Earlier this week I proclaimed that due to the national Social Distancing/Quarantine dilemma, I will listen to all of Drake’s albums and rank them. And I did just that. While doing my regular day job from the comfort of my home, I have been bumping Drizzy non-stop so I can properly rank each project. I have been working tirelessly FOR YOU. You are welcome.
The process has been grueling, my emotions switching up every 3-4 minutes was quite exhausting; my portable Bluetooth charger dying mid song was unfortunate; but most of all, ranking the greatness that is Drake’s body of work is near impossible. How can you possibly rank one higher than the other? Let me be clear. I like all of these projects. I understand this is the internet and I’m pretty much breaking the rules here but just because one is higher than the other does not mean I hate the other one. Let me explain this as such. If I gave you One Hundred Dollars on 8 separate occasions, and then I told you to rank those times I gave you One Hundred Dollars, you wouldn’t be offending me to tell me you enjoyed one of those crisp 100’s more than another. That’s what is going on here.
Before we begin I do have to lay the ground rules. The first rule is that the rankings are of all projects that are currently on Apple Music. Some might argue, “That’s actually a mixtape” and to that I say that I do not care. It is 2020 and I have not bought a physical album in 5 years (GO:OD AM- Mac Miller). It’s all the same now.
Rule number 2 is that out of all the projects that are on Apple Music under Drake the 2 that will NOT be ranked are Care Package and What A Time To Be Alive. Care Package is obviously because it is just a collection of singles that were released over the span of a decade. What A Time To Be Alive is also not on this ranking because it is not fair to the rest of the participants. WATTBA is in a league of its own with other elite Collab Albums. It is basically 73-9 Warriors adding KD. Drake is the 73-9 Warriors and Future is KD. Honorable mention to the 2 greats of this era joining forces for a tape that served as the pregame warmup tape for most of the College Basketball SZN that year.
After 5 days and 1 text to my ex girl (Jordan Shrug), here it is:
8. So Far Gone
It’s hard to rank the project that started it all so low. But here we are. This project has classics such as “Best I Ever Had”, “Successful” and “The Calm”. Some might say this is recency bias, or the opposite of recency bias. This is Drake’s Rookie of the Year award. He went crazy, got his name on the map and he hasn’t left since.
7. More Life
These next few on the list are like the middle of the Western Conference standings. Only a few games separate you from the 4th seed and the 7th seed. . The word ‘contentious’ just doesn’t do it justice. For this project, the highs on this are very high. We have a Kanye feature, 2 Young Thug features, and even Quavo. There is also a lot of Drake going every accent in the world. It was great but it just didn’t seem like Drake went that hard on it, the features did shine though. This album also gave us Do Not Disturb and we cant forget that.
6. Scorpion
Scorpion is Drake’s most recent project, a 25 song “2-Sided” Album. It gave us “God’s Plan”, “Sandra’s Rose” and “Jaded”. Drake really demonstrated his great range on this. 1 Rap side and 1 R&B side. It flowed perfectly and it came at a time where he needed to bring heat to overcome his situation with Pusha T. He brought it and more providing us with multiple summer anthems. It is close but: Side A > Side B.
5. Thank Me Later
I can teach you how to speak my language, Rosetta Stone. This is Drake taking his Rap/sing skill to the next level. He shows that he can hang with Jay and Weezy on “Light Up” and “Miss Me”. This was Drake saying that he belongs in the MVP convo. The Kanye produced “Find Your Love” really hit the streets hard when it came out. We even got “The Resistence” and “Over”, this project really had it all.
4. Views
Shoutout to KD we relate we get the same attention. This was Drake’s first attempt at maxing out on the streaming algorithms. He puts together a long project that just flows through and cashes in on the streaming numbers. He did it 2 more times after with More Life and Scorpion so that’s how you know Views was successful. Some people that complained saying that songs sounded too similar. “Controlla” and “One Dance” have similar Island vibes but I wouldn’t knock the project for that. This album plays back at a high value with very few misses. It gave us another Rihanna and Drake combo with “Too Good”, a Drake and Future recall on “Grammys”. This whole album bangs and it stood out during a heavy year for good music.
3. Nothing Was The Same
Fuck goin’ platinum, I looked at my wrist and it’s already platinum. This was Drake coming off a MVP type season where he had great great features and a few one off singles. He was starting to lose a bit of hype because of the noise that Kendrick and those TDE boys were making. When NWTS dropped Drake just had to remind everyone that he was still at the top and that he was in this for the long haul. We were given “Furthest Thing”, “From Time” and ‘Come Thru” just to name a few. This album is really Drake winning back to back titles like the ’12-’13 Miami Heat.
2. Take Care.
2000 Shaq. That’s is the comparison that Take Care holds. We saw the skill set, we saw the talent. This was Drake putting it all together for a completely dominant season (Album). It got ultimate feelings Drake in “Marvin’s Room”. Bomani Jones is still making jokes about that one. The run of “Shot for Me”, “Headlines”, “Crew Love” to “Take Care” is iconic. This album gave really also gave us the trend of using Drake lyrics for IG captions.
1. If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late
If NWTS is the ‘LeBron Heat’ and Take Care is 2000 Shaq, then IYRTITL is the 1993 Bulls. The 3-Peat. It told us that it was physically impossible for Drake to release a flop. We were given an album full of hits. There are 3 separate 5 song runs on this album that go insane. Not counting the Interlude, 6 God to 6 Man is unreal. Also, the total number of 6 Man of the Year trophies for Lou Williams before this album: 0. The total of 6 Man of the Year awards since this album: 3. Think about it. But this album really goes hard.
If you want to fight me for this list, we can fight. But you have to give me your list as well. That’s how that works.
Too Good Entertainment 