Oontz Oontz, Baby

On Honestly, Nevermind, Drake came to catch flights, not feelings.

black music traverses the planet along the same winding, unpredictable pathways Black people do. Wherever we subsist, there’s culture—ways, wares, and wisdom— exchanged. New musical concepts blow in like developing storm systems, and vibrant art springs up in their wake. When you trace the steps of intrepid travelers at the foundations of these movements—like DJ Kool Herc, instrumental to the birth of hip-hop in the ’70s by virtue of the concepts from dancehall culture he brought to inner-city youth parties when his family moved from Kingston, Jamaica, to the Bronx, or Fela Kuti, the Nigerian cultural titan and Afrobeat pioneer whose music was a colorful response to homespun artistic traditions and local current events that also synthesized the innovations of jazz and funk bands across the Atlantic—sounds that once seemed far removed and totally unique to their geographies are revealed as distant relatives.

You have to imagine Drake sees himself on some such musical pilgrimage. The Canadian rapper and singer owes his career as a pop charttopper to his gall as a savvy early adopter and chameleon who softens the turns his music takes with plaintive vocals, self-aware lyrics about angst and desire, and aqueous sonics from frequent collaborators like Noah “40” Shebib. Drake is sort of like a rock-star venture capitalist: He latches on to a potentially great idea, and it creates a feeding frenzy. Sometimes the original idea gets watered down, but there’s a lot of money in following the sure bet around. His 2009 mixtape,

So Far Gone, braided southern rap, Swedish pop, ’90s R&B, and ’80s synth pop; 2012’s Take Care breezes from the triumphant trap of “Headlines” to the hypnagogic soul of “Crew Love” to the xx and Rihanna fan service of the title track to the spectral and mournful “Marvin’s Room.” They’re subtle, careful evolutions, smart annexations of regional and international sounds, the better to make Drake feel less like a businessman breaching new markets and more local and on the pulse.

Sharp turns lose people. More Life—the 2017 mixtape on which the expected train of trapsoul hybrids was derailed by nods to U.K. grime, Jamaican reggae and dancehall, South African house, and Nigerian Afrobeats—is not unanimously appreciated for its creative twists. Some see it as a carefree, unrepeatable peak, and some see it as the beginning of a doldrums for Drake. On 2018’s bloated, combative Scorpion and 2021’s surprisingly cranky Certified

Lover Boy, he reined it in, centering pillowy trap beats and the passive-aggressive mood of 2015’s

If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, the mixtape where his art hardened and skepticism began to edge out romance. It all succeeds because Drake is monoculture.

Honestly, Nevermind, his seventh album, seems designed to raise eyebrows. It’s both a noisy genre pivot and an embrace of sounds

Drake has given his spin on in the past. Like the four-song streak where More Life posts “Passionfruit,” “Jorja’s Interlude,” “Get It Together,” and “Madiba Riddim,” Honestly, Nevermind celebrates the shared DNA tying African dance music to its international diasporic siblings. It’s as much a musicology exercise as an attempt to push one audience outside its comfort zone while making inroads with a totally different one (typical Drake shit). But this time, the genre experiments that might have peppered prior projects as garnishes are the main course. Does the artist behind More Life’s intercontinental scope pass as a full-time dance-pop divo? Kinda, sorta.

Nevermind casts a wide net, taking inspiration from past Drake singles like “Hold On, We’re Going Home” and the moonlit, hypnotic grooves of South African DJ (and guest star on “Get It Together”) Black Coffee. Congolese Afropop star Tresor pitches in vocals, and EDM-trap producer Gordo (f.k.a. Carnage) produces a batch of songs that use his love of Baltimore club music and his track record as a wayfarer for rappers dabbling in EDM. With 40 in the mix as producer and engineer, Drake drizzles his vocals across these tracks, easing off the tightly constructed lyrical exercises of past records and singing universal lines about lust. Foregrounding the romantic longing that made him a star at the end of the aughts and avoiding the vengeful discourtesies of his recent releases, Drake arrives at his smoothest listen in years.

But what makes Honestly, Nevermind feel intimate can also make it feel sleepy. Drake is a sharp lyricist whose gains as a vocalist have come from intense practice; here, his instrument is being stretched to its limits. Several songs give him room to emote over placid, barely there production, carrying these with his melodies rather than sliding into elaborate vehicles specifically engineered to make his words more magisterial. Sometimes the lengthy stretches

of vocals, gossamer synths, and delicate drums are invigorating, and sometimes it feels as if we’re being treated to a performance of Drake trying to cut loose. From its opening lines—“Finding myself/Showing myself / Finding a way to stay out of the way”—to the two minutes of auto-tuned coos toward the end, “Falling Back” feels like the questionable kind of spontaneity, the freestyle where the words don’t quite gel. Leading with that song seems almost confrontational, a warning to the fans looking for more “Way 2 Sexy” and “Pipe Down” that we are checking all that bossy, flossy shit at the door this time.

Stick with the album, and it rewards your attention. The beat change in “Calling My Name” raises suspicion that Drake is circling ballroom culture; on “Sticky,” he demolishes a Jersey club track. Gordo gets us in the ballpark of tech house with “Massive,” then “Flight’s Booked” and “Overdrive” dip to explore the expressive guitars and soulful repose heard in Sade, Santana, and xx records. “Down Hill” and “Tie That Binds” venture a little further out, coolly juggling aspects of Afropop and drippy adult contemporary.

Descending into Honestly, Nevermind feels like drawing a warm bubble bath. It’s a comforting, frictionless environment, a sensory-deprivation tank with not much more to ponder than your innermost desires. The drums don’t pop. The vocals don’t soar. The synths don’t stab. It’s a head massage. It’s what you play at the after-hours, where you stop answering texts because you’ve found someone for the night, and very notably not what was burning down the club when you met. Dance music doesn’t have to always be brash, though. It can soothe and smolder. (Nightclubs need bangers, and so do retail shops, tanning salons, and doctor’s offices.) It’s strange to see these songs dismissed as house music when many don’t even qualify; it’s poor form dismissing the genre, and it’s rude to the half-dozen ideas crashing into one another in order to make anything as lotion-y soft and intercontinental as the part of the album where “Overdrive,” “Down Hill,” and “Tie That Binds” go full spa resort on us.

Black artists should feel at ease traversing traditions. There’s vital Black history in every scene, especially along the intersections of dance music, rap, and soul. When you take that route, you must show out. As much fun as it is to think about Honestly, Nevermind as a temporal curiosity, it’s more like Drake’s Soulection mix—a pleasant if subtle gesture, the heated hotel hand towel in the catalogue, a geographical shift ushered in as comfortingly as possible, a muted vacation from a much busier place he’ll get back to after a while.