After six months of anticipation, refreshing Drake and PARTYNEXTDOOR’s Instagram and Spotify daily, I was excited to finally see they finally announced the release date for their highly anticipated collaboration album: “$ome $exy $ongs 4 U.” I screamed when I saw the post and was counting down the minutes until midnight on Valentine’s Day for the album to come. However, after listening to the album, one thing I can say is that I’ve spent the last six months harboring expectations that the album didn’t meet.
Canadian rapper Drake, announcing the collaboration at a concert last fall, said it would be released “when it gets a little chilly.” Well, it’s been chilly for many months now, and honestly, it still feels rushed. Quite a few songs on the album, such as “MOTH BALLS,” “SOMETHING ABOUT YOU” and “GIMME A HUG,” repeat the same lyrics an annoying number of times. It feels like when I’m 50 words short of the required word count for an English essay and ran out of things to say.
It was initially marketed as an R&B album, but there were a couple of songs that sounded more like pop or even house music that felt so out of place for both Drake and PARTYNEXTDOOR (PND), considering their typical music genres. On the first beat of “NOKIA,” I was caught off guard. It reminded me of some of the house music Drake released in 2022, that I did not like at all, which to be fair, I tend not to like house music anyway. Also another song, “DIE TRYING,” sounds like a theme song for a Disney show. PND is known for his R&B music, rather than rap (similar to Drake’s old music), so I had a feeling the genre of the collaboration would lean more toward that. However, Drake chose not to go in that direction and instead moved forward with his modern-rap career. It feels like a Drake-dominated album in general. Drake has six solo songs, while PND only has one, and on the rest of their songs together, it sounds like PND is just a feature when we even get to hear his voice at all. There were even a couple of times, specifically on “CN TOWER,” where PND sounded exactly like Drake.
Although I feel like there was too much inclusion of other genres such as pop, house music and rap that sounds like wanna-be “R&B”, there were some songs that were just what I imagined the contemporary R&B album to be. “RAINING IN HOUSTON” and “DEEPER” are a few of the songs that have a very authentic R&B vibe, which I love, but I wish more of the album gave what these songs did.
Of course, I have to mention the nine-month-long, and ongoing, Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef, which Drake briefly acknowledged in “CELIBACY” with the lyric, “We’re not like them, baby, and they’re not like us, either one.” I was honestly surprised that out of the entire album, this was the only thing he mentioned about the beef, and even then, I missed it on my first listen because it didn’t seem like a diss in any way. It flowed so naturally with the song. He wasn’t making any anti-Kendrick comments, nor rebutting any of his accusations. If anything, it sounds like he was just inspired by Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” He obviously hasn’t forgotten about the beef, and knowing Drake and his typical lyrics, he most definitely wanted to say something else, but he likely wants to prove that he’s above it at this point, and in his position, I think that’s the best choice he could have made.
I wish I heard more of PND on the album, as it’s supposed to be a collaboration, not a feature. As big of a Drake fan I’ve been since elementary school, I think if the album had more focus on PND, it would have been much better. My biggest takeaway is not that the album isn’t good. I do like it; I already put many of the songs on my playlists on my first listen, I already have many of the songs stuck repeating in my head all day, and the more I listen to it, the more it grows on me. The album just didn’t meet the expectations I set for it. If Drake and PND had the album finished by the time they announced they were coming out with one, I might’ve been more pleasantly surprised with it, but I just feel I’ve spent six months getting my hopes up for something not worth the wait.
