7 Things We Learned From Drake's New Album 'Honestly, Nevermind'

What does 'Honestly, Nevermind' tell us about Drake’s career? Where is his head at? What has he been listening to? Here are seven things we learned.

Drake "Falling Back" music video
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Image via YouTube/Drake

Drake "Falling Back" music video

It’s been less than 24 hours since Drake surprise-released his new album Honestly, Nevermind. After a few spins, we shared our first impressions of the album, including our picks for the best and worst songs, which you can read here. But now it’s time to start digging a little deeper. What does this album tell us about Drake’s career? Where is his head at? What has he been listening to? What does this say about popular music in 2022?


As the album settles in, narratives are starting to develop and we’re learning new things about Drake (and the modern pop music landscape around him). For one, he’s been influenced by house music from various regions across the world, and it seems he’s starting to strategize his own career differently, warming up to the idea of making concise, sonically-focused albums instead of attempting to please all of his fans at once. Before diving into more in-depth reviews and collaborator interviews next week, we put together a list of 7 things we learned from Drake’s new album Honestly, Nevermind.

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Honestly, Nevermind draws influences from various club music and house scenes like Chicago house, Baltimore club, Detroit club, and more, but one that stuck out immediately was Jersey club. Jersey club has been around the tri-state area for decades, and was popularized by DJs like DJ Lil Man, DJ Taj, DJ Sliink, and more. It sounds like Drake might have taken a trip across the Hudson to Newark and Jersey City because he’s incorporated some of the scene’s most recognizable sounds on this album. While Jersey club does have some similarities to other club scenes on the east coast, like Baltimore club and Delaware club, there are certain unique sound effects that separate them. The bed-squeaking sound that’s in the background of “Currents” is an unmistakable marker for most Jersey club tracks, and the heavy thumping of “Sticky” is also commonly used in the scene. Thanks to TikTok grappling onto Jersey club songs and beats for viral dance trends, the scene has slowly gained national attention, which might have been one of the ways it got on Drake’s radar. Regardless, its inclusion on Honestly, Nevermind marks a major moment of national visibility for the scene. —Jordan Rose

Certified Lover Boy wasn’t the album that many people hoped for, and it didn’t receive great reviews, so many people assumed that Drake would return on his next project with a mission to prove himself. We expected him to rap with a chip on his shoulder and come through with a bunch of hungry rap verses like he gave us on Jack Harlow’s “Churchill Downs.” Honestly, Nevermind is far from the rap album that many suspected it would be, though. In fact, he rarely raps on it at all, only spitting on two of the songs. There are no opps on this project and Drake’s paranoia is kept at bay for the most part. Instead, this record presents itself as an experimental house album in which Drake spends most of his time singing over uptempo beats. Drake swerved left and delivered a concise pop-leaning summer album when everyone thought he was getting ready to rap. It seems Drake has been listening to the criticism concerning the monotony of his music and decided to switch things up. —Jessica McKinney

Drake doesn’t have a long history in house music, but he brought in an impressive crew of producers to help shape the album’s sound. Black Coffee, a DJ and record producer from South Africa, is credited as an executive producer, and Gordo (the new house music alias of the artist formerly known as Carnage) has credits on half a dozen songs. “Gordo got me on the wave,” Drake raps on “Sticky,” hinting that the producer may have been the one who pushed him so heavily into the house music sound on Honestly, Nevermind. Drake has a long history with Carnage, even calling the producer his “actual brother” a few years ago, so it seems likely he may have connected the dots. Beyond Black Coffee and Gordo (and some of the usual Drake collaborators like 40, Tay Keith, Vinylz, and Cubeatz), Drake also called on the following producers to shape the album’s house music sound: Beau Nox, Alex Lustig, Kid Masterpiece, Richard Zastenker, Rampa, &Me, and Klahr. —Eric Skelton

Drake didn’t directly respond to the CLB backlash on Honestly, Nevermind, but it does seem he heard some of the complaints. There was chatter that his reign might come to an end if he kept rehashing old styles like he did on CLB, so he swerved left and made a house music album. Switching things up, he worked with dance music producers that pushed him out of his comfort zone, and he doesn’t sound like he’s going through the motions anymore (which he did on the lowest points of CLB). On songs like “Tie That Binds” and “Flight’s Booked,” he’s more loose and experimental than he’s been since the beginning of his career, and he’s clearly rejuvenated. This is a strategy that artists like Kanye have used to stay creatively inspired and avoid stagnation deep into their careers, and Drake’s reign might last even longer than anyone expected if he keeps taking these risks. Drake has always been great at adopting new styles to stay relevant—dabbling in everything from UK drill to dancehall—but he’s never tried a new subgenre with as much commitment for an entire album as he did here, and it saved him from falling into a stylistic rut. —Eric Skelton

During Drake’s 2019 Rap Radar interview, he talked about why his newer albums have been so long, explaining that he always wants to satisfy his two main groups of fans on every project: people who like his rap records and people who like his pop and R&B songs. That got him in trouble on projects like CLB, where he tried to make every type of fan happy with a bunch of different styles, but ultimately lost focus and ended up with a bloated, directionless album. On Honestly, Nevermind, he finally picked one sound (singing over dance records) and stuck to it, unbothered with appeasing his rap fanbase. This represents a potential new strategy for Drake that would fix some of the problems that bogged down his last few projects. Instead of doing everything on each album, he could focus on singing throughout an album like Honestly, Nevermind, then come back several months later with a bunch of rap records on a Scary Hours project (which he hinted at on his radio show on Thursday night). —Eric Skelton

Ruff!

In some ways, Honestly, Nevermind sounds like the natural evolution of More Life. While More Life definitely had more rap songs than this one, both albums find Drake experimenting with more singing and dance-oriented sounds that he hadn’t tried before. While More Life is well-suited for intimate day parties, though, Honestly, Nevermind sounds better equipped for dimly lit dungeon raves. Drake says he considers More Life a “playlist” instead of an album and that’s likely because it has so many different sounds, inspired by various genres like dancehall, Soca, and beats from other regions like the Caribbean and UK. Honestly, Nevermind, meanwhile, sounds more anchored to specific house and club scenes than utilizing different global sounds, making it more concise and focused than More Life, while also revisiting some of its core themes. There are a few songs on the album that sound influenced by More Life songs like “Passionfruit” and “Blem.” Many Drake fans also look at More Life as a very summertime album (even though it dropped right as spring was beginning to blossom in 2017), and Drake released Honestly, Nevermind just days before the official beginning of summer. He told Akademiks this is a “summer album” and it was clearly designed to be played outside. —Jordan Rose

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