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>They want songs they can add to their playlists, not for a >front-to-back album experience. Drake hasn't even cared to try >to create great, cohesive albums for the better part of a >decade. His goal is to maximize streams, which means putting >out bloated tracklists with a shit ton of filler. > >I'm a huge fan of Drake's early work. So Far Gone was one of >my favorites of the 2000s, Take Care was solid (albeit too >long), and Nothing Was The Same imo is his strongest album. >Since then though, big yikes. But again, he doesn't seem to be >even trying. > >I'd say if you were to pick one that would be his best >"contender" for the classic status it'd be either Take Care >(definitely the Drakeyest of Drake albums) or NWTS. Neither >are close though.
You make a great point about people being in love with their personal playlists. I know for sure that my elaborate and tangled web of playlists across multiple apps over the last 20 years are AMAZING! Haha! I also know that I'm not special cuz damn near everyone thinks their playlist are AMAZING. I can break my trance and listen to full albums more than once. And I'm not in a huge hurry to cut down every album to only the songs that I immediately liked after 1.5 listens. Apparently that IS a 'talent' that not everyone is interested in having because it would mess up their playlist curation strategy? IDK.
I'm not trying to be an ass, but the whole concept of 'classic' has been fucked with so much over the years that I struggle sometime with even trying to 'qualify' the word anymore. Twitter folks are calling stuff classic 35 minutes after a 55-minute album drops. Some old heads act like an album can't be classic unless it can beat Illmatic song for song by their obviously skewed and salty standards. Or if they can't immediately predict some massive 'impact' for the album. Or if it doesn't remind them of some 'prior classic'. Or if it isn't popular. OR, alternately, if its TOO popular. Or if the rapper in question has 'too many' resources: big name producers, time, guests (the whole 'no guests!' flex is propaganda at this point to me), or whatever.
Others act like we need 10-20 years of touching our chins, measuring shit on triple beam scales, invoking advanced math theorems and calculations, and/or mixing up random liquids in beakers with lab coats and safety goggles on to decide if something is 'classic' or not.
And OMG, don't let the rapper have ANY 'scandals' of any kinds. Bad tweet. Vaccine status. Someone telling some story about some time the rapper did them dirty. Some relationship issue. Some song that kinda sorta reminds people of some previous song ('yoouuuuuuu aint shiiiiiiiiiit! Your lab ain't shiiiiiiiiit!). Some less popular rapper having an issue with some other rapper (yes, like noname/Cole). It can be anything when people want to be negative about an artist and/or album. It is impressive really.
But fuck it..people should be listening to shit, giving it a fair shake, then moving on if they aren't into it for whatever their 'reasons' are. And if they like it, then please..go ahead and FUCKING LIKE IT and don't let people talk you out of it or fuck it up for you!
Back to Drake, he reminds me of mid-career Nas. He could do some REALLY good stuff on every album but the album itself always has stuff where lots of listeners will be like 'how did this make this album? Who let this shit onto this album?'
NWTS has aged pretty doggone well tho. He tried to change up flows a bit, the singing was more organized/effective, some of those beets were excellent (2nd half of Furthest Thing! Jake One!), and he didn't do the whole 'bloated tracklist' thing that he often gets dinged for now.
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