Charting Drake's Unforgettable Path To 'Honestly, Nevermind'
Just hours after its announcement, Drake released the surprise album Honestly, Nevermind on June 17. The dance and house-inspired record, his seventh studio effort, further proves the pop icon's transcendent abilities and his willingness to extend his artistry to its furthest limits.
On the 14-track project, Drake casts his boisterous rap persona aside and flows over the reverberating sounds and soothing piano keys of South African house and American club music. Collaborators Black Coffee, Noah "40" Shebib and Gordo (formerly Carnage) steer the Toronto rapper and singer on a course of creative free flow, allowing his wistful lyrics and airy vocals to shine on "A Keeper," and "Falling Back."
Despite his stature — and ability to seemingly shift the course of hip-hop and pop at will — Drake has never dedicated an entire project to embark on a new musical pathway. But after being the face of mainstream hip-hop and pop for over a decade, there was no better time to delve into a state of experimentation. Enter, Honestly, Nevermind.
From hip-hop love ballads to strip club anthems and Afro-Caribbean tunes, the four-time GRAMMY winner is responsible for some of the era’s greatest hits. Whether melding melodic bridges and hooks with rap, or dabbling in Afrobeats and British grime, Drake has morphed the pop music soundscape to his liking without compromising his creative intuition — a habit that sprouted the moment he gleamed under the industry spotlight.
Drake came into the spotlight at an auspicious time, when hip-hop heavyweights like Jay Z, Eminem, Kanye West, Rick Ross and his mentor Lil Wayne sat atop the hip-hop leaderboard and an intense auto-tune phase met its end. Drake's 2009 debut EP, So Far Gone, shook the world by fusing the timbre of slow-grind R&B with the spirit of braggadocious rap.
The EP’s break-out single, "Best I Ever Had," peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and garnered his first of many GRAMMY nominations — one for Best Rap Song and Best Rap Solo Performance. The "Nice For What" artist had officially created a distinct sound that elevated him to early superstardom.
Drake wasn’t the first artist to sing and rap on his songs, but in an interview with the Jewish Chronicle in 2012, he declared himself the first person to do it at a high level. "There were people who incorporated melody before me, but I would deem myself the first person to successfully rap and sing."
Backed by the Young Money Entertainment hype machine, Drizzy continued his success in 2010 with his first studio album, Thank Me Later. The project boasted concert-ready hits like "Over" and "Fancy," and threaded moments of soul-stirring emotion and honesty on "Fireworks" and "Shut It Down." With its commercial and critical success, the great Canadian hope fulfilled the colossal expectations set upon his shoulders.
Off the heels of his debut project, Drake endeared rap fans with his vulnerability. But this was a pocket he had to carve out for himself and fend against the "soft rapper" label that loomed over his early career.
"I wish that we lived in a time and a generation where people would stop viewing my honesty as overly emotional," Drake told GQ in 2011 ahead of the release of his second album, Take Care. "People always act like I spend my life crying in a dark room. I don’t, I’m good. I’m a man. I want to be remembered as an artist that gave you a piece of me, as opposed to some surface bulls<em></em>*t. I don’t think people realize that we die, we leave here, and either they forget about you or remember you. And how they remember you is up to you. I just want to be remembered as a poet that was open and honest because I wake up every morning and I’m me."
But instead of disrupting his accent, the vulnerable Take Care earned Drake his first GRAMMY Award for Best Rap Album and cemented his name among hip-hop’s elite with "Headlines," "Marvins Room" and "The Motto." While Thank Me Later was a respectful debut, Drake felt the latter project offered a firmer grip on his artistry and was a better reflection of the culture of his hometown.
"I came back home and reconnected with my friends… and just realized that we have a true opportunity to again establish ourselves separately from everybody else," Drake said in a sit-down with Elliot Wilson and B.Dot of Rap Radar in 2019. "So, that was when we were truly hellbent on we’re going to have our sound, that sounds like our city, and it’s going to be dark and it’s going to be moody and it’s going to sound like how cold it feels outside."
From his debut Thank Me Later to Nothing Was The Same, Drake reconfigured the limits of rap. His work continued to expand the genre to the outer banks of R&B — paving the way for other rapper-singers like Tory Lanez, Post Malone and the late Juice WRLD.
