Vintage Review: Nothing Was The Same

Score: 4/5 (Hall Of Fame Album) | Released: September 24th, 2013

Written By: Anthony Seaman

   In every genre of music levels of popularity exist. In hip-hop there’s local fame, regional fame, membership to the genre, national fame, pop stardom, and superstar status. For Drake Comeback Season was the regional fame being solidified. So Far Gone’s release was an adrenaline injection that zoomed his sappy character through membership and into national fame, which was doubled down upon with a Lil Wayne cosign and string of features with the maturing YMCMB camp. Thank Me Later & Take Care solidified that national fame, and showed sparkles of pop stardom. At this moment he was already a household name that could fade away and still define an era of hip-hop. It could have been a moody 4-5 year blip where rap and R&B nearly became one, where the seams and soul of each were nearly lost within another by a kid from fucking Canada. Yet that wasn’t enough. Nothing Was The Same was the cementing of Drake into the DNA of pop music, and not just as the guy who everyone in pop steals from but seldom mentions *cough* T-Pain *cough*, but rather a permanent figure that even your grandmother could point out. 

How Did We Get Here?

        Billboard charts, radio play and red carpet appearances were still the main showcase for pop stars to enter American lives. E! News, MTV, YouTube premieres for music videos on VEVO, award shows; they all still mattered. It was one of the last hip-hop albums to take over the world in a traditional music industry where the artist played the game. Kanye had already inflated himself too large for these events but Big Sean, A$AP Rocky, Kendrick Lamar and Nicki Minaj were still present in media spaces, constantly promoting themselves. good kid m.A.A.d. city was still being showered with universal acclaim, while Datpiff and LiveMixtapes were still the post-regional hubs of the most forward thinking hip-hop music. Maybach Music Group, French Montana and Atlanta as a whole were omnipresent in clubs and parties alike, but slipping into more melody by the day. What cut through it all was “Started From The Bottom”, the lead single to begin a new era, ending a transitional year where Drake ran through every feature (“Stay Schemin”, “Love Me”, “Poetic Justice”) and watched the genre slowly meld from braggadocio fueled club records to everything sounding like Drake featuring Drake. It was driven by an airy and infectious melody, packed full of quotables, vocal tone switches, builds and crashes of energy, and a music video with awkward mean mugs and action shots of his friends enjoying his success alongside him. A child actor turned musician who within 3 years of making music was signed to the biggest artist in the world made a record about coming from nothing, and made it a hit. “Just Hold On We’re Going Home '' was a left field 80’s pop built to be an eternal wedding song which was in that moment the biggest risk any star artist had taken since Kanye West's 808’s & Heartbreak. Backed up by Majid Jordan (who we now see has a style and aesthetic built off of the exact neon drenched romance that exists in Stranger Things more than it does hip-hop), the record shot to the Billboard top 10 and for high school kids and younger is remembered fondly thanks to his VMA’s performance as much as it’s inescapable presence in grocery stores and drive time radio. He did interviews on Hot97, GQ, Billboard Magazine, an infamous Rolling Stone cover switch up, The Fader, and even a live event with Elliott Wilson. Unquestioned superstardom was his goal, and he was going to shake all the hands and kiss all the babies until it was his.

Flashes Of The Past & Future

  

     Nothing Was The Same became one of Drake's many moments in the sun. The 658,000 copies it moved week one were the most by a rapper in two years (Tha Carter IV did 964,000). It was GRAMMY nominated for Rap Album of The Year. Was near the top of every year end albums ranking list. As much as Drake was shined with praise, it was his right hand man and dear friend 40 who pushed Drake to tighten the track list down to 13 on the standard edition. It still remains the most concise rap project in his catalog, though within those 13 there’s a combination of beat switches, mood changes, literal “hidden” tracks and tonal disruptions to make the 60 minutes of run time undaunting. 40’s fingerprints are on every song, over half having direct production credits with the album being mixed and mastered in majority by him. The moodiness of Take Care is given an influx of experimental aggression, the drums blast through the speakers in short complex bursts or in repetitive perfection. His most agro moments previously are “Underground Kings”, “Lord Knows”, and “9AM In Dallas”, until the pre-album loosie “5AM In Toronto”. On "5AM" allusions to bad blood with The Weeknd, MTV and Chris Brown, but NWTS still is limited in this outright aggression lyrically. 

        With 40 on Martin Scorsese the production was loaded with enough aggressive flips to balance out the lyrics falling short of fearful, while also revving up from the prolonged malaise that weighed down Take Care at times. “Tuscan Leather” is a 3-part Diplomatic Immunity-adjacent odyssey based around a Whitney Houston sample, “Worst Behavior” is a beat battle judges dream, “Connect” is a low end portal slowed to a crawl honoring his beloved 3rd or 4th hometown Houston, Texas. These hard hitting moments are the ego of who he wishes to be at work in sonic form, but the lyrics to further the character are still in an infant phase. For flashes he’s toying with the pieces that would later be crystalized into If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. "Worst Behavior" and "Started From The Bottom" are excersies in the tones and pockets but lack the bar for bar focus to fill the spaces. His songwriting ability, relatability, and delivery are his true powers across his early career. Sweet spots come on “Wu-Tang Forever”, “Too Much” and “Paris Morton Music 2”, where all of the sliders are calibrated to make perfect Drake rap songs. Each has sonics he’s mastered (ethereal straightforward piano or sampled based beats) where he can rely on his conversational flows and simple but effective wordplay. They are vintage Drake, plucked from the depths of So Far Gone or Comeback Season. The vintage Drake moments mixed with his adventures deeper into 40's musical explorations create an album that is so distinctly himself that even the moments he's quoting Ma$e and Ol' Dirty Bastard you could be fooled into thinking it's just himself.

