I disagree, Nicki Minaj is a fine vocalist. And Drake's music is on another level. I recently reviewed his latest mixtape "If You're Reading This It's Too Late", which may help you understand my point.

Darkness vs. Light

This mixtape is as much about what you hear as it is about what you don't hear. Turning on this mixtape for the first time, hearing that distant, reverb-drenched, spacious fragment of a sample on Legend while looking at the plain white cover gave me this sense of total emptiness. Even when the rest of the music came in, that emptiness never subsided. Going into Energy, something about that machine gun leading into the low repeating piano was so STARK. It was so bold, yet also so EMPTY. It was like I was living in a city with no buildings, no grass or trees, just giant glass walls, see-through buildings and white floors. The music sounds almost too polished, to the point where it is disturbing, unnaturally clean. 10 Bands really caught me with that "Let em sleep, let em rest in peace" line, so heartless, so cold. The strange, off-kilter No Tellin'...

But something about all of these soulless, empty, minimal musical landscapes added up to something more. Maybe it wasn't that Drake was giving off this vibe because his heart was cold, maybe it was because his heart was tortured. Maybe he was struggling to express emotion in a world where emotion wasn't accepted. Like trying to draw a sketch on a piece of dark black paper, you can't. The only way to do it is to use a white pencil, a spark of light in a cold world. I think the cover reflects this thought. Some lines have two interpretations (soulless or soulful), for example: "Runnin through the 6 with my woes, you know how that should go". Drake is expressing his woes nonchalantly but saying it could also be interpreted as his homies (covering up his emotions), while also giving the listener the choice on whether to interpret should as "should" or "shit" (tough or clean?). "If You're Reading This It's Too Late", the unsettling feeling one would get when reading that is the same feeling one gets when listening to this music. "I didn't reply, let her know I read it though", so cold, so empty.

Drake is often made fun of for being too emotional or too "soft", in this project I can see him desperately trying to give this heartless, aggressive music some emotion and sensitivity (of which he finally does on the final track), and it really is fascinating to listen to. The more I listen to it, the more of the harsh surface is stripped away and the more I see the true nature of this album brought to life. This album, in all actuality, is sincere but troubled. A confident yet depressed soul who has no one to express themselves to. A confident yet insecure soul, overcompensating. A mystical, mysterious atmosphere, all glam but no personality. The end result of love of materialism over love of humanity. Like a portrait, a premonition of a dystopian future. It is absolutely brilliant.