After much excitement and hype that Drake and Kanye West created over their albums, they’re finally here. Kanye West’s Donda, released August 29th, 2021, also followed by Drake’s Certified Lover Boy, released September 3rd, were comebacks for the two artists since before covid struck, clearly meaning these two albums were long-anticipated.
One can confirm the theme of Drake’s album by the second track titled, “Papi’s Home” and in one of the lyrics he even says “I apologize for my absence, I know I left you without an annual drop” then followed by “See your mother raised a fine young man”.
The main topic of this album is Drake addressing the women and his children that he’s left behind, acknowledging the achievements they’ve had and the people they’ve become. Certified Lover Boy sticks to his ‘free-style’ kind of rap, with most of the songs having generic beats while focusing on the lyrical part. There are the occasional bops throughout the album though, such as ‘Champagne Poetry’, ‘Girls Want Girls featuring Lil Baby’, and ‘No Friends In The Industry’. Since Drake took a semi-hiatus of music for a bit (not though, with EP’s ‘Dark Lane Demo Tapes’ and ‘Scary Hours 2’ being released in between), the album is overall a great comeback and deserves a solid 8.5/10.
Donda, on the other hand, by Kanye, starts off with simply an audio of a woman chanting the name “Donda”, up to 58 times. This is also the age of Kanye’s mother, whom he dedicated the album to. Wests’ previous album “Jesus Is King” (released in 2019) put a small twist on his usual style of music, going with more of a choral, church-styled sound. Kanye had made the transition to Christianity, and made it very clear in his album. Though Donda has more of a hip-hop sound, his gospel sound bleeds through from the previous album to now. Most of the songs are average, then occasional unique and intricate beats, such as ‘Hurricane’ featuring The Weeknd, and ‘Believe What I Say’. The album total was an overall 7/10.
Drama was sparked after Kanye and Drake’s albums were due to be released around the same time. Fans of both artists were going back and forth over the internet, trolling each other and debating over which album would come out first. Kanye spoke out saying that ‘Donda’ was released earlier than expected, due to the pressure of Drake planning on dropping his music around the same time. Donda ended up being released August 29th, while CLB was dropped September 3rd. It’s been a back-and-forth argument comparing the two albums and seeing which is better, but it would be unfair to compare them. This is simply because the two rappers have parted ways from their old music and have slightly changed the way their music sounds. Not only that, who needs the drama when one can just enjoy the music for what it is and appreciate both artists?
At the end of the day, both albums were unique and well-executed in their own ways. Though Drake had a slightly better comeback than Kanye, they both did a great job for their first official studio albums ever since covid. You can tell that lots of planning went into both, and both albums were lots of hard work and time to out together. Both also featured other artists, helping put the music industry back on its feet and bringing the summer to a great end music-wise.
Zoe Rivera // Staff Writer
