EPISODE 30 - DRAKE VS KANYE VS KENDRICK

RANKING THE 3 GOATS OF THE RAP GAME BASED ON THEIR LATEST ALBUMS, REVIEWING THOSE ALBUMS AND GIVING MY THOUGHTS ON THE SPIRITUALITY OF HOW TO THINK ABOUT ART AND MUSIC AS WELL

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Your gurus are your gurus, you know. The great paradox of life. I drop so much truth you would think I'm ruthless. Look, if I'm on only love and you boys on only fans, all that. Change your tone, David. Change your tone, man. Doesn't really land, you know what I'm saying? You know, at the end of the day, I make this all for you. Tryna lend a hand. No, not like that. This is for you, though. Look. Where do I start? I feel like Brett Favre. Without AP to cough it up. Coming for the championship ring, only I could conceive of. Diving deep within myself, head first, freestyle. Like I'm I guess I'm tired of being someone else. I guess I'm tired of the stealth. I guess I'm tired of the wealth. I never retire. I'm never tired, focusing on my health. Digging deeper and deeper in the well. I need the belt like a riot. I need the stealth, cause they lying. I wish you well, I see you trying, but please don't deny my experience in the name of science. You worried about how you come off like some tied on a white garment.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

I'm worried about how I'ma get off this mountain once I climb it. You in the crowd, virtues, virtue signalin', like what about the climate? I'm off the cloud on a VPN in a new province, hiding out. The truth is I'm hiding because you hide from the truth. You don't need the crown to sit down and figure out how to solve it.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

How to think about it if you really dissolve it. Boil it down like the chemist you say you are. You will put pen to paper, put yourself in the paper. If you really cared about all the above, but we can see you don't. I mean, we in the 21st century. There's no need for all these identities, all these labels, it's not an accolade, more like a presentation of fear and hatred.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

In the spirit, it's eye to eye, but you stuck in the past like it's black and white. Even if you study the Bible, or you voted for Biden, you're still liable to lie and be tribal.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

I can't just trust all the intentions behind it. See, the epiphany of reality is that you are me. That's why I could care less about my enemy, other than making them history.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

That's above your head like a mystery. Here's a glimpse of me, irony in the age of AI.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

The only way to get ahead is to be more like I. That's A to Z. Welcome to the memo. Got my pay grade up. Once I found my tempo. You boys think this the climax. You got your porno on IMAX. I mean it's top of the mind, man. I done lived so many lives, I'm a mind, I'm a menace. I'm not done, I'm not numb. Even when I'm at the dentist, I'm as raw as they come. That's the finish, like I'm childish. On this last reincarnation, like a finalist. Up in Minnesota, like I'm LeBron's best chance. At a finals win, my god, this bird's eye got me asking questions. Like, what about going outside? Refining what's inside us towards more alignment. What about my skin tone? Has anything to do with rhyming? What about a skin tone has anything to do with committing a crime? What about our emotions? Has anything to do with violence? I think assumptions are the only thing we haven't defined yet. You got me up here shinin' more than my ex did. She got a blind story, me on IG like a Fed would. And knowing me, I offended all the above. God still got me number one. Wimba Yana, telling the truth. Like, yes, Your Honor. If you want me to be honest, I'm always thinking beyond it. I wrote through the comments on a comment, wrote a sonic, super saying, supersonic. Dog, I'm on it.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

It's worth it, it's purpose. I'm on this earth like an urchin. That means I'm deep. It's a feast for the lion, the way y'all are sheep.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

All this opportunity, I don't really know how they sleep. Me, I'm out running to this. Me, I got a bucket list. And it's got a lot on hit, like spittin' this.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Starting six businesses and telling you to suck my I turn off IDF, ideas of everything, especially Ivy League emulating. Ped degrees is incredibly low-hangin'. I mean, it seems like money, happiness weren't even in consideration. This the basics from the basement to the GM on a box. You can say sh, a better me is all I need for entertainment.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

You should put that on a poster note and stick that on your brain, man. I just read and write and get to levitating every day, man. When I'm playing, I'm going off in the studio. Dishing Rubio, fluid flow, just to animate it. Wow, David, that's a crazy cadence. I've been on a month now and they've been on ages. And I'm way more amazing. What the F they really blazin'? I don't know. Fentanyl, new low.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Only life I gotta blow. These boys acting like they don't know what I'm talking about. Know yourself, no wind of doubt. You the type to go nowhere, cause you think you above it. I mean we could be talking to Warren Buffett, and you wouldn't let him say nothing. While the boy glowed up, got my way with words like a poto does. This poet does something Peter Druck with a frank ocean touch. Oh my god, the way I open up, you would think I was an opera with Tony Robbins drinking five mimosas, bruh. Just that word we know we love. Just that watch me bust these. Amazing story. So I was in the gym earlier today. And there was this guy in there with me, a few other people, but this one guy I recognize he's there quite a bit. And uh, you know, couldn't look any different than the guy. Uh different race, different body type. Very different, you know. And uh different energy, even I would say. Um you know, he's always listening to music in there, which is normal thing to do. I don't listen to music. Um he's always kind of banging around over in the kind of yoga room over there. I'm never in that room. So we just kind of have a different way about going about things. Um and I had these preconceived assumptions about kind of who he was in my head in terms of just being this different person than me. And I was just, you know, doing what humans n normally do, which is being judgmental. And I think we can all relate to that. Whether we admit it or not. And all of a sudden he's kind of working out near me in my zone, and uh a grasshopper, beautiful, one of the most beautiful green grasshoppers comes in uh out of nowhere. It didn't like open up the door, it was just it just appeared. And he points at, you know, he looks at me and he points at it, he goes, It's a grasshopper. And he immediately, we both make eye contact, and we immediately, like, intuitively on a spiritual level, like understand. We look out of the eye and we're like, we we know we don't want to kill it. We both know we don't want to kill it. He's he says, you know, let's get it out of here. And I say, Yeah, let's do it. Is there a cup around here? And I'm looking around, and then he points at the uh wipes, you know, that people use to wipe those sterile wipes that people use to wipe off the equipment that have all the chemicals. He said he goes, I would use one of those, but I think that'll kill it, you know, all the chemicals. I'm like, good idea. And then I say, I got it. So I go in the bathroom, I grab a few napkins, and then I pick up this grasshopper and uh put it outside. He holds the door for me. And uh, because you know, I forgot about my key, which I needed. So he he realized that too. He was thinking ahead too to make sure I got back in and you know, we saved the grasshopper's life. And kind of a beautiful moment right there. You know, I think sometimes we can just assume the worst in people, and then we're reminded of and some other reasons that I didn't that I maybe assumed the worst in the guy. And I'm not saying like I assumed the worst out of the worst, you know. I just I I saw the difference as not threatening, just just unapproachable or um just different. And and that difference was neutral, it wasn't positive, right? And I think all of us can do this in our lives. We can see the difference, and it's it's just neutral to negative. And instead, what I learned and discovered from this man, must have been the same age as me, was that he had a beautiful spirit who wanted to save this grasshopper's life, and we bonded over that. And I remember when he the came back in, went back to our weights, he goes, Grasshopper just wanted to pump. I loved that. I smiled, I laughed, I I was like, what a beautiful moment that was. What an amazing moment that was for us to share. And I think it's moments like this that we can really reinvigorate our hope in our fellow man and our fellow humans. Um and I think that it also shows how assumptions that we make of difference being this neutral to negative thing or something we don't want to get involved in is just an irrational fear at the end of the day. And there's just this similarity and this beauty in all of us. Um when we are healthy, you know, he's in the gym working out, he's healthy, you know, he's he's got a roof over his head, he's he's you know, doing well mostly. Um, you know, he does some things in the gym I disagree with, he's banging around weights sometimes, he's throwing them around, whatever. But at the end of the, and that's kind of what I was saying earlier where I lost my train of thought, was that that was kind of like some of the negative thoughts I was getting. Like he's over in that yoga room and he sometimes would like clang big weights or throw uh weights down on the ground and make a really loud noise. I'm like, come on, bro, you know, um, just set it down gently. But again, that's the judge in me, that's the negative judgmental version of myself, and I think it just really shows if we can hold on to the positivity within us and hold on to the um the positivity and hope and optimism in others. It's such a powerful thing because it is the truth. It is the truth. So without further ado, Drake vs. Kanye vs. Kendrick. Alright, everyone, gather round. Today we have a feast. Today we will be crowning a king who will reign over the land forever in legend. There can only truly be one number one, am I right? The crowd goes wild, yay! Or perhaps I'm wrong, and there can be multiple winners. The crowd boos and throws tomatoes at me. See, oftentimes the truth is not alluring. It is not what we want to hear, but this episode, I want to be clear, is not about bringing anyone down. It is simply my opinion on art, and there is certainly beauty in the art of everyone. But is there more beauty in others than some? Or is that beauty perhaps just more dormant in some versus others? Are there different kinds of beauty? Is some darkness actually benef beautiful? Today we'll be answering all these questions, and we'll be completely avoiding any conversations and comparisons to the rap game, unfortunately, as that is completely irrelevant, and it doesn't matter. Nobody cares about rap. You know, so if you came for the swag, the vibes, and the fun and hot takes, you can leave. I'm completely kidding. Today we'll be doing precisely that. We're gonna be diving deep into the belly of the beast. Hope I got you warmed up a little bit. Heart of the rap game, where it stands, opinion on the three current kings. However, I want to use today's conversation as a not only a fun little glimpse on my own thoughts on the culture of music and hip hop currently, but also, as I usually do, a testament and a deeper look into what underlies our principles as a society and as people in general from a spiritual perspective. So without