Why Drake’s Next Solo Album Could Be His Best

It’s been a tough stretch, but don’t count Drake out just yet. With a battle to overcome and the talent to back it up, Drake has the raw materials to follow this loss with the best album of his career.

Drake wearing a fur coat and black cap, surrounded by people in a nighttime setting.
Prince Williams/ GettyImages

Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show was already a historic W. But, while closing things out with “tv off,” Kung Fu Kenny hit Drake with his 100th fatality when a pitch black crowd illuminated a devastating summation of the moment: “Game Over.”

Their battle is done, sure, but it would be wrong to say the same for Drake, who’s apparently already plotting his next solo album. Last week, during a stop on his Anita Max Win Tour in Australia, he mentioned that he would be dropping a solo LP “when the time is right.” Whether that’s shortly after his joint album with PARTYNEXTDOOR—which is dropping tomorrow, February 14—or next year, Drake’s new solo LP will be the start of a new chapter in his career. This one’s called, “How to Deal With Defeat.” When it comes to rappers, it’s good music. When it comes to Drake, it’s great music. And he can still make it.

As bad as the loss and his subsequent Universal Music Group lawsuit have been for his reputation, Drake remains one of the defining artists of his generation. In the face of increasing public indifference to Drake’s music, Kendrick gave him an L and an opportunity. With a battle to overcome and the talent to do it, Drake has the raw materials to follow up this loss with the best album of his career.

Drake can use being the underdog to his advantage

Drake’s level up begins with a role reversal: for the first time since the iPhone 2 dropped, he’s actually an underdog. From the moment So Far Gone was released 16 years ago to around 2020, he was largely invincible. His tours broke records, his feature verses made stars, he dated Rihanna, and he collected more slaps than the Beatles. You can’t take away what Drake’s done, but the internet—and Kendrick—will try, and thus far, it feels like it’s all worked. It’s an about-face embedded with narrative gravitas. In the span of a year, he went from Apollo Creed to Rocky Balboa; 50 Cent to Ja Rule; the most dominant rapper to a Super Bowl punchline. But there are lessons in losses, and Drake’s output, and even the outcome of this battle, could spur a much-needed redirect from his previous artistic strategies.

Through the years, Drake’s continual success became conjoined with his musical and thematic monotony; the genuine transparency of tracks like “Too Much” and “Fear” receded into repetitive collaborations, quasi mafioso raps and fuckboy anthems about girls who weren’t good enough. While every release sold well, Drake became static. Gliding across the luminous boom bap of 2018’s “Sandra Rose,” Drizzy let loose bars that dripped in arrogance and, possibly, a trace of laziness: “Niggas want a classic, that’s just 10 of these.”

And yet neither fans nor critics agreed. His most recent solo album, For All the Dogs, earned the lowest aggregate critical score of his career, and to date, has only been certified once-platinum—a modest total when considering Drizzy’s commercial peak. His previous two solo albums, Honestly, Nevermind and Certified Loverboy, didn’t do much better. This was before his loss to Kendrick. Prior to that exchange, Drake hovered at his own personal status quo artistically and commercially. Now, fans, and Drizzy himself have seen that a God King can bleed, and his success doesn’t feel so inevitable. If Drake had been operating under the idea of, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” Kendrick, and the general public, have just told him to head to the repair shop. Having suffered an epic defeat on a global scale, Drake’s got all the motivation—and the ability—to do so.

Losing the beef could force Drake to be inventive

In the same way unchallenged success breeds complacency, failure spawns innovation. Winning big caused Drake to make the same song over and over again. Losing big should force Drake to be inventive. And it’s not as if he hasn’t done it before. Diaspora-spanning rap albums are more commonplace now, but tracks like “Controlla” and “One Dance” weren’t a thing rappers did before Drizzy. Those types of songs were about as common as North American rap superstars collaborating with Skepta or adopting UK accents to spit over UK drill beats. Drake did all of those things over the span of about two years. Some call it cultural appropriation, but if people were more honest—and Drake less successful — it might be called generational versatility. It’s been a longtime since Views and More Life. But Drake flaunted a degree of ingenuity on Honestly, Nevermind, which saw him graft his customary musings onto dance beats. While his vocals couldn’t carry the whole project and he skewed a bit too far from the specificity that defines his best songs, tracks like “Sticky,” a mesmerizing mix of sharp wits and club beat electricity, proved he could still combine the best elements of his styles for something altogether new. Drake has always had room to challenge himself. Now, Kendrick and, let’s say, the culture, have challenged him, too.

To be sure, there’s room for new musical dynamism from Drake. But the bars are still there. The fallout from the Kendrick beef has the potential to make them even deadlier. The difference is the vantage point. At his best, Drake used to snipe opponents from a throne, calm, controlled, and confident in his superiority. The Drake of 2025 is the hunted or ignored. It’s hard to say which is worse. Based on his leaked “Fighting Irish” freestyle, Drake and LeBron are no longer besties. Tyler, the Creator, who famously defended Drake from boos after bringing him out for his Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival in 2019. His ex, Serena Williams, Crip Walked in front of 130 million people during K. Dot’s Super Bowl performance. People whom Drake essentially made hits for partied to “Not Like Us” all summer. I say all of this to say that Drake has a lot to be mad about, and the past tells us he can channel that anger into some of the most potent lyrics of his career.

Drake needs to come with “Family Matters” energy

Aside from his best melodic tracks, Drake’s pantheon verses are as bitter as they are lethally incisive. Just look at any of the timestamp songs. Maybe “Middle of the Ocean.” I could burrow into his past, but, ironically, the best evidence is “Family Matters,” a generational diss track that still wasn’t good enough to win the Kendrick beef. For that one, Drake dismantles and discombobulates his opponents like Itachi Uchiha wielding the Sharingan. He had bars for Kendrick, Rick Ross, Metro Boomin, Future and ASAP Rocky. With spurts of murmuring melodies, shapeshifting rhyme schemes, and bars that are as snippy as they are succinct. It was a moment that, surprisingly, even won over some of his biggest doubters.

Now: imagine an entire albums’ worth of “Family Matters?” That could get a little one-note, but if he maintains that level of technical excellence—that level of fire—it would be hard to turn away from. And this time around, instead of vague nods to unspecified enemies and anonymous baddies of 6ix God’s past, we should know exactly who Drake’s talking about, just like in the old days. In effect, LeBron could become Drizzy’s new Courtney From Peachtree. It’s a narrative charm that encourages more emotional investment than the monotonous Drake-isms that had been spilling out every eight months.

Between the perceived betrayals, life lessons, and personal faults to sort through, Drake now has the ingredients for the most compelling music of his entire career. While he was dynamic enough to make us think otherwise, much of his earlier material was decidedly low stakes; suburban rapper problems rendered with the dramatic flair of The Young and the Restless. Or Degrassi. This time, Drake is bleeding, and the whole world can see it. If he was ever searching for new things to rap about, he’s finally gotten it, and if history’s proven anything, he’s got infinite ways to say it. He’s always had the skill. Now, he has the scars and the fury of a king trying to reclaim his kingdom.

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