Honestly, Nevermind is one of the most concise, seamless albums Drake has released in years. It’s focused, with smooth transitions between songs, and compared to albums like CLB, Scorpion, and almost everything else since If You’re Reading This, it finally feels like a complete thought. Drake doesn’t have to rush through themes in order to make room for all of the different flavors in his bag. Honestly, Nevermind isn’t a “playlist” or a “collection of vibes” or a double album that would have been better off as two separate albums. It has a clear structure and brevity.
Despite the new sonic direction, Honestly, Nevermind still has all the makings of a Drake album in terms of its subject matter. “If I come around you, can I be myself? Wind up in the mirror just to see yourself/ If I was in your shoes, I would hate myself/ Left all this behind to be with someone else, oh/ Why should I fake it anymore?” he croons on “Texts Go Green.” These are the same love-stricken bars that we’ve grown accustomed to from Drake, just delivered through a different sonic vehicle, as he pairs sobering lines with esoteric beats. Songs like “Flight’s Booked,” “Liability,” and “A Keeper” are highlights, delivering narrative structures and flow at the same pace of their grumbling production. It’s the type of music that sounds muffled yet clear, like you’re listening to Drake profess his love and illustrate his heartbreak through the damp walls of a dark underground club. This style of house is effective for what Drake is trying to achieve on Honestly, Nevermind, as he delivers club records that still contain caption-friendly lyrics.
“Calling My Name” is one of the songs that most effectively captures Drake’s vocal and lyrical ability while also keeping the production at center stage. The first half is centered around smooth melodies, before shifting into a bouncing club beat. At times, though, it’s clear that Drake is still feeling out how to navigate this new space, and much of Honestly, Nevermind finds him relying on the production more than his patented storytelling. There are too many moments where Drake’s words are buried behind the bells and whistles of a song’s pounding base, and the vocals become an afterthought. Alternatively, a song like “Tie That Binds” has some of the cleanest production on the album, but because of that, it would sound better if Drake’s vocals were cut short and the beat was allowed to breathe more. When the content does ring through, though, the lyrics are less vapid and more emotional than recent projects like Certified Lover Boy, and it makes the album’s core themes of balancing longing with separation feel more relatable. It’s comforting to know that even Drake’s texts sometimes go green, too.
“Jimmy Cooks” is a clear outlier on Honestly, Nevermind, because it’s a straight-up rap song and diverges from the album’s otherwise cohesive dance themes. It almost feels like he only added it at the end to please the fans he knew would be upset if there was no rapping on a dance album altogether. Even though it adds another impressive entry to Drake and 21 Savage’s strong collaborative history, and might be one of my personal favorite songs on the album, it could have just as easily been released as a loosie rather than the outro for this cohesive dance album. It skews too far away from the project’s core themes.
After being in the game for over a decade, breaking nearly every numerical record in the book, delivering several critically acclaimed albums and EPs, and changing the way melodic rap is perceived in hip-hop, Drake has already covered a lot of ground in his career, and he’s self-aware. He knows that he’s petty, distrusting, damaged, and, at this point, too rich for his own good. He puts all of that into his music, and part of the reason his subject matter hasn’t changed is because he hasn’t found solutions to those problems yet. He makes music that’s influenced by his life and surroundings, so he isn’t going to make an album about therapy like Kendrick Lamar (even though he will finally rap about it on a song like “Churchill Downs”), or drop a Gangsta Grillz mixtape like J. Cole. Based on the music we hear throughout Honestly, Nevermind, the next stage of Drake’s career still involves the club and “being outside,” which is not a stark change in lifestyle like we’ve seen from other superstars.