But it wasn’t until 2016’s Views that Drake veered from his signature sound and began exploring yet another genre. The seeds of "AfroDrake" were sown on album standouts "Controlla," "Too Good" and "One Dance," (his first No. 1 record), further inspiring other artists to delve into the Afrobeats, reggae and dancehall lane.
Drake’s fascination with Afrobeats and dancehall continued on the sonic mishmash More Life in 2017, where songs like "Blem" and "Madiba Riddim." Perhaps a prelude to the sounds of Honestly, Nevermind, the then 30-year-old artist also ventured into UK drill with "Gyalchester" and the Giggs-assisted "KMT" on the project, and made room for British grime maven Skepta to shine on "Skepta Interlude."
Drake has traversed between varying sounds throughout his discography, flirting with house and dance as early as 2011 with the Rihanna-assisted "Take Care." The artist later delved into synth-soaked house cuts on 2013’s "Hold On, We're Going Home," foreshadowing a shift to 100-BPM electro tunes.
As Drake has ascended to icon status in the past 13 years, he’s continued to experiment with various sounds and musical subcultures, reshaping them to fit his own musical taste. But accusations of cultural appropriation began to swirl with the release of the UK funk and dancehall smash "Once Dance," despite the song featuring Afrobeat artist Wizkid, one of the biggest names in the genre.
Drake dismissed the claims in a 2019 interview with Rap Radar.
"The definition of appropriating a culture is not supporting that culture, doing songs with people who are deeply rooted in that culture, giving opportunity to people who are in that culture, that’s not appropriating," he said. "Any time I embark on one of those journeys, I ensure that I'm not only paying all due respect verbally but like I make a point to give opportunity to people that I respect."
Following the success of More Life, Drake's 2018 effort, Scorpion, was a further declaration of his genre-hopping prowess. Songs like the stadium-filling "God’s Plan," sorrowful "Jaded," and the eerily soothing Michael Jackson collab on "Don’t Matter To Me” evenly split the double-sided album into R&B and rap tracks.
Between the 2020 mixtape Dark Lane Demo Tapes and his 2021 studio album Certified Lover Boy, Drake continued to exercise his range, releasing Atlanta trap anthems, brooding R&B songs, and Afrobeat and UK drill records. He developed a formula that generated massive streaming numbers, as his lyrics and songs like "Toosie Slide" and “Way 2 Sexy” became the subject of TikTok videos and Instagram captions. Still, Drake's sound had grown increasingly redundant and the artist was in need of a creative audible. From that standpoint, Honestly, Nevermind delivered.
The album is by far the biggest sonic leap Drake has taken in his nearly 15-year career. Like Kanye’s Yeezus, Drake’s latest effort adopts a sound untouched by hip-hop acts of his caliber while dividing his allies and skeptics. Honestly, Nevermind's dive into house and dance music — both sonically and in its use of producers — further fueled a sense of confusion among rap fans who are unaware of the queer, Black history and influence of the two genres.
The creative detour has birthed lengthy Twitter debates and memes of the highest virality, with folks giving their take on the success or failure of Drake’s artistic pivot. Since its release, Honestly, Nevermind has largely received mixed reviews, with an assemblage of fans either praising or mocking Drizzy’s genre shift.
Publications have been split on the album, with Pitchfork’s Alphonse Pierre writing, "It’s light and breezy, and the songs flow right into each other like a DJ mix, not unlike 2017’s More Life." While the album should work, Pierre opined that Honestly, Nevermind "feels a little empty for one glaring reason: Drake’s writing lacks its former zest." Other music critics have applauded the massive departure, with Rolling Stone Senior Editor Jeff Ihaza writing that Drake created "a collection of blissful dance tunes constructed for embrace and abandon." Honestly, Nevermind, Ihaza continued, is Drake leaping beyond his peers for a "refreshing sign of what’s to come."
Drizzy appears unbothered by the criticism that’s come with the new release. "It's all good if you don't get it yet. It's all good. That's what we do. That's what we do," Drake said during the album's release party, per Complex.
Honestly, Nevermind is projected to sell between 210,000-230,000 album-equivalent units based on early projections by HitsDailyDouble. And according to Billboard, the album has broken the record for most first-day streams by a dance album on Apple Music, only taking one hour to achieve the feat.
Whether it alienates his listeners or draws in a new legion of fans, Honestly, Nevermind signifies Drake’s willingness to take creative risks and, like Kanye, allow those artistic pursuits to grow in favor over time and inspire other mainstream hip-hop acts to explore the depths of hip-house.