Because a review is as much about my own critical perspective as the work under consideration, I guess I should talk a little about where I'm coming from w.r.t. Drake. I really have no preconceptions about Drake. I've barely read anything about him, barely know his circles or his upbringing, and so far that lack of knowledge has served me just fine. I'm pretty sure he's Canadian or something, and is sensitive. I don't listen to much hip-hop, but I cherish the few albums and tracks that really suit me. I'm old school all the way back to Bach (O.G. of the Western Canon) but I'm open to the new school. I like what Nat King Cole does, a lot. I like what Death Grips does, sometimes. I don't listen to the radio, and most of the newer music I come to is because the melody or the flow is so irresistible that I just have to get it and listen to it over and over - and thence branching to related songs and albums and artists. I've written a lot of music; I've been playing the piano for ten years, and I've been slowly and laboriously climbing into basic competence as a vocalist over the last five years.
Emotionally I connect with songs but for me emotion comes from musicality. See, when you listen to tracks as much as I do, there's a sort of U-shaped Nietzsche-derived preference graph that develops with the best songs.
There's a trial period (the first 1-10 plays of a song, let's say) where the initial brilliance of the song's hook impresses itself upon you. This is the part where you might try to brainwash yourself into liking something and the song tries its best to help you out. And if it works, then, you know, you're hooked. If it doesn't, into the trash it goes. This is where 95% of songs I hear (at a minimum) go; if the song is mediocre, if it's irresolvably unpleasant, if it's got a vibe I can't respect, if it's a thought that doesn't stick, if it's got a big melodic idea that doesn't work? I have no use for that song. And I only listen to the song rarely thereafter, and only rarely does it bite back as something I'd overlooked. The novelty of this period makes the songs that survive (and even the songs that fail admirably) quite entertaining for this duration.
And if I keep listening to a song after the trial period? Suddenly the urge to sing along is there. More generally, I try to replicate the song, to get the chords, to get the mood, to see the bare bones of production and lyrical connotation. And immediately, the real culling period begins - okay, you passed the test: you're a solid song with a great hook and a great feel. But will your lyrics survive the sudden scrutiny of someone singing along? Does your bridge fit into the song well, or did I just miss that part? Are there melodic ideas that totally don't work that I've totally overlooked? And so on. This can take dozens or hundreds of plays. This is where my experience of the song reaches its nadir - nitpicking isn't nearly as fun as relishing. But in the end, after a long time, a song that gets discarded at this stage gets frequent play after that point... and a song that survives gets endless play.
And then, as I listen to the songs endlessly, the endlessly minute details come to the forefront. A perfect song has survived all my scrutiny and I will get more and more enjoyment as I listen to it build on previous listening into greater and greater territory, asymptotically approaching euphoria.
So now that you know exactly where I'm coming from, let's talk about "Nothing Was the Same".
Okay, so any track where Drake sings something remotely sensitive using that vocoder crap is automatically off my list forever. It automatically fails the trial period after one or two listens and I never want to hear it again. All the songs with really sensitive vocoder vocals by Drake completely fall apart and it's impossible to hear whatever theme or mood he wants us to accept. Okay, not automatically, but I think you know what I'm saying. Look, the vocoder is a fine addition to popular music; whether it's overused is irrelevant, the point is that it can be part of greatness. But I'd argue that using the vocoder correctly means understanding its limitations, and among these limitations are slowed-down expression, singing long phrases, and making the vocoder vocals the center of a song.
Hearing someone sing in a vocoder isn't necessarily offensive at all, but it certainly is artificial (Don't think that's too controversial). And, in order to counter this artificiality, harmonies help a great deal (adding a sense of instrumentation and structure). Short phrases help. Using vocoders in songs that don't demand highly-expressive vocals helps. Hell, using vocoders in beats that exploit the oscillatory wah-wah mechanical catchiness of the sound helps. Using vocoders in danceable tracks that don't expect sing-alongs helps.
What doesn't help when using a vocoder is when you're making an AutoTune'd vocal the lead in a love ballad or a lament. Because if a love ballad or a lament means anything, that meaning is precisely in the authenticity of the persona and the integrity of the voice. I mean, this isn't a curmudgeonly thing to say - I think most people like to listen to a song that is either:
- Danceable/rockable/head-bang-able/"Ether"eal/fun/upbeat/clever, or
- sensitive/authentic/true-to-life/meaningful/thoughtful/well-constructed/slow.
This isn't a strict dichotomy and every song is different, and there are the rare songs that capture attributes from both bullets (hey Stevie), but in a nutshell those are the two types of songs I look and select for, anyway, when I'm culling tracks that don't work for me. The vocoder is distinctly more suitable to the former group of songs. ALL OF THE LIGHTS ALL OF THE LIGHTS. WE'RE UP ALL NIGHT TO GET LUCKY. etc.
And Drake just has too many tracks that use vocoders in the second group of songs and to me come off sounding silly, overwrought, and ill-conveyed on "Nothing Was the Same".
All that said, there are quite a few great points in the album's favor. "Started From the Bottom" is a total freaking smash. Generally speaking, Drake is good enough as an MC and thematically is pretty solid - he hardly overdoes the "swagger"/wealthy musician angle, or uses it as a lead-in for observations about relationships with girls and friends and feelings. Though there are plenty of tracks where he's just hitting the marks (and his flow, generally speaking, as phenomenally uninteresting), Drake is just fine. Drake has, if not fantastic production, then earnest and solid production, and when you combine that with the better rap verses you're really on to something special. The production is actually pretty neat: Scratchy reversed-audio-beats work to keep tracks together nicely, and on the tracks where productions go all out with the bass, the bass actually makes the vocoder and reverse-audio stuff work pretty well in contrast. The guest MCs and singers are pretty good, including a superfluous, silly appearance by Jay-Z. Though, of course, over the course of the album, there's one male and one female guest vocalist that both knock their cues out of the park, and it uncomfortably reminds the listener that excellent vocals are such a rare privilege on "Nothing Was the Same".
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