further ado, let's do it. So I want to first preface today's conversation with a few points. Firstly, we are comparing Drake, Kang Kanye, and Kendrick for a few reasons. Ultimately, when we look at modern music, much of the culture, so to speak, much of the ears, much of the influence has shifted and come from modern day hip hop. People don't care about the 1975 as much as they care about Drake. Sorry if I'm sweating by the way. Um, it is like 92 degrees outside, so yeah. Um I'm sweating. Anyways, people don't care about the 1975 as much as they do about Drake. Drake also sells more records than the 1975. Although you could argue, in my case, my opinion, in some instances, at certain junctures, at certain moments, in the music that I've heard, the 1975 makes even better music than Drake. Although it is certainly a toss-up. I love both the 1975, Maddie Healy personally, and I also love Drake. And I would say their influence should be just as large as Drake's, but that's just not how the cookie crumbled. That's just not how it's shaken out. And hip-hop, and that shows us that hip-hop rules supreme, and hence hip-hop is the conversation of who gets to wear the crown. I mean, let's compare Taylor Swift and Drake. Now that's a closer comparison, but still there is a raw competitive competitiveness and overtaking quality that occurs when the world watches Kendrick and Drake battle back and forth, and when the world watches Kanye and 50 Cent or Kanye and Drake drop an album at the same time, versus when Taylor Swift just releases her next album. When the world wonders what Kanye's next move is going to be or his next musical phase on his next album, that's like front row seats to the biggest ticket in town. That's not to say Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, Billy Eilish, Dua Lipa, Beyonce. These are also the world's biggest artists, undoubtedly. But are they bigger than Drake? Are they bigger than Kanye? And are they bigger than Kendrick? You couldn't really strongly make that argument just by the inherent nature of the league, so to speak, these three play in. They play in the main card in the main event. You could disagree, it couldn't be your sideshow, but the world as a whole would rate the rap game as the pinnacle of comp competition in music and the pinnacle of truth in music. Regardless, and in my opinion, the rawness and realness of rap hip-hop, in a sense, is what ultimately just makes it more relevant than any pop artist or any alternative artist. Where the pop artist is pleasing the crowd or the DJ is looking for the best next song to play, to please the most amount of people, the rapper, or honestly, for a more accurate term, the modern day poet, cuts right to the core of their spirit, usually at least if they're doing it well, portraying much more accurate feelings of their own worldview, their own life, and relating the two versus the pop artist or any other genre or artist. In general, this is the appeal of Drake, Kanye, and even Taylor or Beyoncé. These artists are very relatable to their cult of fans, vulnerable, and have a level of diehard trust built up over the years. However, ultimately it seems Taylor Swift is really only competing with Beyonce, perhaps, Billy Eilish. As Kanye once said, I'm sorry, Taylor, I'm gonna let you finish, but so when you put it like that, what's the more interesting competition? What's got the most eyeballs? What's the debate really about? Is it about Taylor versus Beyoncé? Or is it about you tell me. For some, of course, it is about Taylor versus Beyonce. But the world I follow, and the world I will speak on today, is about the rap game and the highly competitiveness of the rap game. The inherent nature of the fact that many rappers, all shapes and sizes, are always talking about who's number one, who's the best. That's really what their music is constantly aimed at. Rap is inherently Raleigh competitive. Rawly competitive, very competitive and raw, right? There's songs the rappers write that are five to six minutes of just spitting what's on their mind, telling a story, maybe even, laying almost everything they mentally mentally and spiritually can afford to on songs, all their thoughts they're willing to make public. See the difference is while both rap artists and pop artists are focused on making a song, the rap artists are worried about making sure their truest, rawest feelings, spirits, and thoughts are being conveyed, if they're doing it well. Few do this better than Drake, Kanye, and Kendrick. Hence, here we are, guys. Oh, but David, you're just being sexist. Nah, I just threw Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, Morgan Wallen, all those big artists under the bus as well. I'm not even throwing any shade to anyone here. I'm just telling you the consensus of where the eyeballs of the debate and the culture stands. There's even dozens of radio shows, podcasts, YouTube channels, which are highly popular, millions of views constantly, and their dedicated main focus of conversation is about the rap game and all that it entails. There's a reason the most famous celebrity family in the world, the Kardashians, dates rappers like Kange and Travis Scott. I'm just pointing out where the culture actually focuses most of their attention on a general basis. Although, as an aside, I really don't like mentioning genres as much as I just did. I think they are mainly irrelevant, often multifaceted, and blurry to begin with. So I personally don't enjoy using them. It also labels and boxes the artist, and many of my favorite artists seem to A, hate being boxed in. I would argue all humans do. So this is mainly an empathy thing. And B, cross over to many different sounds in general, making it hard to categorize them into one genre. However, for the sake of narrowing it down where today's discussion will go, I use them. I would argue genres are becoming beginning to become less and less relevant and even less and less apparent. And where music is going is less of a genre, so to speak, and more of what I just mentioned, which is a world, a brand, a person who is singing, rapping, harmonizing their thoughts. And because of this, we actually see those who are able to do both. And that's the key word, both. Make good sounding music, pop-sounding music, so to speak, and also create a unique world in which the listener can step into and actually hear something unique and original and culturally moving, shifting. And those are the people that begin to rise to the top of not only popularity, but influence in the space of music. And the formula for music and success, or success and music rather, is essentially what I just laid out. So it is no coincidence that we find ourselves in a stage in music where essentially the most influential people, the biggest artists, the biggest headline acts, so to speak, the goats, so to speak, of their art are going to be Drake, Kanye, and Kendrick due to the combination of those two critical components. In my opinion, at least. And of course, I believe strongly that music is subjective, meaning it is individual. You may like Billie Eilish a lot more than you like Drake, and I may have the complete opposite opinion, which frankly I do, but that doesn't mean either of us is right because this of the subjectivity of music. You actually can't be right when it comes to musical opinions. It's just the same thing as saying, Well, I can be right on what is the best food to eat. Well, I can be right on ketchup is better than mustard. No, you really can't. That is a personal choice and a preference. Subjectivity is often objective, except when it comes to spirituality. Now, if you're confused about what I just said, go listen to my podcast, man. I talk about that exact sentence in a lot of different ways. Go listen to the other episodes, not just the uh clickbaity episode I got here for you today. However, for the sake of today's show and idea, we're going to go off a combination of my thoughts, general popularity, cultural influence, and frankly, what would be the best debate. And I think you when you combine those three things, you arrive at the three artists I just mentioned. So, a couple more things before I get into it. This is not going to be a good, this is not going to be a topic of who is the best rapper, so to speak. Rather, it is going to be a topic of who's the best artist. And furthermore, who is the best artist right now based on their latest album. We are also going to be specifically comparing their most recent albums and where that lands them currently. We're not going to be looking at their entire bodies of work for the purpose of just not making this episode another eight-hour long episode. So just to be clear, I'm comparing I'm saying where they are currently based on their latest album, and I'm not comparing their overall legend and careers. Just to be clear here, when I come up with these rankings at the end. Although maybe one day I will do that comparing all three of them and their entire discography. You who I think is the goat right now as Think Stance, who I think had the best album of the recent three, and who I actually think is the best rapper of all time. Hint, it's not any of these three. I'm also going to talk about three larger, I'm also going to talk, excuse me, about larger societal points throughout the episode and relate it back to spirituality as well, because otherwise it wouldn't be the Applebaum incident. And yeah, I do feel it's fair to compare GNX to Iceman. All three albums Drake dropped and bully. It feels like that's what the game, the present moment, is kind of asking us to look at right now, these three recent albums from the three biggest artists. It feels like a nice kind of time and space in 2026 summertime to have this conversation. So without further ado, here I go. So let's start with me answering that question that I just said who is the best rapper of all time? Because I have to get this out of the way before I get into any of this. Um, and I just said, uh, in my subjective preference and taste, the best rapper of all time is not Drake, Kanye, or Kendrick. As someone born in 1992, someone who didn't grow up on Biggie or Tupac, I can't really say I'm considering them fully in this conversation as many do, as I have not listened to every song they have released. To be honest, I'm not that into either of their music, of what I have heard. It's good for sure, but I haven't given it the deep dive it deserves, and so I am not considering them in this conversation because I don't have all the information, and I don't like to talk about things I don't know about, as if I do know about them. Um, but what I am considering is the modern day game post Biggie and Tupac, the Nelly MM 50 Cent onwards, like you know, I believe I have a strong grasp on the discographies of the players uh who really got it going in the 2000s and beyond. Besides, I also believe that what I heard from Biggie and Tupac, I can say that what Biggie provided with Club Classics and Realness, Drake also provides in spades, and probably at an even higher level. And what Tupac provided with thought-provoking storytelling, Kendrick also provides in spades and arguably at a higher level. However, with the strong, very strong caveat that making better sounding music now is inherently easier due to the increase in technological capabilities in production, mixing, mixing, and mastering. This really can't be overstated, so I think it's actually a silly comparison to even bring these guys into the mix of the debate in the first place. It's just simply a different time, and ultimately, I think we can appreciate them for what they were at the time. Again, it's subjective, anyways, and the bias on music preferences is also clearly an indicative, indicative of the time we grew up in, right? Most of us love the music the most that we heard in our teenage years, our formative years, our early 20s, right? And um, that preference has a hard time of waning. Again, this is my opinion, completely subjective, but I'm gonna give you my favorite rapper of all time right