Drake is in a position to add another No. 1 album to his resume. The 6ix God surprised fans with the new dance album, Honestly, Nevermind, on Friday.
Even though the album is receiving mixed reviews, Drizzy is set to pull in a solid first-week number according to HitsDailyDouble. The 7th solo album from Drake is estimated for the first week between 210,000 and 230,000 equivalent album units.
In comparison to Certified Lover Boy, Honestly, Nevermind is a drop-off in first-week production as CLB made a No. 1 debut with 613,000 units.
Drake‘s Honestly, Nevermind became Apple Music’s most-streamed dance album, smashing the previous record for first-day streams worldwide.
Honestly, Nevermind adds to Drake’s Apple Music run. Certified Lover Boy, Drake’s previous album, presently holds the record for the most first-day streams in Apple Music history. On Apple Music, Scorpion is the second most popular album in terms of first-day streams worldwide. With “Girls Want Girls,” Drake also holds the record for the most first-day streams worldwide on Apple Music.
Drake also released a statement letting fans in on his current life:
I let my humbleness turn to numbness at times letting time go by knowing I got the endurance to catch it another time
I work with every breath in my body cause it’s the work not air that makes me feel alive
That’s some real detrimental shit but that’s that shit my perfectionist mind doesn’t really mind because no one knows whats on my mind when I go to sleep at 9 & wake up at 5 – unless I say it in rhyme
I can’t remember the last time someone put they phone down, looked me in the eyes and asked my current insight on the times
But I remember every single time someone shined a light in my eyes
I purposely try to forget what went on between some ppl and I because I know I’m not a forgiving guy even when I try
My urge for revenge wins the game against my good guy inside every single fckn time
I got plans I can’t talk about with more than like 4 guys because the last time I shared em with someone on the outside…well that’s another story for another night
I was tryna get thru that statement to get to saying I’m not @ a time in my life where pats on the shoulder help get me by
I’ll take loyalty over an oh my & emoji fire
I know if it was a dark night where all the odds were against my side & my skill went to whoever took my life they’d done me off with a big smile & maybe evn post it for some likes
I know everyone that tells me they love me doesn’t love me all the time especially when im doing better than alright & they have to watch it from whatever point they at in their life
I got here being realistic
I didn’t get here being blind
I know whats what and especially what and who is by my side
Honestly…Nevermind.
DEDICATED TO OUR BROTHER V
– Drake
Drake also released the video for the album’s single “Fallin Back,” which you can watch here.
Drake‘s Honestly, Nevermind became Apple Music’s most-streamed dance album, smashing the previous record for first-day streams worldwide.
Honestly, Nevermind adds to Drake’s Apple Music resume. Certified Lover Boy, Drake’s previous album, presently holds the record for the most first-day streams in Apple Music history. On Apple Music, Scorpion is the second most popular album in terms of first-day streams worldwide. With “Girls Want Girls,” Drake also holds the record for the most first-day streams worldwide on Apple Music.
Drake also released a statement letting fans in on his current life:
I let my humbleness turn to numbness at times letting time go by knowing I got the endurance to catch it another time
I work with every breath in my body cause it’s the work not air that makes me feel alive
That’s some real detrimental shit but that’s that shit my perfectionist mind doesn’t really mind because no one knows whats on my mind when I go to sleep at 9 & wake up at 5 – unless I say it in rhyme
I can’t remember the last time someone put they phone down, looked me in the eyes and asked my current insight on the times
But I remember every single time someone shined a light in my eyes
I purposely try to forget what went on between some ppl and I because I know I’m not a forgiving guy even when I try
My urge for revenge wins the game against my good guy inside every single fckn time
I got plans I can’t talk about with more than like 4 guys because the last time I shared em with someone on the outside…well that’s another story for another night
I was tryna get thru that statement to get to saying I’m not @ a time in my life where pats on the shoulder help get me by
I’ll take loyalty over an oh my & emoji fire
I know if it was a dark night where all the odds were against my side & my skill went to whoever took my life they’d done me off with a big smile & maybe evn post it for some likes
I know everyone that tells me they love me doesn’t love me all the time especially when im doing better than alright & they have to watch it from whatever point they at in their life
I got here being realistic
I didn’t get here being blind
I know whats what and especially what and who is by my side
Honestly…Nevermind.
DEDICATED TO OUR BROTHER V
– Drake
Drake also released the video for the album’s single “Fallin Back,” which you can watch here.
Drake is a master of throwing curveballs. The now-35-year-old rapper has been juking fans’ expectations since he arrived on the scene as an aspiring artist back when he was still just a cast member on a cable teen soap opera. Heck, his very existence as THEE superstar rapper of the past decade defiantly flouts rap conventions. You probably already know the spiel at this point and have probably long since chosen your position on whether this is a boon or blasphemy.
