DONDA>>CLB

Over the last week of August and the first week of September, two largely organized albums were dropped, Donda by Kanye West and Certified Lover Boy (CLB) by Drake.

Weste and Drake are rap/hip hop artists. A review for each album was made by two renowned companies known for their music critics and thoughts: CLB by the Post and Donda by Pitchfork. Each album was rated on a scale 1-6 stars. Drake’s release of CLB was delayed after he underwent surgery for his knee, but he made sure that his release was going to be big by releasing limited information, leaving listeners curious about the mysterious album. Drake had billboards for each artist’s feature, which were put in the artists’ hometown or city.

The only information Drake gave listeners on CLB was in a post on Instagram.

“[CLB is] a combination of toxic masculinity and acceptance of truth which is inevitably heartbreaking,” said Drake.

CLB was released on September 3rd, 2021. The top five most popular songs on this album were “Champagne Poetry” at #5, “Way 2 Sexy” (with Future and Young Thug) #4, “Girls Want Girls” (with Lil Baby) #3, “Fair Trade” (with Travis Scott) #2, “IMY2” (with Kid Cudi) #1.

Dylan Green, the editor on Pitchfork,on August 31st writes that CLB is “pain and pleasure”, and can be seen as an ensemble of love and hate that Drake has gone through. However, most listeners believe that Drake might have love just around the corner.
A week before Drake’s album drop came the album by Kanye West:Donda. This album had a long-awaited drop as it took Kanye West almost an entire month to release the album since he was supposed to release the album

In the month that Kanye had started to hype-up his album, he had three different listening parties. Pitchfork says, These listening parties were large amounts of time where Kanye was becoming his true self through performing the album in the album and the audience was trying to understand that. Two were done at the Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, and the last was in Chicago.

When Kanye West finally did end up dropping Donda, it had a whopping 27 tracks on the album. The top five on Kanye West’s album were Praise God #5, Moon #4, Jail #3, Off The Grid #2, and Hurricane #1. These top songs made nine out of top ten songs on the Billboard music chart in the first 24 hours. When the Drake album dropped, all Kanye’s charts were swept away.

Looking at Drake, 27 Billboard Music Award winner, and 4 Grammy winning rapper, against Kanye, the 2 time Billboard Music Award winner, and 21 Grammy winning rapper,both of them come out on top next to each other.

It seems Kanye’s Donda album was more about becoming himself,only needing god, and becoming something bigger,compared to Drake’s album of being a Lover Boy which in defining terms means ‘a sexually attractive male’. The critics rated Donda at 6/6 stars, compared to CLB, which ended with 3.5 /6 stars. Kanye’s album scored the second biggest global Spotify streamed album debut of all time.
However, although the critics might favor Donda over CLB, most of the listeners have it the exact opposite. Drake’s debut album made a record breaking nine out of ten Billboard charts top 10, and tied with Ariana Grande for most 1# debuts in history. CLB also out-streamed Kanye’s ‘Donda’ in three days.

The choice is yours, who is the better, Drizzy? Or Ye?

Cite:
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/?page=1
https://www.thepostathens.com/article/2021/09/drake-clb-certified-lover-boy-album-review-future