now, and I don't ever ever see that changing. I'm stubborn when it comes to this, and I'm very protective over my love for this man. So, without further ado, drum roll, please. Do a little drum roll. I need some water, it's hot, guys. You're wondering what's in this water? I'm not gonna tell you. It's uh what can I put in here? A lot of iodine, a lot of salt, minerals, potassium, just a lot of minerals, and um a little bit of ant powder. Not powder, uh ant uh black ant extract, which is good for testosterone, essentially eating ants, um, as well as a little bit of um citrulline and vitamin C. So, anyways, that's what's in my water. So, without further ado, the best rapper of all time is none other than, of course, Mr. Carter, and by Mr. Carter, I mean Wheezy! And by Wheezy, I mean Wayne, and by Wayne, I mean Toonchi, and by Toonchi, I mean Lil Wayne, obviously. I mean, okay, basically the way I look at this is like this. If rappers are like FIFA characters or NBA 2K characters in a video game or Madden characters, whatever your flavor was, NHL, and we're ranking them based on a scale of zero to a hundred across a variety of attributes, which is essentially what I'm doing here when I'm evaluating this art, but we're just looking at the rap category overall, which probably consists of like five to ten smaller subcategories like lyrics, swag, flow, individuality, voice, thought-provoking, storytelling, etc. I just have to say, like from the period from 2006, we'll say, to like 2013, little Wayne was like a maxed-out character character. He was like the cheat code, he was like the guy who your friend picked in the video game, and you were like, Okay, buddy, like this is unfair. Um, obviously, you're gonna win. He was supremely dominant, and I personally am very biased towards a few categories in specifics when it comes to rapper. Personally, rapper to me, a lot of it is about swag aura energy, whatever you want to call it. It's the same reason I view Michael Jordan as the best basketball player of all time, no matter what. The dude just had swag dripping off of him effortlessly. He was him. You couldn't really explain it, and that's what made it so beautiful. You were just living in his world. And undoubtedly the aura and swag of Peak Little Wayne is unmatched. I also think I'm undoubtedly biased because I think the music we grow up grew up on, especially in our teenage and early 20s, as I said, is formative in developing our taste in music and liking towards artists, as I already said. However, that being said, all all three of the big guys I'm about to get into all were around back then, especially Kanye. But Wayne, when it comes to rapping specifically, just had it on lock. I do love Kanye and consider him a close second to Wayne, truthfully, as far as rapping goes, which I have to mention. And a lot of people would probably think that's a hot take. Kanye, he's not a lyricist, he's not a rapper, but for the ways in which I ranked Wayne, Kanye also has incredible lyricism. If you really listen to his entire discography, incredible storytelling, and he has obviously incredible energy, aura, and swag and spades. But I really couldn't record this podcast without dedicating and mentioning Carter 3 Little Wayne and just Lil Wayne in general. Just an absolutely dominant period of time he was rapping on this earth. Still is rapping, and still is a living legend. He was on a run where basically every verse he touched was a hit song just because he was on it. You had to listen immediately if you saw his name on the song. At his peak, they were probably paying him like 500k a verse, but they really should have been paying him like two to three mil a verse for the impact he was having on those songs. Inflation accounted for. People tend to think Lil Wayne is just a fun rapper, but no, he was storytelling in many songs. He was able to sing a good, meaningful hook. He poured his heart to us in many of those songs. He had such a unique, raspy tone to his voice, hence wheezy. And his metaphors and lyricism overall were unmatched. He would come up with these lines that were completely out of this world because he dared to go there. He was constantly pushing the envelope. He was the envelope. No, he was the entire post office. He was the game, bro. Like you, I think just people, you know, we come and go and we forget little Wayne was the game. He was shipping everything, every word for four or five years straight. We were all on it. A million a million you know, all that. That being said, Wayne definitely still makes great music to this day. Someone of his caliber can't just lose it overnight, but I will say his downfall became perhaps just a bit uh due to a bit of overstimulation of his sound, of his style, of his brand of music. Whereas Frank Ocean has the opposite issue, we don't get enough of Frank Ocean. They both ultimately fall under the same scrutiny in my eye of either giving us too much or too little. When you give us too much without enough variation, it begin begins to become dry. It begins to lose the same sense that the artist is challenging himself. And the same goes for when you give us too little, begins to lose the sense that the artist is challenging themselves. For me though, it would have been great to see Wayne just completely try something new, to put on more of a producer hat, like the three artists I'm about to talk in, talk about so often do, and creating different worlds for each of their albums. Wayne's album began to muddle, Wayne's albums began to muddle together. They lacked variety and vision outside of incredible lyrics, flow, and swag, which again Wayne has in spades, but it would have been cool to see Wayne try to dedicate an entire album towards like Louisiana or his home state, um, where he grew up, for example, and really do a deep uh dive into that world for an entire album, or perhaps do an album with a lot of features, or a heavy RB album, some kind of unique story and world we can dive into instead of just Carter 5 and Carter 6. Just my thoughts as a fan and clearly a big one. So I just had to mention Lil' Wayne quickly because I feel like none of the three goats I'm about to speak about would be goats without his influence. And frankly, I'm sure even some of them, especially Drake, would agree that Wayne is his goat as far as a rapper goes. So, yes, ultimately Wayne is my goat rapper for talking strictly rapping. I honestly just couldn't have had this conversation uh with any sort of integrity uh without getting that out of the way first. So, thank you for listening to that. So, today's topic is about comparing the three artists in the title who sit atop the rap game and their artistry and their three recent albums and where they currently stand. So, let's talk about Drake, Kanye, and Kendrick. I want to make one last very important point. I think so often, as fans of these great artists, whoever they are, we get so passionate about them. Well, so and so saved my life with their music. Some passionate fans will say their music brought me out of a dark place, their music spoke to my spirit, and then we we begin to believe that music moves from the subjective to more of the objective. And in no sphere does this happen more than in rap. Fans are truly fanatic, especially when comparing Drake, Kanye, and Kendrick. It's like if you're in one of the camps, you can't possibly be in the other. But I like to look at it like this: pretend Drake is, say, like a cowboy and Kanye is an astronaut, and Kendrick is a surfer, right? This is quite exactly what music is like, and really humanity as a whole. And I'm making a spiritual point here as well. Much of life is this way. Allow me to explain. If Drake is a cowboy, Kanye is an astronaut, and Kendrick is a surfer, aren't there certain times or head spaces where we think being a cowboy is the coolest thing ever? I mean, think about it. The coolest cowboy you could ever imagine. Swinging the guns, riding the horse, swinging the rope, getting the girl. Perhaps we're in Texas, or we're just daydreaming about living in the great West of America back in the 1800s, having our own saloon. It turns into a lively bar at night. Can't cowboys just be cool though? For real? Can we all just simply appreciate cowboys for what they are? How about an astronaut? Think of the coolest astronaut possible. I mean, better yet, just think of the coolest futuristic dude out in space, perhaps flying on a surfboard. Perhaps you could even think of the silver surfer. Fitting for Kanye, right? Flying out in space, being in the future, doing cool things, looking cool. Astronauts or futuristic archetypes are cool. They can be cool if we simply appreciate them for what they are. The same goes for the surfer archetype. Of course, surfers can be cool. I mean, come on, riding waves in an effortless groove, laid-back attitude, swimming in the ocean despite its dangers, unafraid of the biggest wave, always seeking more and more thrill, coming home with some new story about the same old waves, but always finding a new way to express themselves. Think of the coolest surfer archetype. Can't we just simply appreciate the surfer for what they are? The point is, all these archetypes have their charm, have their flavor, have something we can appreciate about them. And actually, much of life is this way, especially the rap game, and even politics, sports, relationships, and people. This is sort of the point I often make of not making things so black and white unless it comes from higher principles of our spirit, such as love, which is more black and white when comparing love versus hatred, for example, because inherently of the spirit within us that is all loving. But when you think about people, ideas, thoughts, art, appreciating the individuality and the beauty and the diversity of life, we so often want to be tribal. We want to make the subjective objective, and we do so out of this fear of needing to know everything and needing to have everything nailed down, right? Oh, of course Drake is worse than Kendrick, or of course Drake is better than Kendrick, whatever it is. It's it's not even they're not even in the same ballpark, right? But we think about, and that can be fun when it's something innocent as who's the best artist in the game right now, but we also have to recognize the falseness that inherently comes with this conversation I'm about to have. Who is the best artist in the game right now is inherently a false conversation because who is the best artist in the game right now is ultimately subjective, as I just said. It is not important, it is not an overarching spiritual principle like light over darkness, which is ultimately inherently objective due to the inherent spiritual nature of this reality. Hence the importance, hence the laws we create in our world about these things. We don't create, you know, you can't murder people, right? That was important enough to create a law, but we didn't create laws saying if you like Kanye more than Kendrick, you have to go to jail. Because frankly, that's ridiculous due to the subjective nature of art. However, some fans will literally talk like this. They'll talk to you, making comments saying you are crazy or mentally ill if you like so-and-so over my guy or my girl. And you may be saying, Well, David, it's not that serious, but I just want to send a reminder to those who do make those comments, which is honestly a larger group of people than you think, to really remember this and extrapolate this open-mindedness principle you are now thinking about to many different areas of life, such as lifestyles, such as medicines, such as politics, such as ways of being, such as ways of just operating in life. A lot of times the peace we often seek in this world and from others just comes from accept accepting people, accepting things, so long as they are not going against the principle of the higher spirituality within all of us from our soul, just as harming someone deliberately would, right? When you accept another with your heart, you open a portal from your heart to theirs. When you