Certified Lover Boy (Album)

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    Drake Removes Himself From Competition for 2022 Grammy Awards

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    The superstar rapper and singer, long a critic of the awards, was nominated in two categories, best rap album and best rap performance.Drake, the chart-topping rapper and singer, has withdrawn his name from competition in the upcoming Grammy Awards, the latest problem involving headlining talent for the embattled awards, which have struggled with the alienation of other top acts like the Weeknd and Frank Ocean.Drake, one of the most popular and influential artists in pop music today, had two nominations for the 64th annual awards, which were announced two weeks ago. His song “Way 2 Sexy,” featuring Future and Young Thug, was up for best rap performance, and “Certified Lover Boy” — one of the biggest hits of the year — was up for best rap album. He was not nominated in any of the top categories, like album, record or song of the year.But Drake and his managers recently asked that his name be removed from the two rap categories, and the Recording Academy, the organization behind the awards, honored the request, according to representatives for the rapper.The Recording Academy had no comment, but a page on the Grammys’ official website, listing changes to the nominations, was updated on Monday noting the removal of Drake’s two citations.The news was first reported by Variety.Drake’s withdrawal, which emerged just as the final voting period for the awards was opening, is the latest complication for the Grammys. The academy has struggled for years to prevent an exodus among major artists of color, who have made a litany of complaints against the awards, including a poor record of wins for Black artists in the most prestigious categories, as well as a wider failure by the academy and its voters to recognize and appreciate the cultural heft and intricacies of contemporary Black music..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The Recording Academy has also taken steps in recent years to attract a younger and more diverse voting pool and to prove to the music industry that its processes are fair and transparent.But already this year, the awards have been dogged by questions about what has happened behind the scenes. The day before the nominations were announced last month, the academy’s board approved a last-minute plan to expand the ballot in the top four categories to 10 slots, from eight. Comparing the final ballot to an early version of its nominations list, which circulated throughout the industry, showed that the beneficiaries included Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Abba and Lil Nas X.Drake has been nominated for 49 Grammys in his career — counting the two nods he got this year — and has taken home four. But he has long expressed ambivalence about the awards, even after winning, and has often decided not to attend the ceremony even when he has been widely nominated.After his streaming smash “Hotline Bling” won best rap song and best rap/sung performance in 2017, Drake questioned his genre categorization in a radio interview. “‘Hotline Bling’ is not a rap song,” he said at the time. “Maybe because I’ve rapped in the past or because I’m Black, I can’t figure out why.” He added of the awards, “I don’t even want them, because it just feels weird.”In 2019, when Drake and Kendrick Lamar were the two most-nominated artists, each declined invitations to perform on the show. Drake did appear onstage to accept the best rap song award for “God’s Plan,” but seemed to allude in his speech to the Grammys’ fraught history in recognizing hip-hop — a rocky relationship that dated back to the first-ever rap award in 1989, when some artists boycotted the show because the category was not going to be televised.“This is a business where sometimes it’s up to a bunch of people that might not understand what a mixed-race kid from Canada has to say or a fly Spanish girl from New York, or a brother from Houston,” Drake said. “But the point is, you’ve already won if you have people who are singing your songs word for word — you don’t need this right here,” he added, holding up the Grammy.But as Drake started to continue speaking, the Grammys cut to commercial. Drake later called his words “too raw for TV.” A representative for the show said that producers had mistaken a pause in Drake’s speech for the end.Earlier this year, before the 63rd annual show, the Weeknd, who had been shut out of the nominations despite his album, “After Hours,” being one of the biggest hits of 2020, declared that he would boycott the awards in the future to protest its use of anonymous nominations review committees. Those were blue-ribbon industry panels that sorted through voters’ first-round nomination picks and settled on a final ballot.The review committees had long been a subject of intrigue in the business. A legal complaint by Deborah Dugan, who became the academy’s chief executive in 2019 — only to be ejected just five months later — said that those committees were rife with corruption and conflicts of interest. This year the Recording Academy, led by its new chief, the producer Harvey Mason Jr., eliminated those committees in most categories, though the last-minute rule change has once again put a spotlight on the nominations process.In response to the perceived snubs of the Weeknd last year, Drake wrote on Instagram that “we should stop allowing ourselves to be shocked every year by the disconnect between impactful music and these awards and just accept that what once was the highest form of recognition may no longer matter to the artists that exist now and the ones that come after.”He added, “This is a great time for somebody to start something new that we can build up over time and pass on to the generations to come.”The 64th annual Grammys are scheduled to be held in Los Angeles on Jan. 31. More

