![]() ![]() ![]() Both rappers talked about the status in the game they’re vying for and the lengths they were willing to go to reach them. While their sounds were different, with Sideline Story utilizing more piano keys and instruments in its production and Thank Me Later sounding more influenced by Wayne’s Hot Boys–era Southern beats, at this point in their careers the subject matter on the two projects wasn’t too different. This allowed them to land major features on their widely distributed debut albums, Thank Me Later and Cole World: The Sideline Story. Thanks to the support of two of the biggest rappers in the world at the time-plus the power of Roc Nation and Cash Money Records-both debut albums cemented Cole and Drake in the rap landscape. Cole both had the fortune of being guided early in their careers, respectively, by titans of the genre Lil Wayne, who would hop on several of Drake’s early songs and give him a visibility boost, and Jay-Z, who made Cole the first signee to Roc Nation. They beat the sophomore slump allegations with Born Sinner and Take Care, landed their classic albums within a year of each other with 2014 Forest Hills Drive and Nothing Was the Same, and have continued to climb the ranks of rap side by side until they finally reached the pinnacle of the genre together.ĭrake and J. Though their personalities and the subject matter of their music are vastly different, they experienced the same hills and valleys in their careers. Through the years, Cole and Drake have fostered a close friendship-from Drizzy buying dozens of copies of Born Sinner at Best Buy with Cole to the two making several surprise appearances at each other’s shows through the years. And thanks to the tutelage from their respective legendary mentors Jay-Z and Lil Wayne, they were able to lay the groundwork for becoming two of the biggest rappers in the world: Between them, they have more than 50 billion streams of their dense catalogs in addition to a heap of BET, Billboard, and Grammy awards, along with enough influence to affect an entire generation of rappers and rap fans. Both projects helped solidify them as leaders of the new school of rappers. Their debut albums, 2010’s Thank Me Later and 2011’s Cole World: The Sideline Story, also arrived within a year of each other. Cole entered the consciousness of the rap world around the same time in the mid-aughts: The former’s Room for Improvement dropped in 2006 and the latter’s The Come Up came out over a year later. And Drake has proved nothing if not that he’s a popular behemoth.Drake and J. The Grammys often go for popular behemoths even when they don’t have strong critical support. But by then Drake had built tons of cultural capital, and in terms of their commercial performance, they were the number-two albums of their respective years on Billboard’s year-end charts. Fans’ number-one album “Take Care” was his only winner for Best Rap Album thus far, but it was two of his later releases, “Views” and “Scorpion,” that earned him his Album of the Year nominations despite their relatively mixed receptions with reviewers. The numbers don’t perfectly correspond with his Grammy track record, though. But it has been diminishing returns ever since: 69 for “Views,” 67 for “Scorpion,” and 61 as of this writing for “Certified Lover Boy.” “Nothing Was the Same” is rated as his very best with a 79 score, followed very closely by “Take Care” at 78 and his debut “Thank Me Later” at 75. ![]() Perhaps surprisingly, our readers’ responses correspond almost perfectly to the assessments of music critics, at least judging from MetaCritic scores. SEE Kanye West albums, ranked: All 12 albums from worst to best, according to fans Padding your runtime certainly helps rack up more streams to boost your numbers on the charts, though it might also make for more inconsistent quality. Perhaps brevity is also the soul of wit since those top three albums include fewer than 20 tracks while his bottom three included 20 or more. Judging from fans’ votes, early Drake was the best Drake, with his first three albums (2010’s “Thank Me Later,” 2011’s “Take Care,” and 2013’s “Nothing Was the Same”) getting a combined 76.26% of the vote, while his three most recent efforts (2016’s “Views,” 2018’s “ Scorpion,” and 2021’s “Certified Lover Boy”) scored a combined 23.74%. ![]()
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