sit in this and allow the need to change them, the need to judge them to completely dissipate and lose out to this radical acceptance. What you will find so profoundly is actually that the higher spirituality and peace you both sought from coming into contact with each other will actually evolve and ascend out of the portal between both of you. You just created. So accepting people for how they are allows them to ascend their own higher spirituality because it creates a portal between your heart and their heart, right? That's really a true thing. If you really think about a lot of your interactions, you know, when Pete you're at a, you know, you're out in public at the store or at a concert at a rowdy event at a bar, and you get into it with someone, oh, what are you doing? What are you that just all of that comes from not accepting who they are, where they're at, their position. If you went up to them and accepted them exactly who they were, they would look at you like, oh, you're here to help me, or you're here to vibe out with me, or you're here to have a good time. But you get into that scuffle, right? You get into that that fight with them because there's this lack of acceptance. In other words, and a large part of my message in my podcast is that there's subjective truths, yet there is ultimately ultimately more objective spiritual truths which which live within all of us. In this example, it would be the preference of Kanye over Kendrick and Drake in my case, as far as my favorite artist goes. But the understanding and ability to appreciate, accept, and love all art is the overarching deeper spiritual truth. So now that I got that out of the way, let's talk about these guys. All of which, by the way, I personally love and appreciate very deeply. Hence, why are they there in this conversation, why they're at the top of my list, and I would imagine also likely in the top of many people's lists. So, let's start with Drake. Let's just go alphabetically here. Drake is coming to us freshest and hottest off the iron, so to speak, releasing three entire albums as recent as May 15th, 2026. The rollout in anticipation was highly anticipated. We all thought we were gonna get one album, Iceman. Oh yeah, right? But he surprised the entire world, as he so often does and likes to do, with Iceman and two other albums, Habiti and Maid of Honor. I don't know if I'm saying that second Habiti. I don't know if I'm saying that right. Um, anyways, I don't like watch, I haven't watched like any other people's reviews, by the way, before I get into this, of any of these albums. These are all my reviews. I don't know what anyone thinks of these albums. I may I made me know what four people think at work about this stuff. I don't so this is all my opinion. I've been a fan of Drake since 2009, the first time I was at a friend's house, and he showed me So Far Gone one summer night. I'll never forget that. I remember thinking that night I had just discovered the biggest artist the world will ever see. And frankly, I wasn't really wrong. You know, uh, I remember telling all my friends that later that summer about Drake, he's gonna be the next big thing, you guys. This was 2009, bro. 2000, it's 2026. You know, the satisfaction I got when listening to So Far Gone with them showing my other friends who weren't at that sleepover for the first time was so joyful. I was right, but what was a lot more important to me was being able to discover beautiful new music and share that with my friends. One of my greatest joys in life. If we really go back and listen to So Far Gone, we can say perhaps one of Drake's greatest albums ever, for sure, from Houston Lana Vegas. I remember flying into Vegas one time listening to that song as we were landing and flying over the city. Peak experience, by the way. Gotta do that once in your life. To brand new, that outro is peak Drake. The outro to brand new to congratulations, afloat hi, don't try and cut my water wings. You know, just in that one project, you can really see the ultimate genius of Drake and the beauty of his spirit in that entire album. If he never gave us another album or project after so far gone, I think this debate would be a lot easier, and that proves a lot about the points I'm about to make. See, I think Drake's greatest mistakes, as with all of us, but often with Drake and his artistry, is shooting himself in the foot, being his own worst enemy. Like in 2026, how many people want to hear Drake rap over a six-minute track talking about his enemies and how much money he's made and how much that's changed his life? How these other guys are different and worse and have a smaller, you know, you know what's almost nobody wants to hear that. I don't care if you're in Drake's Maybach with him, you probably don't want to hear that. You're gonna nod your head and say, Man, this is hard because you're in the Maybach and you don't want to get kicked out of the Maybach. But like the lack of self-awareness, I think, around giving us more of this kind of same rappy stuff, um is uh interesting to say the least. It would be one thing if we got less of it, but we've gotten a lot of Drake albums. We get one like almost every year. So that's gonna be a main point of everything I'm about to say. But we would likely want to hear this, very much so, had we not gotten so much of this in the past. Drake is a good thing. Drake is a very good thing. So good he's one of the greatest artists of all time, undoubtedly. But you can always have too much of a good thing, despite how good. Even if it has as as gold as Drake himself. I believe Drake could have benefited from a period in his career where he did fall off the map for around three or around roughly three years, but we never got that period. This is perhaps the biggest mistake of Drake's career, in my opinion. And I think now, this most recent album rollout was the time to do this. Of course, or even like a couple albums ago. Of course, I have understanding and empathy for why Drake wouldn't want to do this, but his choice to not do this, in my opinion, sabotage his artistry much more than it helped it, despite the financial benefits he perhaps received. And let's be honest, Drake's probably doing alright financially. We all know that. From all the times he's told us, and it's undeniable. He's one of the biggest artists ever. But a little pause would have been nice, especially if we're going to get three albums. I think then in Drake's defense and probably his thought process would be well, if I'm going to take three to four years off and drop three albums, the pressure for those three albums would be a lot higher than they were for this. I think what Drake fears more than anything is losing his spot. And perhaps taking a long time to drop an album and dropping three, and then those flopping would manifest that worst fear. And maybe he felt he wouldn't be able to live up to that. Uh time off, so to speak. Maybe that's not what he's thinking. But I know as one of his biggest fans, this would have been his optimal move. Just a break on the ear, right, from his sound would allow us all to appreciate it again with a new sense. Also, in Drake's defense, we as fans or his critics often do want what he doesn't give us, despite him giving us a variety of things. We do want and like from him. He recognizes himself when on his Scorpion album description on the album page began with, I hate it when Drake raps, I hate it when Drake sings, and so on and so on. Listening and ref referring to how it seems like whatever he does at any point in his career, or at that point in his career rather, in 2018, he can't seem to please anyone, even his loyal fans. Come with a classic, they come around years later and say it's a sleeper. He raps on 2020 Hit Wants and Needs with Little Baby. This sentiment has never left his psyche. So perhaps this is his driving force in giving us constant music. Plus, time is of the essence. He doesn't have forever. And it's true in that sense that Scorpion was a classic. Even Certified Lover Boy had classic components and elements to it. But I think one of Drake's driest and least sexy styles in his admittedly wide range of skills and elements in his music is his long drawn-out five-minute raps without any chorus or breaks, especially if the beat isn't absolutely there. On Iceman, where Make Them Remember hits due to the pure classical essence of the beat and how the piano complements Drake's tone very nicely. Not to mention, those are some of the most creative lyrics I've ever heard from Drake in a long time. You can tell he spent a long time on that. I, you know, I spent a couple weeks on my rap, you heard there, and you know, it is what it is. Make them pay, however, can't be shut off quickly enough, due to the exact opposite reason that the beat selection was just annoying. It's the same style, it's a five to six minute song of just pure rapping, but the sample is overstimulating and drowns out any joy I get from hearing Drake, which isn't much considering it's just another five-minute track on his haters. An easy throwaway for me on the album. Not to mention, one of the biggest weaknesses of the album itself is its lack of again, what we need the most from Drake, which is breaks, distance, pauses. It's like it's hard to appreciate what you have unless you miss it a little. And I would have loved to get an album with more features. Where's where's Lil Wayne? Where's Kanye? Where's Tyler? Where's Gambino? Three stacks, where's literally anyone who can give us something different for just two minutes? It feels like this album is entirely about revenge and being the macho man. That's really the main overall tone I get from everything on Iceman. I'm talking about specific. Look at what I can do all by myself, could have been the thought process. But man, it needed someone else in a lot of places. This is what made Take Care so successful and so great. Think about all the features on that album. From Little Wayne, two to three times, I think. Andre 3000, The Weekend, Rihanna, whoever that girl is singing at the beginning of Over My Dead Body, Birdman. I mean, and I'm probably missing some, right? Even the first voice we hear on Take Care is not Drake's. It is this woman, my apologies for not knowing her name, singing over the song Over My Dead Body. And this is perhaps one of the highlights of the entire album. Then we get you could also say Wednesday night interlude on if you're reading this, it's too late, is an entire track in the middle of the album with party next door. Drake is nowhere to be on the song. And it's one of the most beautiful moments of the album, if not the most beautiful moment of the album, because not because Drake is bad, but because that break that we needed was perfectly placed with a perfectly resetting ambiance and song and vibe. That's probably my favorite Drake song. And Drake's not even on it, or over my dead body, it's between those two. So then we we get three to four Drake only tracks on on uh but then we dive uh deep into a heavy feature album, which is what makes it so beautiful. I'm talking about take care here. It feels like we are hearing from everyone we needed to, whereas on Iceman, it feels like we're hearing from the only guy we needed to not hear from in another year or two. That's ultimately what made it fall flat for me. I don't enjoy how harsh that sounds, believe me. I don't want to be harsh. I'm not a hater because the album isn't without its highlights, and the other two albums aren't either without their highlights, and I'll mention them briefly in a second. Iceman highlights us with What Did I Miss, which feels like the theme track for the album's messaging, and it is undoubtedly done nicely in a good petty fashion, as Drake does. What did I miss when I was giving you know, it has a nice ring to it in the sense of this genuinely wondering, What did I miss? It's you know, genuinely wondering in also a diss petty way what went wrong when I was doing everything I could to make it right between us, right? It's genius in its own way, and