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      Drake Earns a Fifth Week at No. 1 Ahead of Music’s Major Fall Releases

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      With new albums by Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and Adele looming, the rapper’s “Certified Lover Boy” remains atop the Billboard chart.Before Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and Adele make themselves known on the Billboard album chart, there is still Drake.In the absence of much competition, the rapper’s latest album, “Certified Lover Boy,” logged its fifth nonconsecutive week at No. 1 with the equivalent of 74,000 sales in the United States, including 100 million streams and fewer than 1,000 copies sold as a complete package in its eighth week out, according to MRC Data.But major releases loom this fall as formidable challengers: Sheeran’s new album, “=,” pronounced “equals,” was released on Friday and will make its chart debut next week, while Swift’s rerecorded version of “Red,” from 2012 — now called “Red (Taylor’s Version)” — is due out Nov. 12.Yet even those top-selling singer-songwriters should enjoy their likely spots at No. 1 while they last, as the new album from Adele, “30,” is scheduled for release on Nov. 19, and is shaping up to be another blockbuster.Drake’s five weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 so far this year with “Certified Lover Boy” match the stay of his previous album, “Scorpion,” in 2018, according to Billboard. And it ties his second-longest reign for a release, trailing the 13 weeks at No. 1 for his 2016 album, “Views.”“Certified Lover Boy” is followed on this week’s chart by some of the year’s most consistently popular releases, including “Dangerous: The Double Album” by Morgan Wallen at No. 2; “Planet Her” by Doja Cat at No. 3; “Sincerely, Kentrell” by YoungBoy Never Broke Again at No. 4; and “Sour” by Olivia Rodrigo at No. 5.New albums by Lana Del Rey (“Blue Banisters,” No. 8) and Elton John (the collaborative “The Lockdown Sessions,” No. 10) were the top debuts of the week. More

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      Drake’s ‘Certified Lover Boy’ Spends a Fourth Week at No. 1

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      The Houston rapper Don Toliver opens at No. 2, while the music industry turns its attention to the numbers for Adele’s comeback single.Drake returns to No. 1 on this week’s Billboard album chart, while the Houston rapper Don Toliver opens at No. 2 and the music industry keeps a close eye on the numbers for a song that will impact next week’s chart: Adele’s comeback single.Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy,” which arrived at No. 1 last month with blockbuster streaming numbers after nearly a year of teases and false starts, notched its fourth week at the top. In its sixth week out, “Certified” had the equivalent of 94,000 sales in the United States, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. Virtually all of that number is attributed to streaming, with nearly 126 million clicks online.After six weeks out, Drake’s album has racked up nearly 1.4 million equivalent sales, including 1.7 billion streams — a huge showing, but cooler than the release of the rapper’s last studio album, “Scorpion,” in 2018, which in its first six weeks had 1.8 million sales and 1.9 billion streams.Toliver, a protégé of Travis Scott, opened in second place with “Life of a Don,” his second studio album. It had the equivalent of 68,000 sales, including 64 million streams.YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s “Sincerely, Kentrell” is in third place, Meek Mill’s “Expensive Pain” is No. 4 and Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is No. 5. Last week’s No. 1, Taylor Swift’s “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” fell to No. 35.Attention is now shifting to the data rolling in for next week’s singles chart, with Adele’s song “Easy on Me” expected to arrive with huge numbers. Released late last week — in an unusual move, Adele tied its worldwide arrival to midnight British time, making it available in the United States on Thursday — it quickly attracted big streaming numbers. Spotify announced that the song had broken its record for the most-streamed track in a single day, and Amazon Music said it had gotten “the most first-day Alexa song requests” in that service’s history.On Monday, CBS announced “Adele One Night Only,” a two-hour special featuring a concert performance and an interview with Oprah Winfrey, coming on Nov. 14, five days before the release of “30,” Adele’s first album in six years. More

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      Youngboy Edges Past Drake for Billboard No. 1 Album Slot

