m still not convinced that its the album everyone makes it out to be, simply put, it’s boring. With Drake exclaiming that ‘mothafucka never loved us’ for the fifth time on Worst Behaviour, we get the message, it’s tiring and on the whole leaves you wanting a lot more from his latest release. Having said that there is still a lot to like and many will find it enjoyable, but Nothing Was The Same leaves me with one question: is it really that good?