(ThyBlackMan.com) In September, two heavyweight albums dropped by two artists currently deep in beef spanning multiple years. The root of this beef is most likely something very stupid, a misunderstanding, or something small that two massive egos simply cannot let it go. Whatever it is, it has made the hype for these two albums grow to huge amounts and has divided the hip hop community into two sides. Team Donda and Team CLB. I’ve taken on the task to listen to both of these albums to give my take and at the end of the day, decide which album is better between the two.
Donda
Throughout the years, Kanye has been one of my favorite artists. He has never been the best artists lyrically but he has always had witty bars and lines. Going back to his first album, he has always dropped great albums up until My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. After that, he had a few albums that didn’t live up to my expectations of him, but I can say that Donda is a return to form for Kanye.
One thing that has been consistent throughout the history of Kanye West’s album library has been his superior production led by him. He does get other people to make the beats at time, but he always makes sure to put his touch and sounds on the production. Even on his albums that I feel weren’t as good as the rest of them, the production has been great and very rarely fall below a certain level. Kanye does a great job of making every album that he has ever dropped listenable at the very least. Not many artists can say that every one of their albums sound pleasant on the ears.
Donda was a good listen on the first playthrough and got better with each additional listen. The way the album sounds make getting through the absolutely unnecessary on any album, 27 songs, a breeze. Getting lost in the music is easy on this album because everything sounds so good and smooth. Most of the songs sound completely different and there is rarely a time on the album where you would say that this song sound like that other song that I heard earlier.
The worse part of this album is the vast number of features on the album. It gets close to unbearable. This album is closer to a DJ Khaled album if DJ Khaled rapped. On almost every song, there are no less than two features on them and on almost every song, the features outperform Kanye. They do the heavy lifting in the song and Kayne is more of an afterthought. The most exciting parts of the album is to see some of the feature combinations that they had more so than to hear Kanye on the song with them. Some would say that his albums have always had a lot of features on them, but the other times, they were more of a compliment to his songs rather than the highlight.
Overall, Donda was a good album, but never reached the heights that some of his best albums reached.
Certified Lover Boy
The hype for this album dates back to last year around this time. After a million delays for many different reasons, the album finally released. To me, Drake has never been the person to go to for must hear production or the greatest beats of all time like Kanye. Instead, you can count on the songs always sounding pleasant to the ears and being listenable. Also, you can always count on a few bangers. Unlike Kanye’s Donda album, this album has a ton of replay ability.
Many people did not know what to expect from the album but going by the Certified Lover Boy title, people thought that it would be more of a singy, R&B album. Although it had a lot of him singing on CLB, there was also a nice amount high level rap. Something that Drake is a master at is making any song that he makes catchy and a song that you want to listen to more than once. Throughout this album, there is probably only one or two songs that you might not want to listen to but even those songs sound good to hear.
Like Donda, there are a lot of features on the album but nowhere near as many. Also, the features on CLB rarely outperform Drake. They complement the songs in a great way. Many of the times, the more I hear the songs with features, the more I would rather hear the song without the feature and an extra verse from Drake. On the song with Jay Z, even though he had a great feature, I would’ve rather had another Drake verse instead. Also, Travis Scott had a great part, but I could’ve done with either another Drake verse or Future instead.
Even a lot of the album cuts on this album are bangers. Songs like Pipe Down, 5AM on Briddle Path, and IMY2 are not the big radio bangers but got a large number of listens from me. There were not many songs on Donda that made me want to go out my way to listen to them multiple times. The intial sound of the features on Donda got me hyped but after the hype died down, I didn’t want to listen again and again.
Verdict
In my opinion, there is no debate between the two albums. No matter how good an album is, the top thing for me is replay value. If a song or album come out, you say that it is good or great but never listen to it again, is it really that great? I listened to Donda around seven or eight times and enjoyed it as a whole more and more each time yet after that, I did not go back to it at all. The replay value was not there and there was nothing else to listen to at the time. CLB on the other hand, still get heavy play till this day. The songs still hit hard and it still sounds fresh to me. I think that it would be considered one of Drake’s top 3 albums. Everyone has their preference in music, but to me, CLB is more of a social album than Donda and the album is one that you can listen to with everyone and they can enjoy it.
Staff Writer; Tardell Swift
This brother is new to writing yet has many different interests such as gaming, hip hop, wrestling, and manga.
You can follow him on Twitter; PhirewoodGaming and keep up with his thoughts there as well.