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      “Sincerely, Kentrell” narrowly beat Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” to earn this Louisiana rapper his fourth Billboard chart-topping album in two years.In a close race for No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, the new release by YoungBoy Never Broke Again, a 21-year-old from Baton Rouge, La., narrowly beat fourth-week sales for “Certified Lover Boy,” the streaming smash by Drake, who was dethroned after three straight weeks on top.YoungBoy’s “Sincerely, Kentrell” tallied 137,000 album units in total (including 186 million streams and 10,000 in traditional sales), enough to squeak by the 135,000 overall sales units for “Certified Lover Boy,” according to Billboard.“Sincerely, Kentrell” becomes the fourth No. 1 album in less than two years for YoungBoy, who is incarcerated awaiting trial in Louisiana, where he faces federal charges that he possessed an unlicensed gun as a felon. YoungBoy was among 16 people arrested in Baton Rouge in September 2020 on drug and firearm charges, not long after his album “Top” became his third No. 1 in less than a year.YoungBoy — among the most popular musicians on YouTube — has been dogged by legal problems since signing with Atlantic Records as a teenager in 2016. In the current case, his lawyers have said he did not possess any of the contraband himself and are seeking to suppress evidence they say was unconstitutionally obtained, according to court filings.In its first month out, Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” earned the equivalent of over 1 million sales in the United States, including more than one billion streams, and it held off a formidable challenger in Lil Nas X’s debut album, “Montero,” last week. This time, “Certified Lover Boy” settled for No. 2, although it is expected to contend for the top spot again next week.The rest of the Top 5 is rounded out by “Montero,” at No. 3; Kanye West’s “Donda,” repeating its position at No. 4; and Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour,” which also held steady at No. 5. More

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      Lil Nas X’s ‘Montero’ Debuts at No. 2, While Drake Holds at the Top

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      Over its three weeks out, Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” has logged the equivalent of just over 1 million sales in the United States.Drake holds the top spot on the Billboard album chart for a third week with “Certified Lover Boy,” while Lil Nas X starts at No. 2.“Certified Lover Boy,” which had arrived on the chart with the biggest opening-week numbers in over a year, has since cooled down a little. In its third week out, it had 222 million streams in the United States and sold about 4,000 copies as a complete package; altogether, it was credited with the equivalent of 171,000 sales, according to MRC Data, a tracking service owned by Billboard’s parent company.Those numbers let “Certified Lover Boy” hold the top spot by a comfortable margin. Over its three weeks out, the album has logged the equivalent of just over 1 million sales in the United States, including nearly 1.3 billion streams. Since the arrival of “Thank Me Later” in 2010, a Drake title has been No. 1 on the weekly Billboard 200 album chart 30 times.Drake’s closest competitor this week was “Montero” by Lil Nas X, the rapper and meme virtuoso whose “country-trap” song “Old Town Road” was a chart-busting phenomenon two years ago, notching a record 19 weeks at No. 1. In its opening week, “Montero” had the equivalent of 126,000 sales, including 147 million streams, landing at second place.With 15 songs, “Montero” — which features guest spots by Elton John, Megan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat and Miley Cyrus — is Lil Nas X’s first official LP, after “7,” an eight-track EP released in 2019, at the height of the “Old Town Road” craze. (Still, it was nominated for album of the year at the Grammys.) “7” also peaked at No. 2 on the album chart.The other big debut this week is “Sticker” by NCT 127, a “sub-unit” of the 23-man K-pop group NCT. “Sticker” opens at No. 3 with the equivalent of 62,000 sales, mostly from copies sold as a complete package, like CD boxed sets. Its 11 songs had 4.7 million streams in the United States.Kanye West’s “Donda” is No. 4 and Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is No. 5. More

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      Drake’s ‘Certified Lover Boy’ Holds at No. 1 for a Second Week

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      The rapper’s latest album repeats at the top of the Billboard 200, and Kacey Musgraves’s “Star-Crossed” opens at No. 3.In its second week out, Drake’s hit new album, “Certified Lover Boy,” lost 61 percent of its sales, but it still holds at No. 1 on Billboard’s chart, while the latest LP from the Grammy-winning country star Kacey Musgraves opens at No. 3.“Certified Lover Boy” had the equivalent of 236,000 sales in the United States, down from 613,000 in its debut week, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. Almost all of its total was attributed to streaming activity, with songs from the album garnering 305 million clicks — still a huge weekly number, beaten this year only by the opening weeks of J. Cole’s “The Off-Season” (325 million), Kanye West’s “Donda” (357 million) and, of course, “Certified Lover Boy” (744 million).Musgraves’s fifth studio album, “Star-Crossed,” starts at No. 3 with 77,000 sales, including 38 million streams and 47,000 copies sold as a complete package. Musgraves’s last LP, “Golden Hour,” won album of the year and best country album at the 2019 Grammys.West’s “Donda” holds at No. 2 in its third week out, with the equivalent of 79,000 sales. Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is No. 4, and “The Melodic Blue” by the rapper Baby Keem, a protégé of Kendrick Lamar, opens at No. 5.Also this week, Metallica’s self-titled album from 1991 — known to fans as the “Black Album,” and featuring breakthrough hits like “Enter Sandman” and “The Unforgiven” — jumped 149 spots to No. 9 thanks to a 30th-anniversary reissue. More

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      Is Drake Tired of Drake?