the second half of the beat is one of the greatest Drake beats I've heard and one of the greatest beats of the year. But again, what makes it genius? Well, if you listen closely on to that beat, there is another artist, there's another voice, none other than the weekend, singing in the background as the sample. The beat switches works wonderfully. The beat switch works wonderfully, excuse me. His flow is top-notch, easily the highlight of the album. Listen to that in the gym and get a good surge of energy, undoubtedly. Janice STFU is solid, but should not be as popular as it is. I mean, perhaps it should, given the beat, has that crowd-pleasing, generic radio sound that would go well in a concert setting, which the masses seem to appreciate. But is anyone going to listen to this song in three years? I never even had it in rotation once. It frankly got annoying to me. I don't even I think I listened to it once, and I never listened to it again. I didn't, I like I can't get through the song. I didn't think Drake's Drake's voice fit well over the beat. However, it seemed like it would have been the perfect track to introduce a feature and have them handle the first verse while Drake came on the back half to hit it home. But nonetheless, he didn't do that. And I think this also brings up a lack of variation of Drake using effects on his voice or different flows on his voice. I get it, he likes to go natural, sing, or just rap and show his versatility, but we haven't gotten Drake auto-tune in a long time since the early days, and it again would just show more creativity and risk taking if we heard a bit of a different tone here, especially given how fat and ripe the beat was. You know, so overall I didn't love it overall. So my three highlight tracks on Iceman are What Did I Miss, Make Them Remember, and Burning Bridges, which are all very solid on their own accord, but shows you overall, if those are the three best songs on an 18-track album, this is perhaps one of Drake's worst albums I've ever heard, frankly. And it's sad given how the concept of the album had promise. Iceman from the cold, you know, it's kind of cool, like superhero, Iceman from the six, but where the concept had promise, the execution fell flat as they come. I enjoyed for all the dogs much, much more, and frankly, all of his other albums. Thankfully, thank thankfully, we were saved slightly, albeit with the other two albums, Habiti and Maid of Honor, where Drake again delivers two to three songs per album, although of higher quality this time, which was nice. But again, he runs into the same flaws and mistakes he made on Iceman. Let's start with Maid of Honor, the dance hall island ting version of Drake, which has its moments, but again, I'm frankly not even sure what Bro was thinking without having good features. Again, he had sexy red, sure, and Stunner Sandy, whoever that is, and a lot of these newer, like OnlyFans models, right? But like, sorry, Stunner Sandy, if you're not an OnlyFans model, my apologies. But again, we're where's the soul in the classic Drake we had in the past? You know, it just feels like you know what my real thought is. I feel like Drake just took a bunch of like peptides, man. I swear, I think he took a bunch of peptides, I think he's peptide it up right now, and I think that that just drains your soul. And like, if you think about like So Far Gone, Drake, where we had so much soul, so much flavor. Think about how raw that album was. He it was a make or break album. He knew that if he hit it out the park, he could be one of the biggest artists ever. And if he he knew he knew it was the moment, and he gave it everything he had. Here on Maid of Honor, it feels like we're listening to a you know, a sex tape with Stunner Sandy and and Peptide Up Drake. It feels like we're listening to Drake on Peptides because I mean uh the reason I think he's on peptides, have you seen recent photos? He looks jacked. The boy looks beautiful. He's definitely taking some copper, gh u, and I honestly just think I'm not hearing that hunger from him, especially when we're out here on the island ting on made of honor here, man. So, you know, again, we could have used a Beyoncé feature on Maid of Honor here on this island track, maybe a Rihanna feature, maybe a I don't know, even just Billy Eilish, Taylor Swift, something, something, Dua Lipa, something, Siza, something. But what do we get? We get sexy red, we get Stunna Sandy, and we get God knows who else on this thing. Uh, you know, Andre 3000, Lil Wayne, but we haven't gotten that in a long time. Childish Gambino inner channeling is inner kawaii, but we get that, you know, we haven't gotten that from Drake in a long time. It seems his entire personality and lifestyle right now, especially on this album, is about partying, constantly dating different women, and what seems and feels like a new one every week or day, literally just based on the things he says, and frankly, it becomes at a certain point highly unrelatable and harder to digest for me personally, and I'm sure many others. You know, most people are married, man. Most adults who grew up being your fan are married. Um, but there's a sense of appeal to that lifestyle. I get it, but when we're going new OnlyFans model every day, we're sort of just getting into the realm of alien territory here. And instead of feeling like a genuine story, it feels like we're getting a manufactured song for the night out. Drake is about to embark on in this album with each track track, and frankly, also on the other two albums as well, which is for sure understandable. I mean, the guy has to put out records and songs. I'm just saying, from my perspective, you cheapen the sauce by having so much, and this is why I think ultimately that break would have been helpful. While I will say it is impressive that Drake is able to channel and chameleon his way into so many lanes, this dance hall music, this RB, and rap, it doesn't make up for the fact that on all three of these albums, none more than Made of Honor itself, are we getting so much filler, so much skippable, so much, you know, very niche, uh just for one night kind of feel, just for one little weird freak-off, it feels like. I'm listening to a freak-off, man. Listen, I'm listening to a ditty party on some of this stuff, man. So um um, you know, unless we're we're drunk on a boat in the Caribbean going island hopping, and I mean really drunk, I'm not sure when we would want to listen to these songs. I think personally, with my own distaste for the one night stands and the singular experienced sexual encounters in my own life, as I focus more on my spiritual route and my peace, I find this album to not only be extremely unrelatable, but also just unenjoyable to listen to. Because I frankly haven't found peace in the lifestyle Drake seems to be portraying. I for sure haven't partied like Drake, and I think uh that is in essence the disconnect happening with his artistry and some of his fans, like myself. Nobody except his close friends and a rare few have frankly partied like Drake. He's a billionaire and can throw amazing parties, but especially given the also recent release, in my opinion, flop of some sexy songs for you. What is apparent is that it feels like Drake is singing these songs less and less for others, and more and more just for his personal bedroom life. Um, like a journal entry. And I get it, perhaps we're in the partying uh era of Drake's life, the the OnlyFans era of Drake's life, but it just feels like there's a lack of him putting himself in his audience shoes even remotely on these albums, uh, which was generally his strength in the past, making his stories and his sounds relatable. It's not because you got rich, Drake, it's because um, you know, I I just can't uh I can't even imagine living the life you're living. I can't even remotely imagine it. And I I uh and I know also Drake has made it a point in his storytelling and lyrics to say these are stories about my life and frankly are about me. Well, I'm not sure we could have found a nicer, well, middle ground than this for some of his more deeply, you know, uh engaged fans, married fans, spiritual fans to give us that dance hall sound without the uh sexy red I have a stiffy in my pants lines, you know. Overall, though, if you're looking for those two to three good songs on this album, you'll actually find them because they are there, but you get a lot of filler, as I already said. After you fight your way through the OnlyFans and porn section of the album, uh when you get to New Bestie, QA, and Goose in the Juice at the end of the album, QA being the highlight of the three, these songs find Drake asking a laundry list of questions to a lover or multiple, which ends up being quite enjoyable and entertaining. Drake's voice perfectly glides over the groovy, almost oceanic sample as he asks relatable questions we can all ask, like, Are you really having that much fun? Or are you lonely? Oh, yeah, I can't do the melodies on this because it could get demonetized. Oh well. Or the other line is, are you really the love of my life, or are we homies? My favorite question being, why are you kicking your feet up with blanks? Are you Michael Jordan? Great, great line. Now, I will say Habiti gave us a bit more soul in even one of Drake's best songs I've ever heard Drake release. I love the song White Bone. I love the distorting drum synth pattern outro, that two to three minute signature outro we get at the end, as Drake laments in what sounds like the purest Drake thoughts we've gotten in a long time. You know, someone please take my phone away from me before I go off. He sings in almost a Marvin Room type drone. You can picture him in like a dark room, just staring at his phone, like, why am I, you know, drunk alone? Why, you know, what is this? What am I doing with this stupid thing? You know, and then he comes back braggadociously. I'm Mr. Told You So, I'm not a people pleaser, bro. I'm a CEO. What I charge for a show, they charge for Van Gogh, and some people F me over, I can't let it go. Problems, they follow me wherever I go. I mean, those are some bars. This song is cold. This song is fresh out of the freezer. This song is so cold, you gotta let it thaw. This is one of the best songs I've heard from Drake. It's undeniable. Uh, the high and the low, juxtaposed, create a beautiful picture into how many of us feel in today's chaotic world, which is a lot more relatable, I find, personally, than the come to the island and hop on the pogo stick, you know, and his Caribbean accent we get from much of uh Maid of Honor. Uh, I also love the portion of the song where he's talking about connecting with someone. He believes he could be his soulmate, mentioning how he's heard about soulmates, but he's never gotten this close. Then he draws us into the thoughts and plans leading up to their wedding, thinking about such future together, right? It's actually deeply beautiful and feels like the portion of the album, and frankly, all uh three of the albums where Drake actually challenged himself greatly to be both introspective and also deeply truthful, mentioning, I love you so much I cannot lose your soul. A feeling many of us who have fallen in love can relate to on a very deep level. Let me just check something on this camera here for a sec, folks. Um okay, we're good. I'm just checking how long this has been. Recording and the current battery. So I do have to finish this up pretty quickly. I wonder if that will preserve some of the battery. We will we will find out. Because it's on a little charger thing. Um, but I am gonna try to speed this up a little bit. So I think overall, we could have gone without the entirety of Maid of Honor and frankly just done an RB album as the second album, which combined both the dance hall highlights and the RB, the back and forth between the club and the late nights of introspection would have been a beautiful juxtaposition, and I think would have played better. But I'm sure in Drake's defense would have been well, I did that with Scorpion with disc