eMusic Review 0
The Game, the self-proclaimed guide to “penetrating the secret society of pickup artists,” tells the story of Style, a nerdy kid with a bad clothes and worse hair who studies all the great seducers before ending up under the tutelage of an eccentric genius who would be the best in the world, if only he could reign himself in. As it turns out, Drake, the child star-turned-rapper Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint, has followed nearly the same path, and while his new Nothing Was the Same doesn’t hide who else he learned from — across the album, he quotes Ma$e, remembers standing at a Bun B concert, calls one song “Wu-Tang Forever,” and raps over Kanye-influenced chopped-vocal beats in a sing-song style that might best be described as “sad Nelly” — the result is almost sui generis.
As big as any of those artists but still rocking that same chip on his shoulder, Nothing is something like rap’s version of Jordan’s Hall of Fame induction speech, the point where our hero stands at the top of his profession but still checks the kids who dissed him in high school and girls who turned a shoulder shortly thereafter. Where on “Tuscan Leather,”… read more »