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      Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” just had this year’s biggest debut week, a testament to his immense staying power more than a decade into his career. But this album also reflects a slowdown in the Drake Industrial Complex: He’s pulled back on sonic innovation, and his story tropes are becoming familiar.Is the age of Drake nearing its conclusion? He has been the most influential pop star — in any genre — of the past decade, but his ideas have been widely disseminated and copied.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Drake’s habits and tics, his relationship to social media, and the long arc of the era he shaped — and whether it will ever truly come to an end.Guests:Charles Holmes, a writer and podcaster at The RingerJeff Ihaza, a senior editor at Rolling Stone More

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      Drake’s ‘Certified Lover Boy’ Opens With the Year’s Biggest Week

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      The rapper’s latest album debuted with the equivalent of 613,000 sales in the United States, easily beating Kanye West’s total of 309,000 just one week ago.All year long, Drake has teased his fans with a new album, which he said early on would be called “Certified Lover Boy.” It was sure to be a hit, but how big? For Drake, a titan of the streaming era — who over the last week has been facing off against Kanye West — the stakes were high.Now the answer is clear: “Certified Lover Boy” is a blockbuster, eclipsing everything else released this year, although as a streaming phenomenon it fell slightly short of Drake’s own record.In its first week out, Drake’s album opened at No. 1 on Billboard’s chart with the equivalent of 613,000 sales in the United States, according to MRC Data. That is more than any title since Taylor Swift’s “Folklore” had 846,000 in July 2020, before a change in Billboard’s chart rules disqualified most retail bundles, like giving fans a download with the sale of a T-shirt — a highly effective but contested sales strategy.Drake’s great strength is streaming, and “Certified Lover Boy” did not disappoint. In its first week out, the album’s 21 songs racked up 744 million streams in the United States — about 74,000 per minute — far more than any other title. It broke Spotify’s record for the most streams in a single day. (West’s “Donda” opened with the equivalent of 309,000 sales, including 357 million streams.)Drake also dominates Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart, which incorporates streams, radio play and song downloads. Nine of the chart’s Top 10 songs are by Drake, with “Way 2 Sexy,” featuring Future and Young Thug, at No. 1. (The only non-Drake song is “Stay,” by the Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber, which fell four spots to No. 6.)But “Certified Lover Boy” did not quite match the streaming performance of Drake’s last proper studio album, “Scorpion,” in 2018. In its first week out, “Scorpion” had 746 million clicks. The minutiae of chart composition shows that “Certified Lover Boy” is not as close to that record as it might seem. When “Scorpion” came out, Billboard counted only audio streams; in 2020, it began incorporating both audio and video clicks. According to Billboard, the 744 million total streams for “Certified Lover Boy” include nearly 29 million for videos.West’s “Donda,” last week’s chart-topper, fell to second place with the equivalent of 141,000 sales, a drop of 54 percent.Also this week, the veteran British heavy metal band Iron Maiden scored its highest chart position ever with “Senjutsu,” which opens at No. 3 — with just 3.6 million streams, but 61,000 copies sold as a full package. The band’s last two studio albums, “The Book of Souls” (2015) and “The Final Frontier” (2010), each went to No. 4. (And 1980s classics like “Powerslave” and “Somewhere in Time”? They never cracked the Top 10.)Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is No. 4 and Doja Cat’s “Planet Her” is No. 5. More

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      On 'Certified Lover Boy,' Drake Seeks an Enemy Besides Himself

