Drake and Kanye have always been two well-separated points on the same tangent, frequently letting off steam with their 10-pound what-the-hell vocabulary. Yet, at the moment, their fates are sort of intertwined. The Canadian rapper’s sixth album, Certified Lover Boy, appeared last week while West’s tenth album, Donda, is also doing the rounds. Listening to the two albums, the Drake versus Kanye war of words is on in full swing and the way they have approached their albums are absolutely different.

Drake

The 34-year-old’s Certified Lover Boy has already been well certified on Apple Music, becoming the most-streamed album on the platform’s history in 24 hours. All the delays seem to have been worth the wait. What may have come out in late 2020 and then early Janaury 2021, is finally here, containing 21 tracks that feature the who’s who of the music world. Just to throw a few names around, there is Jay-Z, Future, Lil Baby, 21 Savage, Travis Scott, Lil Wayne and Rick Ross. The man indeed has many friends but they also lend his album a different vibe with each track.

The big artiste on his album is Jay-Z on Love All. Two decades ago and even now, having Jay-Z is a sure shot at good radio play; and the man dials it up, rapping effortlessly like a legend: This ain’t the same Shawn that you knew once/I don’t shine shoes, uh or Only thing we respect now is violence/Anything besides this, we playing violins.

And hang on, Drake has a big budget, so there is a nice loop of the Beatles’ Michelle which slips into a chipmunk-style voice on the opening track, Champagne Poetry. There’s more to show the power of money. Way 2 Sexy samples Right Said Fred’s I’m Too Sexy.

Of course, he also takes a dig at Kanye West. Turn back the clock to November 2010, when Drake said in an interview: “I can never sit here and tell you that’s not one of my idols (Kanye West), that’s not one of my favourite rappers.” In 2021, things are absolutely different. On 7AM on Bridle Path, he sings without naming names: Secretly beefin’ me behind closed doors/But playin’ it peacefully for the streets to see/My n***a have some decency/Don’t move like a puto. He suggests that Kanye tries to change his priorities: Lettin’ me take the rap for that Casper the Ghost shit/While you findin’ all of the loopholes.

Finally, no Drake album is complete without a few quotable quotes. On F**king Fans the man goes: I’m still working on me/ And I’m coming back better for you. Well played.

Kanye West

Here’s a man who has experienced the very highs of the music world and is now going through a different phase. Instead of music, it’s his foray into the fashion world that’s brining in the moolah, with Investment bank UBS valuing his sneaker and clothing brand, Yeezy, to be between $3.2 billion and $4.7 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg.

There is a sense of darkness pervading the tracks, easily felt on Jail: Guess who’s goin’ to jail tonight?/ What a grand plan to sell you out/ I could scream and shout, let it out. Things get deeper on Come to Life which is probably the fallout of his life with Kim Kardashian: I don’t wanna die alone/ I get mad when she gone/ Mad when she home/ Sad when she gone. But whatever happened to the track You Never Abandon Your Family, which has been left out of the final cut; it’s the one in which he spoke his heart out about the break-up of his marriage?

Kanye too has an A-list pool of collaborators — Jay-Z, Lil Baby, the Weeknd, Pusha T, Pop Smoke, Da Baby, Vory, Chris Brown and so on. But this is more of a Kanye show where others have restricted rolls to play. Where the album falls behind is in way of production value, which is somewhat monotonous, with little variation in way of tempo, sparse use of drums and few pop hooks. And it’s long, very long at 109 minutes, covering 27 tracks. Perhaps the length stems from the fact that he has a lot to process. In recent years he has had to deal with hospitalisation, the Donald Trump embrace, and his terrible run at the top White House post (his ‘Birthday Party’ collected just 60,000 votes out of an estimated total of 160 million). Donda, in fact, is his troubled life, named after his mother, who died in 2007 following complications from a cosmetic surgery procedure.

Compared to Drake’s, the album keeps it in second gear most of the time because the ride is long and you just don’t know how people will react to an emotional journey that’s far removed from their own.