With his new surprise album Honestly, Nevermind, Drake may have thrown the biggest curve of his career yet. Fans have never expected hardbody rhymes from The Boy, but they could at least rely on receiving a collection of sad boy anthems and passive-aggressive caption raps with each new Drake project. Instead, many were utterly flabbergasted to press play on a compilation of dance tracks inspired by late fashion designer and DJ, Virgil Abloh, showcasing a global palette of mainly South African-originated house styles like gqom (the “gq” is pronounced as a click in isiZulu, one of the nation’s 14 official languages) and amapiano.
As for me, I was delighted. For the past three years, I have been predicting a wave of Black artists making a pilgrimage to dance music, including such pioneers as Channel Tres, Duckwrth, and even Vince Staples (Big Fish Theory was right there). That Drake – who has always cottoned on to international subcultures as both an extension of his eclectic tastes and savvy stylistic evolution – is the one to lead the charge is deliciously fitting. Just look at the mainstream relevance of UK drill music and its New York-based offshoots in the wake of Drake’s 2019 collaboration with Headie One. Before that, it was Nigerian Afropop, UK grime, and way, way back, you may recall, the house-inflected title track from his sophomore album, Take Care.
Not only does Drake’s embrace of house music on his latest represent a full-circle moment for him but it is also one for the genre itself. Over the course of the last several years, there has been a cornucopia of articles on the internet recounting the origins of house and techno music in Black subcultures in cities like Chicago, Detroit, and New York in the 1970s and ‘80s. They’ve highlighted how Black artists and DJs were pushed out of the genres that they created, supplanted with watered-down, whitewashed imitations thanks to an influx of international interest – particularly from Europe, where dance music continues to flourish in a mainstream context compared to the US where it’s still considered niche or passé (classifications of Honestly, Nevermind as mall music abound on Twitter as I write this).
But also over the past few years, due partially to the keen interest in reclaiming Black American history that spawned from the uprisings of the past decade, Black artists have shown a greater inclination to break out of the limiting categorizations of so-called “urban” genres. Even more than that, Black artists have taken aim at reclaiming OUR genres – country, rock, pop, punk – and declaring that we do, in fact, belong in the spaces that we had hands – in some cases, the greatest hands – in creating. As Channel Tres told me back in 2019:
“I think a lot of people right now are artists that fit into a category of what you think how they should be. But if you push the conventions, it frees up other kids that are coming after us seeing certain images. It’s hard a lot of times for Black kids to find an image, because we get told what we should be. I just know if I let somebody put me in a box, someone else might not get the freedom to be who they’re supposed to be.”
“I think that the reason why house is so big in the white demographic is because it’s very much straightforward. It’s two, three, four, one, two, three, four, and with Black folks, put a little swing in that thing. I feel the original creators of it like Mr. Fingers had a bit more of a soulful flair to it, and then as time went on different people started grabbing it, and then it may have become more simple… I think you can hear the Blackness in the original house.”
This is why Virgil Abloh was so important to the movement to bring the culture and the genre back to their respective centers. He’d DJ at festivals and play house music by Black artists such as Black Coffee, who executive-produced Honestly, Nevermind, opening the door for modern audiences to see and understand our role within the dance genre. And this is why it is so important that it’s Drake, the biggest artist within the one Black genre that has successfully defended itself from a complete takeover of cultural appropriation, who is taking this stride back into the space that Black artists created and were forced to vacate. He’s taking a screwdriver to the door’s hinges, and removing it entirely, ensuring unfettered access to our history.
It’s freeing. It’s giving Black people permission again to take up space – both culturally and literally. It’s telling people to move their bodies. For decades after hip-hop’s creation, movement itself was stifled – especially for men. Just look at Terror Squad’s “Lean Back”; we were all so pre-occupied with being “hard,” with being “gangsta,” we couldn’t move our bodies – the most natural response to music in the world – because we were afraid to look “soft” to be vulnerable, to be corny, to be square. Drake has already absorbed all the disapproval connected to those labels for his entire career. He has already been the butt of the joke. He has nothing left to lose. And because of that, he can be the example that shows that it’s okay not to settle for the small, stifled caricature society has assigned to us as Black men. We can be more.
The best part is, he’ll be far from the only one this summer. Because he’s Drake, the trendsetter, the movement starter, there will be others. And if no one else is willing to take up the cause, Beyonce has already hinted that her upcoming album, Renaissance, will also be heavy on dance and country, another style that Black folks helped to originate before being given the boot. She’s reclaiming that, too, in her own way. Black art won’t be reduced to just one of two musical styles it’s “okay” for us to like. And at first, that may confuse some in the audience, those who have learned to accept society’s limitations and expectations. That’s okay. They have “Jimmy Cooks,” the most traditional rap song on Honestly, Nevermind. Until they’re ready. Until they too, free themselves, loosen up, and learn to reclaim what was always theirs from the start.
