Sunday, December 15, 2013

Finally Get It


Trying to get my thoughts together about why I think this album is so genius. 

It's different. Very different. In the very beginning of the cd he says "the isn't for the radio. But they play it anyway, that's just the way it goes".  He took that to heart. There aren't many radio bangers on this cd. Started from the bottom is a really sparse and chill beat to be the lead song. Most of the songs on the cd are very grating upon first listen. "Worst behavior", "305 to my city" and "connect" were awful at first. After several listens, they have so much character that they are among my favorites. 

Lots of trap influence on this cd. The symbols on "started from the bottom" have this really cool crash pattern where they don't quite resolve during the chorus and it ends up sounding string out. 

This cd seems to have drug influences on it. On one song he even says "im peaking im peaking". But the whole thing sounds like its for ears that have a couple to drink  and took a couple blunts to the done. It's that scattered and tweaks feeling that shows itself a lot on the cd, including all the high hat symbol hits, and the fake ones. 

He is more drake than other CDs. He's croony and audacious at the same. But this is the juxtaposition we have in life. Good isn't good unless there's bad to compare it to. "Worst behavior" is sandwiched by the most tender songs on the cd, maybe that he's ever done. 

"The boy" is drake, but it may be more accurately how he wishes he could be. Nothing was the same is referring to how he can't be that person anymore. That there's stuff that's happened that he can't change. "Nothing was the same" the title has several different meanings in this light. Knowing drake, it's simultaneously good and bad. It's great he's famous. He loves it. But it comes a price. This album is his mostly positive reflections on fame but how he can't stop what he's set in motion. 

Maybe the nothing that is the same is his music. Maybe he's telling us he's done being the same. And I commend that. This cd is different than his others and this is an indication it'll keep changing. 

He had the good idea to make this cd another deep cut. Part of my favorite aspect of take care was the length. It allowed us to meet drake and reall yet to know him, even of it took a while. That's because he's not simple. 

The album art is part of why has stick with me about the cd. It appears as of its a reference to biggie's"ready to die" cd. A baby on the cd has a lot of implications because of other CDs that have had babies on it: biggie, illmatic and more recently, Kendrick. The look skyward, looking at what's coming, not paying attention to everyone watching him, only his goals(what he's looking up to). He was face on in his first cd, slightly askewed on take care and now he's a portrait. He's had a transformation. He's not the same. But we already knew that.