Last Friday, Toronto rapper Drake and Atlanta-based rapper 21 Savage dropped a collaboration album called Her Loss. Announced just 2 weeks prior, this album has been heavily hyped and expectations were high for the collab. With 21 Savage, known recently for his incredible feature work, and Drake, who has had a quite frankly terrible album run in the past few years, nobody was sure what to expect. They have collaborated several times in the past, most recently on “Jimmy Cooks”, the only high-quality song on Honestly, Nevermind, an album of sleep-inducing tracks.

Overall, this album was a mixed bag with some decent highs and some dull lows. It sounded like Drake and 21 started working on this album the day it was announced, as it was filled with goofy moments, and some lackluster ones. 

With a length of exactly 1 hour and 16 songs, it started off relatively strong with the song “Rich Flex”. A strong 21 verse, and subtle remnants of Drake from his glory days. They followed suit with “Major Distribution”, another pretty basic track, which sounded similar to the one before.

There is not much else to say for this record, because honestly, every song sounds like a parody of the other. With a few exceptions on tracks like “Middle of the Ocean” and “3AM on Glenwood”, this whole record sounded like a flavorless attempt to reproduce the magic they created on “Jimmy Cooks”. Several singing moments from Drake produced visibly cringing reactions, and nothing from 21 Savage was bad, besides the fact that he was only on about 25% of the album. 

Having said all that, this is the best work Drake has put out in a few years, even though the bar was already set astronomically low. He had some great verses and excellent chemistry with 21, but it was just so repetitive. 

While on the occasion, a hype banger on a Drake album is a great thing, an attempt to make an entire album of hype bangers can result in poorly written, underproduced tracks that just drag down the quality of the record. This album likely would have been better off just having a track list of 9-10 songs, instead of the excessive 16 that it has.

To summarize, this album was decent. Nothing special, but nothing that is unbearable to listen to either. In terms of recent releases from Drake, it ranks at the top and is hopefully a move in the right direction for him. As for 21 Savage, we should all be excited to see how he will continue to progress from here. Personally, I give this album a final rating of 6.5/10.