Nothing Was The Same: Complex Staff's First Impressions of Drake's New Album

Drake is such a piece of work.

Even as he's won us over with his talent, making better and better music, flexing his inarguable talent in more and more compelling ways, he still finds ways to frustrate, annoy, ruin a day. Last night, after a long weekend, just as we were all watching "Breaking Bad," letting all the beer we'd drank watching football or baseball or 60 Minutes or whatever soak in and lull us towards our beds for a good night's sleep before the hard work week ahead... BLAMMO! The most feverishly anticipated album of the year leaks and Twitter explodes and drunk people send embarrassing emotional texts to their exes and then write embarrassing tweets on Twitter about how they just sent their ex a bunch of embarassing emotional texts and hardcore Drake fans break out the white wine and middle-aged editors who need to get some sleep clench their fists and shake them skyward and shout at the top of their lungs whisper, because their wives and kids are already asleep (Sunday is a night schoolnight after all!)

"Damn you, Drake!"

So, today, we find ourselves a bit underslept, because of course we stayed up listening. It's a NEW DRAKE album for Pete's sake. And here are our initial, blurry-eyed thoughts. In a post you are about to read called Nothing Was The Same: Complex Staff's First Impressions of Drake's New Album.

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Don't lie, if you gave Nothing Was The Same its first spin hoping to hear that aggressive rapping Drake displayed on pre-release leaked material like "Versace," or "5 AM in Toronto," you were feeling a little short-changed. Until you got to track 10, "The Language." That's the standout pre-game anthem, it's the I'm-going-to-blast-this-on-the-way-home-while-riding-in-some-UBER-SUV-by-myself anthem, it's the We're-going-to-totally-act-like-bros-in-the-club anthem. Drake's clipped, rapid-fire flow (dare I say "flamenco-flavored?") mixed with the perfect amount of subliminal disrespect: "I don't know why they be lyin'/But your shit is not that inspiring..." Braggadocio: "Fuck going platinum/I looked at my wrist and it's already platinum..." And sensual 2013-style seduction: "Pussy so good you gotta come see me on tour, and you got fly in first class..."

"The Language" is where Drake shows his flair for effortlessly floating between topics of discussion. Also, Stunna, we appreciate you. Understand me? —Joe La Puma

My immediate reaction (and what other kind of reaction can you have 16 hours after an album leaks?) is that Drake (to be specific, rapping Drake) is the Jay-Z to Kendrick Lamar’s Nas. It’s a loose analogy, so before you start poking holes, I’ll clarify:

Kendrick is a self-indulgent artiste. A singular talent who makes music within his own little literary bubble. As a result, his music feels original and deep and timeless. Drake, on the other hand, is very much a now rapper, of-the-moment, hyper-relevant, neurotically self-aware. Nothing Was The Same finds him in that Jay Z “A Million and One”/“Streets Is Watching” zone, where every line is a quotable or a subliminal and usually both. He’s listening to the haters, reflecting on their criticisms, and responding—trolling them, even. The urgency of his raps means that they may feel dated by his next album.

Kendrick raps like only Kendrick can, and that is why he is unique and great. Drake raps like a lot of other rappers do, only he does it way better. He’s a style carpetbagger, but like Jay was, he’s the best at it. Just imagine Kendrick trying to hop on a Migos record—it’d be like Nas putting a verse on Juvenile's “Ha.”

What this all basically means is that, like the peak of the Jay-Z/Nas era, you won’t be able to argue the merits of Drake without bringing up Kendrick for the next few years, and vice-versa. It also means that it may only be a matter of time before they collide for real, for real. —Donnie Kwak

For some time now, Drake’s sound (and that of his producer, 40) has relied upon a distinctively icy, minimal aesthetic. From a sonic perspective, it’s definitely set Drake apart from his competition. As Rick Ross ramped up the titanic largesse of “B.M.F.” and “So Sophisticated,” Drake and 40 (and affiliates like Boi 1da, T-Minus, and now Mike Zombie) stripped everything down to the sparse and atmospheric.

But even Take Care had an inner warmth that, by comparison, feels almost entirely absent on the frostily windswept Nothing Was The Same. Instead of a chilled glass of champagne, it’s a polar bear plunge: crisp percussion, smooth, narcotic piano loops, an eerily plaintive framework for his reflective, introspective sung raps.

In hip-hop, it’s a reasonably new sound. But it’s not exactly new to R&B. Nor, for that matter, was The Weeknd. Drake’s early collaborator, Trey Songz, was working through icily confessional music when the two debuted “Successful.” Trey’s 2009 Anticipation mixtape, for example, had a bleary distance reminiscient of some of Drake and 40’s frozen teardrop songs. Trey’s “Unfortunate,” from 2010’s Passion Pain & Pleasure, was the best iteration of this spare style. Another sonic precedent within the R&B world is Teedra Moses’ underrated 2004 album Complex Simplicity. That record was at once unapologetically emotional, while holding onto a chilly reserve, raw human passion contained in pristine display, a musical snow globe not too far off from the coolly removed aesthetic of the “Started From the Bottom” rapper. Singles like “Be Your Girl” and “Backstroke” were both tactile and stark in a way that was somehow both poised and vulnerable.

Another inspiration for the cool, sparse style of Nothing Was The Same undoubtedly comes from the dance world. Obviously, The xx-produced “Take Care” indicated 40 and Drake were listening to the similarly spare UK dance scene, where artists like James Blake had made critical waves and found commercial success. But this writer was reminded even more of certain styles of Detroit techno that work along similar contradictory emotional lines, where a tense pulse is aligned with a plaintive, relaxed keyboard loop. A recent example: Omar S’s “Money in the D.” —David Drake