I don’t believe fresh equals good. Just because something is different, doesn’t mean it’s good.

That was my opinion until I heard Drake’s Nothing Was the Same, released September 24.

Let’s back away from September 24 and rewind to October 22 of last year. Kendrick Lamar released his critically acclaimed Good Kid, M.A.A.D City album that turned Lamar into a headliner and that changed the fad of top 40’s rap to angry rap. Jay Z followed suit, releasing Magna Carta Holy Grail and Kanye with Yeezus. Angry rap has always existed. Eminem has made his living off of hate-rapping. But a person can’t ignore its current presence in rap.

Now back to present day: Where do we fit a Canadian rapper? It’s been hard to take Drake seriously, even when he won 2011’s Grammy for Best Rap Album. Critics raise their middle finger to the Grammys in regards to its outlook on rap music.

“Grammy tends toward pop-friendly hip hop that’s easily understood by those who don’t understand hip hop. Pop in this regard is not meant as an insult, it’s merely music palatable to non-aficionados of the genre.”
-Touré Neblett, Times Magazine

Neblett is wrong on the fact that pop is not to be an insult. Uttering the names Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber makes my point.

When Drake won the Grammy for Take Care, I, like much of the rap community, was still pissed about Kanye’s snub from best album of the previous year for My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Take Care was just another pop-friendly hip hop album.

It’s been two years since my frustration. The landscape is different. Pop-friendly isn’t the style.  Drake’s Nothing Was the Same is a huge curveball in the current landscape of music. All of this hate rap has helped us appreciate Drake–maybe it has even helped us retract our statements from his Grammy winning album.

This is a ‘B+’ album. Some of the transitions were off in Drake’s newest work, preventing it from being on the ‘A+’ level of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. But Drake is close. If he spends his next album with a more prominent and experienced producer (much like Kendrick spending his time with Dre), I think Drake will be on an elite level.

The current rap game reminds me of rock in the 70’s. We have so many players bringing so many things to the table. Queen, John Lennon, Black Sabbath, and the Rolling Stones—four of the greatest rock artists during that era—all made totally different types of music within the same genre. With examples such as Eminem’s sampling-induced single, Berzerk, I see sampling, hate rap, and hip hop being the 1970’s rock of today.