A and Disc B, in a sense. Again, Drake is his worst enemy in thinking he always has to outdo himself, always has to be new in the topic of conversation just by doing the thing people wouldn't expect and haven't seen. Man, just give us good good music and don't overdo it. Keep it simple, would be my two cents to to finish the specifics. To finish the specifics here, classic on Habiti is a beautiful track, but has a terrible finish to what was a great start. Not exactly sure what the thought process on this song at all was, which had to have been one of the best starts to a Drake song I've ever heard. I was like, the second I heard it, the the first minute, I was like, this is gonna be the best new Drake song, and then he completes completely ruins it with this weird sample at the end for like that drone's on for a minute and a half, some girls singing, it's not even him. Bizarre, just like made of honor. The last out the album's last three to four songs are the best. I don't really know how this happened on both um of those albums, but it certainly is an interesting choice for Drake to save the best for last. White bone to prioritizing to Fort Worth, excuse me, from White Bone to Fort Worth to prioritizing feels like the highlight of the entirety of the 43 songs we got from Drake. And overall, I only really liked seven to eight of them, which is a pretty low ratio. It's quite telling and symbolic that Drake's highlight in this appearance of his career is on the RB album, which is also the album that gives us the least amount of songs in 11. I think it is telling in what Drake should have focused on here at this point in his career. More space, more quiet, more RB just from him, more soul, more focus. That's what I think people want. More of the take care, Drake. It's apparent with all of Drake's albums after Scorpion, we are going to get three to four great songs, even outstanding at certain junctures. Definitely more towards the as they were more recent or more recent after Scorpion. So, like um, Her Loss, Certified Lover Boy, uh, honestly never mind. Those had five to six really good songs, but as time has gone on for all the dogs, it gets smaller and smaller that ratio of hit. So, um you know, and this impacts his legacy and his artistry. Uh, and it is it would be an understatement to To say it wouldn't. It seems, at least from my perspective, Drake cares more about the materialistic aspects of his art, like making money being considered the number one guy, whether that's literally or figuratively, in other egoic aspects of his art, rather than the artistry itself, which is frankly disappointing considering how talented he is. However, I think ultimately Drake also falls victim to the unfair criticism we all, including myself, place on our artists these days. The fact that our attention spans are smaller, our constant need for novelty and our overall desire for the new and hot thing trumps the guy we've been listening to for 15 years straight. Frank Ocean understands this better than anyone, and that's why he's still not giving us music. Because he just sat back and observed how Drake has again shot himself in the foot. Despite actually giving us good music with each release. It's just too much, and too much often equates to not enough. Ultimately, he has time working against himself, very much so. And while artists like Frank Ocean, even the other two guys I'm about to mention, Kanye and Kendrick, have become the ultimate time benders, Drake appears to have the opposite quality and ability in his arsenal, despite likely being the most talented performing artist of our generation. Now, let's talk about Kanye. Let's talk about Bully. As he likes to be called, Ye. I prefer to call him Kanye, and I will preface this conversation with the fact that I also consider myself a very big Kanye fan. I would probably even say he's my favorite artist of all time. So I do have that bias in comparing the three of them. However, as I stated, this conversation is not about their entire discographies and careers, but rather their most recent albums. Because if we're talking entire discographies, in my opinion, nobody is touching graduation or Yeezus, and therefore Kanye. Kanye is the master of worlds, he's the master of reinvention, 808s and Heartbreaks. That's what makes him such a good artist. He's able to find different themes and phases within his own life and speak on those in a thematic, storytelling way, and relate them to the culture and the world and relay them perfectly into a story you can follow and understand through his albums. That's his biggest strength, you could say. His production is his biggest strength. But production in and of itself is the production of a story, the production of a score, so to speak. And nobody transports us better into his world and is able to make it both beautiful, relatable, and loving at all at the same time better than Kanye. If you love me, you love yourself. If you're a Kanye West fan, you're a fan of yourself. He is famously quoted as saying, This is very true. If you really study Kanye his entire work, his interviews, his social commentary, as I have, you'll realize that much, if not all, of what he does comes from a good place. It comes from a place of self-love, despite how it looks. Kanye has mastered a spiritual aspect of himself, as we all will do eventually, where appearance or looks maxing, so to speak, is irrelevant because that's not the point. Reputation isn't the point. Truth is. Because love is what matters at all costs, and truth is love. Kanye has been able to convey this throughout his art better than anyone, and this is what makes him such a beautiful artist, in my opinion, and perhaps my favorite. Has Kanye said the wrong thing? Plenty of times. Has he said the right thing? Millions more times. Kanye realizes something genius. His genius is in the fact that he understands humans make mistakes inherently. Therefore, he doesn't define himself by his mistakes or even really care about saying the wrong thing or failing. All he cares about is that is it in the process of is is the process of saying the wrong thing in a process and in an effort of saying the right thing. What you see as mental health issues, he sees as discovery and purpose. He's playing a completely different game, a much more fulfilling one because it allows him to be completely authentic and spiritual. This is the quest for love. The quest for truth is the quest for love, and to think you can get there flawlessly like God is to be a fool. To think the opposite is the genius of the mad scientist in us all. Whether out nakedly to the world like Kanye or kept dormant like most of us, most of us with imaginary stop signs in our head. Kanye understands the point of life is discovery and adventure, not reputation and vanity. Because one is a mechanism of growth, true growth, the other is a poor foundation, a straw house, right? And this is what his fans love about him. This is why they are so hardcore, because he's speaking on a truth that goes love deep. We all know the feeling of love that goes beyond the vein. This is the spiritual understanding and lesson of Kanye we will all eventually uncover in our own lives. Not only that, his music is just also incredibly beautiful, mostly at such a high clip that it's hard to really compare him to anyone else in the rap game except maybe the other two guys on the episode title. Where the genius of Drake is his vulnerability and authenticity in music, Kanye took that leap, Drake never did, by not only bringing that to his music, but also his entire life on and off the music. He never or the mic, you could say. And he never hit the brakes where we find and feel Drake is doing so at times in his music, but especially his public life, which isn't an inherent flaw. It's likely a deliberate choice from Drake, but it takes the wild, crazy element out of Drake's artistry, which ultimately ends up helping Kanye in the end. When you're comparing the two artists. Now let's bring ourselves back down to earth. Bully. What do I think? Where are we at, Kanye? So definitely a good first listen, easily above Drake's albums, where I felt like I was witnessing someone I no longer recognized on Iceman and Drake's three albums. With Bully, it felt like a breath of fresh air. Like, ah, here's Kanye again. Again, Janice STFU, what is that? A reinvention gone bad. But Punch Drunk, we know exactly what that is. A reinvention gone mad. Also, if you listen to the album, which I just did recently, you can hear new ver verse tones, perhaps lyrics, even. Just different more updated takes, which I love about Kanye. He's again not considering the critics or looking cool in a superficial sense. Who cares if I have to edit the album a million times? He's considering how he wants it to sound in a hundred years, finished just the way he likes it. That's legendary stuff. So Bully overall for me was a strong album, yet the main issue I had with it is it's hard to compare all of Kanye's work because it's all so strong, it's all so good. So so it sort of falls short in the aspect because it's frankly not as good as Donda or as Donda 2 even was, his most recent albums. But if we're examining it again on its own, it's a very strong album. If you consider yourself a Kanye fan, you can find a song on Bully that has a top 10, top 15 Kanye song. And that's the craziest fact about Kanye, is that all of his albums have a song or two like this that can be a top 10 song in his discography. Not to mention the albums never have a strong, super strong miss. That's what Kanye really has going for him on Bully. Very little filler, very little unused space, especially for a 20-track album. If you're considering the deluxe version, it's an impressive feat. What I also really liked about Bully is it felt thematic and it felt like its own world, just like a Kanye album should feel. It felt like father was the gravity of the album, which set the tone. It felt like every song sort of revolved around the theme of this experimental new age mixed with gospel aspects of both religion and beauty. Kanye so often likes to explore. Where Yeezy, where Yeezus was completely in the future, Bully finds Kanye with one foot in the future and one foot in the past, which is to me the sonical tone of the album. White lines is a beautiful duality of this past future. I love the sample of Close to You. Beauty and the Beast is Kanye at his best, creating a song where you didn't even know it was possible to make, where it felt like Drake was rehashing the same old formula, the same old ideas. Beauty and the Beast, and even songs like Circles, Preacher Man, and this one here, my personal favorite, show us Kanye still has the ability to completely reinvent sound whenever he drops. Nobody is making music that sounds so drastically different like this each and every single album, which is beautiful and definitely a huge plus. In Bully, where Bully may not be the beautiful grandiose flash of graduation, my favorite Kanye album, or the deepest raw emotion we saw on Donda, Bully had this refreshing feel that didn't feel forced. It felt just right for what the hour called upon. It didn't feel like Kanye at his best, but it didn't feel far off from his best. It almost felt like a victory lap, nearly every song giving us more of what we love and what we expect from Mr. West. As I say in the extended version of this podcast, which is only on YouTube, which has me personally listening to many of the main songs and giving my thoughts, the weak songs on the album were either the title track Bully or the Spanish theme song Last Breath. While I see their role in the album, I definitely won't be going back to listening to them. But the fact that nearly every other song on the album, from whatever works to father to the two bonus tracks, okay and mission control, all got added to my listen again playlist, it's very telling that Kanye did not fall off. I think, like Drake, Kanye could have benefited from more features on the album. It didn't have the same feeling as Dondo, where the features