Drake - Honestly, Nevermind

A thirty-six-second beatless vocal loop that sets the tone: Drake in falsetto, fragments about trust and distance, no hooks. Functional as an opening gesture, forgettable as a track.

The lead single and the album's first full track, built by &Me and Rampa around a slow-building house groove that takes two minutes to lock in. Drake sings about moving on from a relationship, but the melody is thin and the falsetto strains. The music video, in which he marries twenty-three women, is more interesting than the song. The production knows where it is going; the vocal does not.

The album's cleverest hook: the premise of an iPhone user being blocked and seeing green text bubbles, delivered over a Black Coffee beat that is crisp and propulsive. Google used the track in an Android ad, which is fitting because the song works better as a concept than as a piece of music. The verse is two lines repeated, and the falsetto grates. The production, though, is airtight.

The first track where the production and the vocal approach fully align. Black Coffee, Gordo, and 40 build a chopped vocal loop that functions as both rhythm and melody, sampling Trillville and Blaqstarr and turning the samples into house architecture. Drake's delivery is still passive, but the repetition works here because the beat demands it. The track moves, and it holds up on repeat listens. One of the album's two or three successes.

A short, breezy track from &Me and Rampa that floats on a piano loop and a steady kick. Drake sings about a woman who might be worth keeping, but the details are nonexistent. The track does not overstay its welcome, but it does not do much while it is here. Pleasant filler.

A two-minute sprint built around samples of Tapp and Obrafour, with Gordo and collaborators chopping the vocals into a stutter that drives the rhythm. The track has energy, but Drake's falsetto is lost in the mix, and the writing is once again a single idea stretched to fill the space. Works as a dance track, less so as a song.

The album's most direct Baltimore club nod, produced by Gordo and featuring dialogue from a Virgil Abloh lecture at Columbia. The Abloh sample is not a tribute in the emotional sense; it is a structural element, a voice that floats in and out like a synth line. Drake's vocal is again strained, but the production is inventive enough to carry the track. The beat shifts between tempos and textures without losing the thread, and the track works as a club record independent of the Drake context. Went to number seventeen on the Billboard Hot 100, which suggests the production did the work.

The album's other clear success, a five-and-a-half-minute track built around a piano stab that could work in a Berlin basement or an Ibiza beach club. Gordo and collaborators know how to build and release tension, and the track locks into a groove that justifies the length. Drake's vocal is still passive and repetitive, but the production is strong enough that the vocal becomes one element among many rather than the focus. Went to number eleven on the Billboard Hot 100. The best argument for the album as a dance project.

A Floetry sample, smooth and soulful, turned into a mid-tempo house track that does not do much with the source material. Drake sings about a relationship ending, and the track drifts. The production is competent but uninspired, and the vocal does not add anything. Skippable.

A collaboration between 40 and Black Coffee, the track that most successfully bridges the house framework and the ambient R&B that has been Drake's default since Take Care. The beat is warm and textured, with live guitar from James Bryan and keys from 40, and Drake's vocal finally finds a pocket that does not require falsetto acrobatics. The writing is still vague, but the track has a mood, and it earns its three and a half minutes. A glimpse of what the album could have been if Drake had met the producers halfway.

Produced solely by 40, the track sounds like a Take Care or Nothing Was the Same leftover, slow and minimal with none of the house energy that defines the rest of the album. Drake sings about a relationship in decline, and the track declines with it. The production is fine, but the song has no reason to exist on this album. Filler disguised as a return to form.

Over five and a half minutes of mid-tempo house that does not earn the length. Gordo and collaborators build a groove that stays in one place, and Drake sings in circles around it. The track has no hook, no progression, and no moment that justifies its inclusion this deep into the album. By this point the format has run out of ideas, and the song proves it.

The penultimate track, produced by Nyan, Tim Suby, and Noel Cadastre, is a slower, more introspective moment that tries to pull back from the house energy but ends up sounding like neither a house track nor a ballad. Drake sings about being a liability in relationships, which is familiar territory, and the production does not give him anything new to work with. A quiet closer would have worked; this is just quiet.

The only rap track on the album, featuring 21 Savage and produced by Tay Keith, Tizzle, Vinylz, and Cubeatz. The beat, built around a Playa Fly sample, is menacing and sparse, and both rappers lock into the rhythm with precision. Drake sounds fully engaged for the first time in an hour, and 21 Savage delivers a verse that is more specific and more memorable than anything on the rest of the album. The track went to number one, became Drake's eleventh chart-topper and 21 Savage's second, and serves as the album's escape hatch. The only track here that sounds like it belongs on a Drake album, which is either a relief or an admission of failure depending on how you felt about the preceding fifty minutes.