Why 'Certified Lover Boy' disappointed
By Max Mwaniki, Web Editor
In the middle of Aug. 2020, Drake teased his next album titled Certified Lover Boy. Fans highly anticipated CLB, calling it album of the year before anyone had heard one track surrounding it with hype. Well, Drake's CLB dropped on Sep. 3 and it was not all that it was promised to be. For an artist of a high caliber like Drake, who has won over 100 awards, including four Grammys, to release an album that was an overall disappointment shocked many fans. Maria Carrillo High School Senior Cody Reilly said, “CLB is just another average Drake album. Nothing new, nothing crazy. But it is far from something that I would take time and listen to again.” As an album it felt like something we have seen from Drake before: repetitive songs that just did not live up to the hype.
I got halfway through CLB and then it felt like I was listening to some of the same songs. Out of the all the songs on the album, only “Champagne Poetry,” “Fair Trade,” “Way 2 Sexy,” “Knife Talk,” “Fountains” and “You Only Live Twice” did not share the same style of a slow beat with slow bumping 808’s and loud snares with singing behind them making only six out of 21 songs unique. The truth is a lot of songs on CLB sound like songs from previous Drake albums. Some perfect examples of this are “Girls Want Girls” sounds like “Time Flies” off of Dark Lane Demo Tapes and “Fountains” feels like an updated version of “One Dance.” This was supposed to be a comeback album to compete with Kanye West’s album Donda but the album is repetitive and reminiscent of what we have already seen from Drake.
With how CLB was presented, it was supposed to be one of Drake's best albums. With genuinely impressive feats of promotion; Drake even went as far as announcing features for the album and release dates on every billboard in time square. Drake also supposedly “hacked” into an ESPN broadcast to announce the release date for his album, and Sportscenter even went to Twitter to apologize for the interruption. This is one of this album's most disappointing facts and honestly one of the main reasons why it flopped. Even beyond the publicity and monetary hype, CLB was supposed to be the album to beat Kanye West’s and be the end to their ongoing rivalry. With Kanye West’s Donda respectively racking in numbers but still underperforming, fans really thought Drake had a guaranteed win against Kanye. Sadly we got CLB and it was worse than Donda. When all said is done, even though CLB may have not been what we wanted, Drake is still getting in insane numbers on the album, breaking Spotify and Apple Music streaming numbers, and selling 604,194 copies of CLB in the first week. With an artist as talented as Drake there is always a chance for him to come back and hopefully drop a better album then CLB.