Is it the strength of your feelings overthrowing your pain?

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts.

21/04/17 : More Life - Drake


Our fifth and a half visit with Drake (the half was a collaboration with 21 Savage) and I remain mystified as to his popularity - I believe this is supposed to be one of his better regarded albums, but I remain unconvinced it will win me over. 

Hmmm, it's fine in places - I'd say I almost came close to liking some of the more R&B-ish numbers and the rappy numbers had the advantage of not being quite as unpleasant as some of his other stuff. I still don't understand what it is that makes everyone quite so keen on him, but I think it's probably safe to say it's not going to happen now. The other thing I'd say is that a lot of the album isn't Drake at all, with a load of guest artists involved, including a strong British representation with Jorja Smith, Skepta and Giggs all popping up. I also really didn't need EIGHTY minutes of it all - it dragged big time towards the end. 

We're at #4 in the charts this week on his fifth week of a 39 week run, with it having peaked at #2 in it's debut week - it then disappeared for Xmas but came back for another 44 week run, so people really couldn't get enough of the lad. The rest of the top five were Guess Who?, Kendrick Lamar (a new entry for someone else I struggle to understand the appeal of), Rag'n'Bone Man and Take That - I wonder who we're going to get to listen to next? The next highest new entry was Tinie Tempah (#9) but I'm also going to mention the Moana soundtrack (#7) because this had an 83 week run from December '16 and this was the highest it ever got to - interestingly, there are two more soundtracks in the top twenty for Beauty And The Beast (#12) and Trolls (#13). We should probably also mention Guess Who? again (#8 - with one we've not met yet) - people also really couldn't get enough of him around this time.

Wikipedia has quite a lot (251 milliPeppers) and it tells it's not really an album at all, but it's his fifth mixtape (even though it was marketed as a playlist, whatever the difference is there). There's remarkably little of interest there, except for telling us that it's his dad on the album cover - awwww. Critically, it was pretty well received with a lot of people going out of their way to sound very knowledgeable about all the musical genres involved - I'll let them spout on and just nod wisely in agreement. Commercially, it did very well from day one, breaking loads of streaming records - interestingly it only got to #1 in the US and Canada but it managed to actually sell 363,000 copies in the US, so I guess he was pretty happy with those numbers.

All of which makes it strange that discogs.com only has five copies for sale globally, but it seems like the vast majority of sales were digital, with only an '17 unofficial release and a '21 re-release being physical copies, which means you're going to have to spend £60 if you want one. Which I can assure you I very much don't - I don't think it's hateful, but I also really don't think it's great.

28/04/17 - Some grade A Stilton

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