Drake Comes Back From Dreary ‘Lover Boy’ With Refreshing Dance Music of ‘Honestly, Nevermind’: Album Review
variety.comAlex Swhear “As far as the Drake era, man, we in the golden ages,” Drake proclaimed, lying, on his last album, “Certified Lover Boy,” a behemoth that subsumed everything within its blast radius.
A mere 287 days after its arrival, though, few are still actively stumping for it. Critics characterized the album as a creative nadir, indistinct and bloodless and never-ending.
And despite its indisputable commercial dominance, assessments of the album’s lasting impact get murkier; even its biggest songs weren’t sticky enough to attain the wedding-reception-ubiquity Drake aspires to. “Lover Boy” still handily bulldozed its competition, which hardly suggests a mandate for change, particularly for a notoriously risk-averse artist.
The most likely outcome was staying the course, trusting his formula until his popularity waned enough to justify a pivot. For this reason, “Honestly, Nevermind,” Drake’s seventh studio album, registers as a corrective, an admission that his conservative creative tendencies were buckling under newfound strain.
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