really spiced and jazzed up each song. In addition, I think what Kanye had working against him the most on Bully was the rollout. The rollout for this thing was one of the worst rollouts I've ever seen from a big artist. He released it roughly on YouTube in 2025, and we had to watch a 40-minute YouTube video to listen to the album. And the YouTube video, to my knowledge, I couldn't even find on YouTube. I had to find it on social media. So you were seeing snippets on social media of certain songs, watching his son in a boxing ring fight. I don't know. I get the symbolism of the video and don't mind that much. I just feel like the entire thing would have been much better received had we gotten a one to two week rollout, and then the album dropped, much like we did for Yeezus. For Bully, it felt like a one to two year rollout, and then we finally get it. And I think that's truly the biggest mistake of this album was just how we finally got it. You know, the rollout of it. Especially big Kanye fans had already listened to the best songs and already had an idea of where it was going. The excitement was quelled, and therefore I think the reception was dulled overall. Had it been a surprise drop, I think this album would have done a lot better. The overall messaging and feelings I'm getting from the album is the listener finding Kanye at a really peak point in his life of being an outcast. Coming off the Hitler comments and being banned from performing in certain parts of the world, it really feels like a lonely time from Kanye. And you can hear that sadness at certain points in the music. At times I got sad listening to this album, where he says on Preacher Man, this path I don't recommend. You know, this regret feels a bit haunting and real. Yet, this is what also draws us in on the art and appreciation of Kanye for giving us his spirit despite the issues he's going through. But still, for what it is, it's a great album. It's a top five Kanye album. Absolutely, excuse me, is it a top five Kanye album? Absolutely not. But Kanye sets the bar extremely high, the highest. You can set it. To get in the top five of his albums is basically an outstanding feat. I don't know if he'll ever do it again. I also think another feature working against Bully was the gospel soulful aspect felt a bit overdone or just felt short. I think if Kanye was going to go the soul sample heavy and make bully this rapping over MF Doom soul sample kind of vibes, he really invented himself and brought to the foreground in his college chopout days. It would have been better, I think, for Kanye to wait another year or so and really do his best to find the best samples possible. And again, surprise drop it. While the soulful samples felt good and a good over vibe overall, it felt like there could have been stronger production with them. Whether that's more strings, more singing from other artists, what have you. Albeit that was a hard point to make considering how good the sample is on Punch Drunk. I just think overall the album felt rushed, and it would have been and it wouldn't have been had that rush feeling had he never teased us with it so early in 2025. Regardless, I definitely think you can't say Kanye fell off at any level or quality with Bully by no means, whereas you can't say the same thing with Drake at all, which is disappointing and not something I want to say. So right now we have Kanye above Drake on these recent albums. Now, last but not least, and we're almost done here, folks. Let's examine Kendrick Lamar's GNX and then round out our final decision and rankings on who had the best latest album. Let's see, I still got enough battery. This thing is going, we're good. I'm just losing daylight, as you can see, but we out here. We love nature. Light or dark. So Kendrick, to be up front, is my least favorite of the three artists to listen to. Key phrase, listen to. Out of these three artists, I am uh I'm coming to this conversation with this bias. In fact, I didn't even get around to listening to GNX fully until 2026, despite the fact Kendrick came out with nearly with uh sorry. Um despite the fact Kendrick came out with it in early 2024 and did an entire Super Bowl halftime show revolving around it, its release as well, which I watched. Although, to add another caveat, not listening to GNX had far less to do with my excitement for listening to it and more to do with the extraordinary circumstances in my life at the time, which if you're looking for a rambling accountant and story of that, in those details, you can check out episode six, which has a lot more of my life story. So back to Kendrick. It's not like I don't love Kendrick, I just think my style and liking towards music naturally has a lot more to do with the production side, the melodic side, and less to do with the lyrics, which is different for everyone. In fact, when it comes to lyrics, I tend to be more shallow in the sense where I enjoy lyrics like two-income household, choosing your bridesmaids, white dress with wine stains, farmhouse with my taste on Drake's white bone, a lot more than I prefer the much more raw, introspective, and spiritual lyrics Kendrick uses, especially on songs like Reincarnated from GNX. I know, I know, I know. Makes literally no sense. But music is for our enjoyment. We enjoy what we enjoy. I enjoy cookies and cream, ice cream, you enjoy mint chocolate chip. Uh, how and why do I like this is confusing to me as well. It's just I like what I like. I think while Kendrick can speak on deeper spiritual truths relating to life and the world as a whole, Drake can speak on deeper spiritual truths relating to my personal life, like relationships, thoughts on friends, exes, romance, etc. And since my writing and much of my work with my podcast is already on the same gear, Kendrick is on lyrically, it's just not as appealing to me at times, especially when music, in my case, is used as a beautiful fantasy escape. Not one which is not real, but one which touches on senses that are very real and also intricately woven into my spirit and psyche. Like all of us, we can't really truly explain our preferences 100% of the time at the end of the day. We just like what we like. I prefer Drake's melodies over Kendrick's hard bars. I also prefer Drake's melodies over his own hard bars. That is Drake singing over Drake rapping. And I think one thing that is important, which I've already mentioned, is not only accepting that in ourselves and not beating ourselves up over it, but rather finding bits of ourselves that we love and appreciate about ourselves. And furthermore, doing the same for others in their own preferences, as I've mentioned already. If we can all more deeply love ourselves and more deeply accept and love others, the world would be a much better place instantly. And I think this is what makes this conversation so relatable, is that even as something as silly and rudimentary as music preferences, we can be so intolerant of others' differences of opinion. We can be so quick to say, well, if they like Drake or if they like Kendrick, they're a bad person. They're going to round up the Jews and put them in the gas chambers. They're a white supremacists, whatever it is. No, I'm serious. I'm really serious here. We can see a difference in opinion and just jump to the most extreme thoughts in our mind about what that means. It means a threat to at the highest level. It means I can never trust them. And this insidiously false and damaging perspective is one of the primary truths of healing we all must and will eventually take in this life to learn and accept and appreciate others. And this is especially wrong and bad when it comes to the institutions like the media, like the college campuses and education. When it comes from the inst when uh something on my leg. When we teach the fact that being different and having different opinions no matter what they are, red, blue, green, or yellow, I don't care, is bad. Bro, opinions is how you make babies. You want to have sex with yourself? No, seriously, think about it. You really think that you're that hot? No, I'm serious. It's a ridiculously false spiritual fallacy when we see difference and go to extremes that are negative. Difference in diversity is one of the most beautiful things we can and will all learn to appreciate in our lives. This is a major spiritual understanding. I also think relating this back to Kendrick and Drake, that it's a lot just a little disheartening when Drake and Kendrick need to beef like that. I didn't even pay attention to it, honestly, and didn't even listen to the songs, other than Kendrick's not like us, because that was impossible to avoid. I just knew it was happening. I appreciate the competition of rap, so in that aspect I liked it. But at the end of the day, the name calling, the character assassination is just a value we all know within our higher spirits is not a virtue or of help to ourselves, to others, and to the world. In politics, it's like the it's like focus on the issues. Infrastructure needs to improve, build the bridge. In music, you want to prove you're a better artist? Put put that in the album and prove it. Make it undeniable. However, you could also understand the physical collision from both artists just on a simple level of gravity. Both were so big, both had such great music to make, and there was a debate between the two, and it felt like two completely separate camps insides. It felt like a storm was brewing, and it did, but ultimately I think it is wise to take the J. Cole route and believe that there's a middle ground and balance, and to learn to appreciate both artists for who they are and what they bring to the table. So, outside of the beef, what did Kendrick bring to the table on GNX? Let me get a sip of water and I'll finish this up. Frankly, any Kendrick album is hard to properly rate because you have to be aware of any hidden messages, any hidden uh meanings, and all the artist touches he may put in on any given body of work. This is what makes Kendrick easily a top three artist in the game. It's not only his ability to have credible flow, tonality, lyricism, and also make a hit song, but also his ability to tell a story, to say a lot without saying too much, leaving room for interpretation and allowing, frankly, forcing the listener to actively think about his art, which you gotta make time for. Frank Ocean, also a master at this. Overall, GNX um just get the last two pages here. Overall, GNX to me felt like a really good album from Kendrick. Not as best because almost every album since the first three have felt like a regression. Mainly because To Pimp a Butterfly is like a nearly perfect album, and that felt like the peak of Kendrick for me. It's such a hard to follow up that. That's probably what Frank Ocean is afraid of right now, as we speak, following up Blonde, his peak. Um, perhaps he should have taken a note from Frank Ocean on just dropping two amazing albums and then disappearing. No, I'm kidding. I actually appreciate this route a lot more. Gives us the music and gives us your best shot. When I first put on GNX, I really didn't like it sonically, and I thought the messaging was frankly disturbing. What felt like giving us his best shot on GNX felt a lot more like shooting more shots at times. It felt at times much more of the distracts to Drake, much more like the distracts to Drake, and even frankly, everyone, as he states on the lead song, whacked out murals. But I remained open-minded as I gave Kendrick the benefit of the doubt, as the refs do to great, you know, athletes in the sports like LeBron or Kobe or Shea Gilders Alexander, they get the calls. I gave Kendrick the benefit of the doubt because he has earned that right. Um by essentially being so deep and conceptual in his albums to try to piece together what he was really trying to say in GNX, which is fun. And what I learned and understood, Kendrick as a storyteller on GNX, was perhaps he was displaying the lower natures of himself. And as he later shares on Reincarnated, his true purpose and lesson on this