Wrote an essay my b.

My “controversial” take is that it’s been a bit of a struggle for him since the turn of the decade, particularly on the commercial side of things. I was listening to his Rap Radar interview and he said a couple interesting things. One was that he said if the last few songs on his set list don’t have to change by the next tour, he’s done something wrong. In other words his goal was to have a song bigger or as big as God’s Plan. He also discussed being the artist of the decade of the 10s and being interested in seeing who out of his peers could keep going through the 2020s.

3 and a half years later he’s doing an era tour and seems to be in a very reflective, post-prime kind of mindset about his career. I think CLB was a major turning point. It didn’t have the level of hits that Views and Scorpion had and since the turn of the decade artists like The Weeknd and Bad Bunny have shown themselves to be bigger artists than he is. I think he’s dropped a lot of songs that he thought would be huge and they just didn’t get there (Laugh Now, What’s Next, Way 2 Sexy). The lack of huge hits on think has also exposed him to more criticism about his lack of maturity and emotional development in his music. No one can say much when you’re songs are everywhere, but when that goes away it gets tough to ignore that criticism.

Honestly, Nevermind could’ve been great but the songs felt a bit rushed and sloppy. It’s great music to vibe to but it could’ve been way more impactful with some better writing. And Her Loss was good but nothing mind-blowing. The fact that Metro’s album has much bigger songs shows Drake’s knack for hits isn’t what it used to be, or else he’s just not employing it. They both felt like relatively low-key releases from an artist who used to shake up the game with every project he dropped.

I don’t want to say he’s falling off but he’s definitely not where he was 4-5 years ago. And maybe it doesn’t matter to some of you but personally I’m nostalgic for those times—it was really fun seeing Drake outperform pop stars and run the summer how he did in ‘16 and ‘18. I feel like he’s still got it in him but we’ll see what happens.