A little over seven months after the passing of fashion designer Virgil Abloh, his global impact is still making itself known. Virgil’s influence is all over Drake’s new surprise albumHonestly, Nevermind and in Spotify’s new documentary short film about Kendrick Lamar, the Compton rapper learns just how well-known Abloh was on his first trip to Ghana. Visiting a skate park in Accra, Kendrick reveals he’s been chatting with the local kids about the late designer, discussing “what he means to them, as far as letting them have this creative space to enjoy themselves.”
The park was opened in December, just after Virgil’s passing, with support from Off-White, Abloh’s own brand, Daily Paper, and Surf Ghana. At the time of the opening, Daily Paper co-founder Jefferson Osei said in a statement, “With this initiative, we hope to evolve the skate culture in Ghana to the next level and give locals a platform to grow their talents within a space that will hopefully become their biggest training ground to date. More than board sports, the park will be a creative hub for young Ghanaians to come together, exchange ideas, inspire each other, and build their futures through recreational activities. They now have a place where they can be themselves, freely develop their skills together with like-minded people, and reach their true potential. Hence the name, Freedom Skate Park.”
Kendrick also discussed his favorite lines from his new album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, explaining why a line about going to therapy resonates with him. “We learn to hold all our sh*t in,” he admits. “That wasn’t my forte when people mentioned it to me. I’m still stuck how my pops thinks: ‘F*ck I need therapy for?’” He also allows, though, that going would represent “growth” and seems more open to the idea than he initially lets on.
You can watch the mini-doc “A Day In Ghana With Kendrick Lamar” above.
Drake returned on Friday, dropping off his seventh album, Honestly, Nevermind. Drake also released a statement letting fans in on his current life:
I let my humbleness turn to numbness at times letting time go by knowing I got the endurance to catch it another time
I work with every breath in my body cause it’s the work not air that makes me feel alive
That’s some real detrimental shit but that’s that shit my perfectionist mind doesn’t really mind because no one knows whats on my mind when I go to sleep at 9 & wake up at 5 – unless I say it in rhyme
I can’t remember the last time someone put they phone down, looked me in the eyes and asked my current insight on the times
But I remember every single time someone shined a light in my eyes
I purposely try to forget what went on between some ppl and I because I know I’m not a forgiving guy even when I try
My urge for revenge wins the game against my good guy inside every single fckn time
I got plans I can’t talk about with more than like 4 guys because the last time I shared em with someone on the outside…well that’s another story for another night
I was tryna get thru that statement to get to saying I’m not @ a time in my life where pats on the shoulder help get me by
I’ll take loyalty over an oh my & emoji fire
I know if it was a dark night where all the odds were against my side & my skill went to whoever took my life they’d done me off with a big smile & maybe evn post it for some likes
I know everyone that tells me they love me doesn’t love me all the time especially when im doing better than alright & they have to watch it from whatever point they at in their life
I got here being realistic
I didn’t get here being blind
I know whats what and especially what and who is by my side
Honestly…Nevermind.
DEDICATED TO OUR BROTHER V
– Drake
Drake also released the video for the album’s single “Fallin Back,” which you can watch here.
One of the last designs from famed designer Virgil Abloh is a one-of-a-kind luxury Maybach that you don’t even need to drive on the road to enjoy. Project Maybach was one of the last designs from the late designer, Virgil Abloh. This car is truly a unique vehicle that can be used for adventurous activities […]
Lil Durk and Gunna pay homage to late designer Virgil Abloh in the Cole Bennett-directed video for their new single, “What Happened To Virgil.” Lyrical Lemonade, Bennett’s production company, is well-known for its colorful, surreal, and whimsical videos, which are a far cry from Durk and Gunna’s grittier visuals. This dynamic turns out to actually be a perfect tribute to Abloh’s high-low aesthetic, which saw him bringing streetwear virtues to high-fashion venues such as Louis Vuitton, where he was the artistic director until his recent passing.
Other nods to Virgil throughout the video include references to his background in architecture; in one scene, Gunna and Durk rap atop the roof of a model house inside a warehouse. Also, Vigirl’s tendency to play with gender tropes makes an appearance as Gunna delivers his verse dressed like Michael Jackson in the “Thriller” video (complete with one sparkle-covered glove), holding a bouquet of flowers as he raps to the camera. Meanwhile, “Air Drake,” the private plane co-owned by the Toronto rapper makes an appearance in its Abloh-designed cloud-patterned paint job. The video concludes with a dedication to Alboh and a description of some of the other tributes he received from Louis Vuitton, and his own brand, Off-White.
Watch Lil Durk and Gunna’s “What Happened To Virgil” video above.
