Drake's "Certified Lover Boy" is aging into a classic

Warning: There will be some Drake bias in this. I've been a massive Drake fan since 2012 and he has been my top artist on Spotify since 2015. Last year, I was in his 0.001% of Spotify listeners. He should for real send me a gift basket or something for that.

Anyway, last September, Drake dropped his sixth studio album: Certified Lover Boy. The album's released was mirrored by Kanye West's Donda release and the competition of the two albums was a real thing between fans. I would see many people on Twitter fighting about which albums were better.

Drake's Certified Lover Boy was met with mixed reviews when it first dropped. People agreed that it was produced extremely well, but it lacked variety and was "boring." People stated that the album was just rehashed music that he had made better before on other previous albums.

When I first heard the album, I immediately knew which songs were gonna be my favorites. My top listened to were "Pipe Down", "Race My Mind", "Knife Talk", "TSU", "In the Bible", and "No Friends in the Industry." It's a kinda weird mix of songs, but they all fit together in my eyes.

I listened to the album non-stop from September 2021 to January 2021. And when I say non-stop, I literally mean I did not listen to anything else in that timeframe. After that, I kinda forgot about it. I would listen to it when it came on my shuffle, but that was about it.

Fast forward to last week, September 23, 2022. The album has now been out over a year, and I started to see the perception of the album changing. People on Twitter started tweeting about how CLB was going to be an instant classic in a couple years, similar to Drake's 2016 album Views. When Views first came out, people were trashing it and saying it was a garbage album. 6 years later, people say that it's a top 3 Drake album and an instant classic. It's very interesting to see things age like that especially as someone who never though Views was trash. I thought it was a great album and when perception started to change I look at all those people and I'm like "yeah, no shit it was a great album, why did you just realize that?"

Look at these tweets and Reddit posts. I did a deep dive on Twitter and Reddit, and all these posts confirmed to me that the perception around the album was changing. Give it about 4 years and people will switch up to saying that the album is a "classic." I started recently listening to CLB again after the 1st year anniversary and I think it's still a great album. The only thing that Drake did wrong was not include the outro on Love All with Jay Z. It's on Youtube and its a top 5 outro I've ever heard. Check it out below.

So, not sure what exactly the point of this blog was. I just think it's important that if you like something, don't let the internet sway your opinions on it because what the majority think might be different.

Drake released another album in June 2022 titled "Honestly Nevermind" This Drake album was something that no one had heard before from him. It was a house music album with one classic Drake song at the ended titled "Jimmy Cooks." When I first listened to it, I thought it was trash. However, I had never really listened to house music before. After about two weeks of listening, I loved the album. It was the perfect summer album and it will definitely been in my top ten most played songs when Spotify Wrapped comes out in December. One song on the album, "Sticky" was announced as my song of the year (SOTY) last week. Check it out below.