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      His new album “Certified Lover Boy” is full of familiar anxieties and sounds, and barbed words for Kanye West, a mentor turned nemesis.At this point in Drake’s career, there are songs about the throne, and songs about the bed. Each milieu comes with a price. The first is about hard power: Remaining at the top means outmaneuvering enemies, building up an invulnerable enterprise. The other, in Drake’s hands at least, is about soft power — most often, the path to conquest is through humility, and sometimes awe. Rarely do the two modes meet.Which is what makes the concluding verse of “Race My Mind,” from Drake’s new album “Certified Lover Boy,” such a jolt. In the first half of the song, he’s singing, but his affection is starting to curdle; it’s a serenade to a woman who’s listening to other things. Midway through, the song shifts away from sweet plea to indignation, and Drake turns to rapping.He sounds frustrated, dismissive, a little anxious: “Don’t you dare hit me back with no ‘k, sure’/Soon as I tell you that you the one I would wait for/You too saucy, too flossy, you moved in and moved off me.” The woman he’s craving is spending time with lesser competitors, and it’s scrambling Drake’s two vectors of control: “Know who you be around, I know that they teaming up/Telling you you better off leaving me in the dust.”It’s a fevered rush of affront, and by far the most alert Drake sounds on “Certified Lover Boy,” his sixth studio album, and first in three years. Historically, his approaches have been hard to argue with — he has fundamentally rewritten the template for pop music over the last decade. But on “Certified Lover Boy” they have been polished smooth, become maybe a little shopworn. This album is better in the dark. Better in the car. It demonstrates how sonically rigorous even the most casual, tossed-off Drake songs are. But its storytelling doesn’t always hold up to strict scrutiny.This is particularly true in the songs about women: the silly “Girls Want Girls” with Lil Baby, “Get Along Better” with Ty Dolla Sign, the lightly grim “___ Fans.” Rather, what really gets Drake steaming on this album are naysayers and adversaries, especially evident in the 11th-hour rhymes about Kanye West, with whom Drake has been lately — and historically, and forevermore — locked in a tangle. (More on these Oedipal shenanigans later.) “Certified Lover Boy” will make its debut at No. 1 next week with the biggest opening-week numbers for any album this year, replacing West’s “Donda,” which just did the same.Throughout his career, Drake’s nimbleness has made him one of pop’s most consistently inventive stars, willing to absorb and reinterpret any number of regional and global styles. There are sonic bright spots when he nods to Houston (the OG Ron C intro on “TSU” and the sample of Bun B’s “Get Throwed” on “N 2 Deep”) and Memphis (the sampled Project Pat verse on “Knife Talk,” its elastically chewy flow pattern ably mimicked by 21 Savage), both long-running fonts of inspiration. And sometimes Drake calls back to older versions of himself — the piano motifs at the beginning and end of “The Remorse,” the album closer, directly nod to “Marvin’s Room,” the ne plus ultra of Drake’s magnetic toxicity.But “Certified Lover Boy” is his least musically imaginative album, the one where he pushes himself the least in terms of method and pattern. Apart from the lite Afrobeats number “Fountains,” with the feathery Nigerian singer Tems, most songs here hew to the familiar narcotic synths and claustrophobic samples that underlie much of his music. This album might mark something like the beginning of the end of the Drake era, except that the Drake era is simply all of pop music now, and his innovations have become the work of, well, everyone else.Drake is aware of this, of course — no one both performs, and watches himself perform, with the same intensity. Some of this album’s sharpest lines are about how Drake, the entity, functions out in the rest of the world. “Under a picture lives some of the greatest quotes from me,” he raps on “Champagne Poetry,” about your Instagram captions. “I apologize for my absence, I know I left you without a name to drop/I don’t know how I expected you to get your clout up and get your money up,” he taunts on “Papi’s Home.”But also Drake is the primary engineer — his image is not happenstance. Which is why the video for “Way 2 Sexy” (which samples Right Said Fred) is designed for memes, though it feels halfhearted. And his deep-sigh line about being a lesbian on “Girls Want Girls” is aimed not at the progressives who have lambasted it, but those in search of a cheap wink.The way Drake steadily manicures his public image couldn’t stand in more stark contrast to how West manages his, and that’s the primary reason the current tension between them feels so asymmetric. West’s lashings — including leaking Drake’s alleged home address — have been primal, broadsides against an impertinent child. But Drake is a father, too, and there’s been something chillier and more strategic about how he’s handled the recent back and forth. “Give that address to your driver, make it your destination/’Stead of just a post out of desperation,” he raps on “7am on Bridle Path,” a lightly deflated but acutely barbed accounting of learning to fall out of love with your mentor.The day after “Certified Lover Boy” was released, Drake leaked “Life of the Party,” an unheard song by West that included some ranting lines aimed at Drake. But the song, which features a majestic verse from the rarely heard Andre 3000, was something approaching spectacular, and also profoundly emotional — in trying to paint his nemesis as hubristic, Drake instead painted him as vulnerable, the good kind.The truth is that this isn’t really a battle, at least not one fellow artists feel compelled to take sides in — several appear on both “Donda” and “Certified Lover Boy.” And that’s not the only thing these two albums have in common: they’re summary statements of a once forward-thinking but now widely accepted worldview, not wild reinventions. Perhaps bored with battling themselves, the two superstars have turned to battling each other. But that won’t heal what’s within.Drake“Certified Lover Boy”(Republic) More