incarnation on Earth is to let go of his egoic desires and transcend his pride, hatred, and to learn forgiveness, true forgiveness, through healing. He came damaged, as did we all, and his lesson was to challenge himself intentionally. Through his unique gift of writing in order to heal himself, which is honestly a beautiful message and sums up the beauty of the album at the highest level for me. Especially given the times of him recently coming off beefing with Drake, just months prior to releasing the album. It felt like from the beginning of the negative energy on Whacked Out Murals to the end of Gloria, we really understood Kendrick's journey of healing himself and understanding his shadow, so to speak. Perhaps the dual nature of man was also a symbolism he wanted to touch on with the black and white cover for the album. In addition, the car or the materialism and the spiritual undertaking he so perfectly describes on Reincarnated are another dualistic symbolism. Reincarnated feels like the staple track on the album for what it is: incredible storytelling, emotional tonality, and impeccable lyricism. As he finishes the album on Gloria, he speaks about how music in his writing essentially was what allowed him to save himself. It was his purpose, which is what allowed him to transcend his lower nature, and how having this unique gift he could give to the world became his mechanism of healing. And to me, if I'm getting that right, Kendrick, is an insanely beautiful and deep message. If I'm getting it wrong, I'm disappointed in myself, and also in Kendrick, for allowing his lower nature and the constant dissing and screw everyone to be a sticking point in his mind and his message. But I frankly doubt that's what he believes or was trying to convey. The downsides of the album are that frankly, some people might interpret it this way, which is fine, just sort of unideal, especially given the sort of rudimentary and droning sounds off some of the less than ideal tracks on here, at least for me. Like Squabble Up, Hey Now, TV Off, Peekaboo, and GNX, Peekaboo being the best out of these four, in my opinion. These songs have their place on the album, and certainly I think describe the lower nature of ourselves and our minds well, with both the sounds and the lyricism, but I can't say I listen to them or ever really will in the future, which is inherently a flaw ultimately, despite the conceptual plus they provide. Man at the Garden felt like the second staple track on the album, but again, one that I didn't want to come back to due to the lack of melodic melodies and sonics that I prefer. Kendrick here seems to be speaking about discovering the duality of purpose and materialism and how to grapple with both wanting it all, yet also reconciling with why he or anyone who has a desire for such intense materialism should pursue it. What is the substance of your desires? Are they fluff just for show or yourself? In yourself, or is there a deeper ocean that can be spread that can spread and sustain more life than just yourself? And if you want to be great and desire all that you want, how can you get there while still holding on to such negativity? That was at least my interpretation, and certainly raised a lot of good questions in the story of Kendrick's spiritual story here. The entire album sonically really felt hit or miss to me, which is honestly the main fault I have with it. But again, as I just said, I can see why he did it, and it does help paint and complete the beautiful overall picture he is painting here. Do I really feel he could have or should have done it any other way? Probably not. But does it get rid of the replay value and the enjoyment I get from listening to it? Which is perhaps just a cost Kendrick was willing to eat at this point in his mega successful career. He was looking to paint a beautiful picture, and it was less about record sales, perhaps. Although I think perhaps he may have thought some of those base heavy club jumpers would have done better on the charts than they ultimately did as far as staying power. Although, if I'm being honest, I never really fully analyzed the numbers that those songs did, and the numbers that this album did, or either any of these albums. It just felt like a lot of the songs on the album on GNX came and went as far as radio mainstream goes, besides Not Like Us, which isn't even on the album. And perhaps that was the reason why the other songs came and went. The highlights sonically, however, are very beautiful, starting with Luther. The beautiful melody back and forth between him and Cesar works so intelligently. They are truly an amazing combination, followed by Dodger Blue, which has a really funky California vibe that works super well. In fact, I can't think of a more beautifully California song I've ever heard in my life. This is probably my personal favorite song on the album, and the one I immediately saved to my playlist. Heart Part 6 picks up on the same West Coast vibe, and it's probably the best combination of beautiful production and lyricism on the entire album. All the people could be pleased with this one. Use your heart and not your eyes, the background vocalist sings on the chorus of the song. Forgive me for not knowing who this singer is. This track appears towards the end of the album, track 10 of 12, and again shows the truer lessons Kendrick's understanding on this incarnation and lesson on Earth. The last materialism club bumper GNX presents is the title track GNX, and it's perhaps the worst, the most ignorant, and the least appealing track on the album. But perhaps the symbolism of the GNX, the car, or the materialism is the final lesson of the spirit and the hardest one to achieve and comprehend. And perhaps that was the purpose of this track. Gloria finishes um Gloria, excuse me, finishes the album beautifully, highlighting Kendrick's falling in love with his purpose and how the love he had for writing and becoming Kendrick Lamar, his highest heights, have become the most fulfilling and joyful thing he could have ever fathomed. Much more so than the car, the money, and getting revenge over those who wronged him. This is probably my second favorite track on the entire album because of how beautiful it sounds and also how it ties everything together so nicely. Overall, GNX appears to have Kendrick asking the deepest questions I've ever seen him ask on any album, if you really pay attention to it. However, it does seem to come at a cost to its replay value, which is fine and doesn't really impact how I feel about it overall. I guess you could listen to Squabble Up if you really found yourself in a weird mood. Or some of the other songs on here, like TV Off or Whacked Down Murals, but overall, I never really feel like I was vibing out to the loudly repetitive banging beats he chooses on these selections. What I love about GNX is the overall message. That's what I love about the album the most, at least the one I interpreted from it. It felt more like a book, like a story than any album I've listened to in a long time. But what Kendrick provides in concept and thought, he lacks here in replay value and classical songs. At the end of the day, we're talking about music here. When I want to listen to music, I want to listen to sound. I want to listen to it sound great too. And we don't get a ton of that from Kendrick on GNX outside of three or four songs out of the 12. Kind of similar to a Drake ratio there. Now that I've given my analysis of all three albums, it's time to decide what the rankings are for me. So gonna finish this quickly. Overall, these rankings are of their most recent albums, and who ultimately, due to the culmination of their work and their most recent album, stands atop the mountain at the moment. Overall, number one, I have to stick with Kanye. Again, I think there is some bias here, perhaps because Kanye is my favorite artist, but you just can't beat the guy. And Bully had 18 songs, 16 of them were great. To really good. Um, if we're talking about overall musical album and where he is as an artist, it's hard to put anyone above Kanye in the game as far as draw, excitement, swag, and who I'm looking forward to more for their next album. Replay value on songs and joy I get to listening to the album. Bully had its flaws overall, lacking those one or two really good mainstream songs, which Kanye is usually easily able to provide, but it had hidden gems sprinkled throughout the entirety of it, which grew on me. I really think, and even the the deluxe shows the re uh the tinkering of the new songs of all the songs and how they sound even better after he's gone through and tinkered with them. This one here is a top 10 Kanye song, so you can't really say, in my opinion, that he's fallen off if he gives us more of his best. I know many people disagree with that take, but the first time I heard that song, I put it on replay like 20 times in one night, and I can safely say that song touches on a part of my spirit. None of the other songs on any of these albums touch. So Kanye just has an effortless way of putting together both beautiful music, deeply meaningful spiritual lyrics. Where Drake or Kendrick feel like two ends of the extreme, Kanye feels like the beautiful middle ground, and to me that will always be more appealing. Now, number two, I have to go with Kendrick over Drake, mainly for the reasons that I have explained in this podcast of Drake just really falling off from his peak, becoming less and less relatable, and more and more like, what am I listening to? What is going on here? Janice STFU? Yeah, like I've never even met a Janice in my life. I don't know a single Janice. Do I need to go out more? Probably, but I've never met a Janice. Not to say Janice is a bad not to say Janice is a bad name. It's just to say how many names is Drake gonna use in his freaking discography, man. It seems like a new girl every single day. And hey, to each their own. I'm not being a hater, I'm not being jealous. I just it's just unrelatable. It's just unrelatable. Maybe I don't got game like that. Maybe, maybe Drake just lives a better party lifestyle than me. But ultimately, the music itself felt like it was lacking clarity, felt like it was lacking a message at all, felt like it was lacking a theme at all, despite him dividing the albums by themes. And so to me, the game needs who who needs to make the biggest comeback right now? It's Drake. It's clearly Drake. It's clearly Drake. Kanye is sitting at top of the game as the GOAT due to the fact that Bully felt not flawless, but hard to say was a bad album. And uh Kendrick, GNX, you could you could pick apart parts of it as that really didn't hit, you know. You could you could say, mmm, that really wasn't it. The message was there. There were a few really good California vibey tracks like Dodger Blue, but Squabble Up and some of those, you know, really clubby songs, while they helped tell the story, they really detracted from the enjoyability I got from the album. So I'm going one Kanye, two Kendrick, three Drake. If you'd like to watch me going over the specifics of the songs, uh of my top three favorite songs on each album and my least favorite song on each album, as well as just a little more bonus content. Watch this podcast on YouTube. You'll be able to see that. And uh, it's about 40 extra minutes of content. It's great, it's fun, it's funny. Um, and uh you can listen to great music uh and vibe out with me while you do it. So that's what that is. I I'm not doing that on the audio of the podcast here due to a variety of reasons, mainly copyright issues. But yeah, this was fun. This was a lot of fun for me to do, guys. Uh try to make it a little shorter, but it's you know, I'm uh I'm I'm uh reviewing three albums, so there's a lot to do, and you know, I really have no limits on the the length of these podcasts. That's not something I think about. So if you stayed with me, thank you so much. I really love you. And uh now back to my uh room where you'll find me reviewing the songs specifically on each of these albums. Much love.