The Lyrics & The Ego

           The production is an ocean, vast, borderless, packed with unknowns that you can only appreciate with trained eyes. No two sections of a song feel the same, with slight tweaks in drum programming and instrument overdubs keeping every moment fresh. Jay-Z is the lone rap feature (sacrificing verses that were slated to be on Magna Carta Holy Grail), with only a Birdman shit talking interlude, Jhene Aiko croons, Majid Jordan background vocals, a heavily used Sampha sample chop to warrant a full feature credit, and Detail adlibs filling out the blanks of an otherwise Drake-centric universe. The production choices and vocal castings aren’t where safety lies, but rather in the lyrics. The writing is shallow, a vlog into the life of a rapper transitioning from rap stardom into the American zeitgeist. Sprinkled throughout are Wu-Tang references, while the longing for love is replaced with the longing for success that is finally within arms reach. The quotable lines are relatable not because they are thought inducing, but because they’re the most universally simple ideas put into a crisp package. The romantic heartbreak is simplified into conquests instead of a search for warmth. What made Drake a deeply loved figure is the details of his life. "Lord Knows" is still to this day the most emotionally vivd POV of going through a girls phone when she leaves the room. Now he's replacing the details of where the love went awry for just calling out the names of the women point blank. Courtney from Hooters on Peachtree was the piece that was supposed to complete him, but why? He plays as a self-aware ego maniac; still the emotional man-child using hip-hop as his release, yet he's arguably the biggest rapper in the world. He wants to pump his chest out, but he’s trying to prove to us (and himself) that he is a guy worthy of doing so. Fans have swapped seats from sitting over his shoulder as he spills his heart into a diary to standing next to him while he practices looking tough in the mirror. Nonstop he is wrestling with who he wants to be and who is, while weighing the pros and cons of each simultaneously. So many records are painfully human in the way he switches bar to bar between these two selves. Like LL Cool J, Eminem, Jay-Z and Kanye West before him, it all comes back to ego. My ego is hurt, so I will vent about how it happened, because my problems matter and I can't imagine why someone would do this to me. My ego tells me I earned all these wonderful things so why not flex them? My ego is only matched by the amount of cars in my driveway and the diversity of my portfolio so why not chase those things? My ego is under attack by someone I see as lesser so why not remind them who the biggest name in the world is? Nothing Was The Same isn’t a man faking it until he makes it, but rather one who has made it and is still deciding whether to lean into being who he has always wanted to be and who he has been until this moment. 

What Really Changed?    

        In the decade since NWTS, chart domination has been the focus for Drake over everything. It’s the one thing that can never be stripped from him. The idea of him as an all-time great rapper to some was taken down a peg by Nickelus F, Meek Mill and Pusha T. The idea of him as an all-time innovator is limited by the rap nerds reminding everyone of Joe Budden, Phonte, Andre 3000, PM Dawn and their own diary spilling content where a melting of R&B and hip-hop was second nature. But the chart history and sales numbers became his guarantee spot in the history books. Exemplified by the CRWN interview with Elliott Wilson in 2013, the questions of Kendrick Lamar and “Control” revealed Drake's disinterest in the entire hoopla made of the song. With an annoyed demeanor he pointed out “I saw him a few days later and it was all love”. The idea of hip-hop as a cutthroat sparring tournament was beneath him, and he revealed he was truly focused on Kanye West and Jay-Z as competitors, other artists who had transcended the hip-hop sphere into the greater popular music conversation. Though “5AM In Toronto” showed he could spar and had issues of his own with his contemporaries, he would only do it on his own time. The conquering hero is a character prominent in all of rap history, but never as focused as Drake. 50 Cent may be the closest to him, but his domination efforts were spread thin between clothing, video games and TV. NWTS was his true last attempt to be a rapper aiming for pop level stardom, where Views was him shedding the burdens of genre, shapeshifting into a pop star with rap sensibilities. NWTS stand as the last time he willingly played by anyone's rules before bending the world to his own will. It’s one of Drake’s three Hall Of Fame worthy albums, but of them it’s the weakest (1. If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, 2. Take Care, 3. Nothing Was The Same). The quality is that of a really good record yes; but it becoming the true coronation moment, his personal favorite child, the one that brought him his biggest hits that point, the most concise effort in a storied career, the love it receives to this day from fans all in combination put it over the top.

Best Song: "Tuscan Leather"

Best Beat: "Worst Behavior"

Best Moments: The 2nd beat on "Tuscan Leather", the 2nd part of "Connect", shouting out Courtney from Hooters on Peachtree, the Sampha vocal chops on "Too Much", Jay-Z making a cartoonish *pop* sound on "Pound Cake", 2 Chainz sneezing the word Givenchy and blessing himself after on "All Me.