Hop on your favorite social media site and within 10 minutes you will probably see one of three terms: #NWTS, Nothing Was The Same, leak. Over a week before the scheduled September 24th release, Drake’s highly anticipated third album, Nothing Was The Same has leaked in full to the internet and reveals a few startling things about the rapper.
Drake turns 27 on October 24th and this would make the fifth year since a coyly assertive 22 year old Toronto child star bursted onto the scene with the emo-driven So Far Gone.
Nothing Was The Same lives up to its name.
His Relationship With Young Money Is Complicated
Paperwork taking too long, maybe they don’t understand me/I’ll compromise if I have to, I gotta stick with the family/Not even talking with Nicki, communication is breaking/Dropped the ball on some personal sh*t, I need to embrace it.-Drake on “Tuscan Leather”
Straight from the “Tuscan Leather” intro of Nothing Was The Same Drake shrouds his relationship with parent label Young Money in a few vagaries. After being the only Young Money artist who has released an album to not appear on the Rich Gang album, Drake revisits rumors of his departure from the label with “paperwork taking too long, maybe they don’t understand me.” While Drake has asserted on numerous occasions(and on the intro itself) that he will forever be on Young Money, other artists have also questioned Drake’s true intentions with the label:
Is he not in Young Money. I’m not saying it wrong but something is definitely not the same as the first album [with Drake]. That’s how I feel. How do you feel?-Nicki Minaj on Funkmaster Flex Show on July 29th, 2013
His once faux wife, Nicki Minaj, questioned Drake’s status with Young Money and later hinted at a disconnect between her and her one-time collaborator:
It gets a little hard to have a real connection when people are on different sides of the world, working on different things. You just never know who people got in their ear or what they’re feeling or maybe they felt wronged in some way. I don’t know. I just know that Drake is my baby and Wayne is my everything.
Drake’s Family Is Not The Same
My uncle used to have all these things on his bucket list/Now he’s acting like ‘oh well this life I guess’, nah f### that s###/Listen man you can still do what you want to do, you got to trust that sh*t-Drake on “Too Much”
In the past, Drake’s family has been sources of motivation to the young MC in one way or another. Whether his late grandmother looking out for him or his mom loaning him her car, Drake has painted his family as supportive bystanders of a child star’s sudden switch to pursuing music. On the album’s emotional apex, soul-infused “Too Much”, Drake gives a more mature outlook on his family addressing their complacency. Saying that “money got my family going backwards”, Drake examines how there are no more family dinners, his sick mother has become a hermit and his uncle has given up on his dreams. While the implication that his success has in a way stunted the progress of his family is surprising, the most startling revelation comes from the fact that not only has him and his father (the subject of his harshest family criticism in the past) have patched things up:
We been talking about the future and the time that we wasted/When he put the bottle down, girl, that ni**a’s amazing. Well, fu*k it, we might’ve had a couple Corona’s/Might have rolled a white paper just to hold us.
Drake REALLY Misses The 90’s
I sip Depora and listen to Cappadonna/The Fresh Prince is at dinner with Tatiyana/No lie/all these 90’s fantasies on my mind/the difference is with mine/they all come true in due time.-Drake on “Tuscan Leather”
Drake has a tattoo of Aaliyah on his back as well as appeared in the “ode to the VHS era rap” video of No New Friends and Nothing Was The Same does not necessarily disprove his fixation with the 90’s but it is the most tangible manifestation of that borderline obsession. Whether it’s quoting Wu-Tang members (and naming songs after them) or Drake is an 80’s baby living a 90’s. Drake even flips Ma$e’s classic “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems” verse and given the landscape of commercial rap music, hits the nail on the head:
Who’s hot who’s not/Tell me who rock, who sell out in the stores/You tell me who flopped who copped the new drop/Who’s jewels got rocks/Who else make rap albums doing numbers like it’s pop? Drake.
