Everything We Know About The New Drake Album, 'Certified Lover Boy'

At a recent battle rap event that he was at (where he gave a whopping $150k to the winner), Drake did an interview where he was asked whether he’d be at the next event. He replied that he wasn’t sure he could make it because he had to work on Certified Lover Boy. When they responded that the event would be at the end of summer, Drake said, “oh yeah, I’ll be there; my album will be out by then.” If you’re being technical and literal, that gives the project a cut-off date of September 21^st.

Now, fans were a little bit skeptical about that comment. It was the end of 2018 when Drake said he was going to start work on the new album soon. Then in June of 2019, he confirmed he was in album mode. In December of 2019, when he came out at DaBaby’s show, he said he was finishing up the album. After that, he said it would be out for the summer of 2020. Then, months later, he announced a January 2021 release for CLB, only for the month to come around and for it to be pushed back so that Drake could nurse an injury. It’s been a long journey—the longest that Drake has had in between albums, in fact—but fans are hoping the wait will be well worth it.

Drizzy’s album covers have a tendency to be pretty iconic, especially the ones for VIEWS and Nothing Was The Same. Both of them have been memed to death and are instantly recognisable. So what will the cover for Certified Lover Boy be?

The artwork is yet to be released, but we do have an idea about what it could be. Way back in the video for ‘Only You Freestyle’ with Headie One, Drake wore a hoodie with a never-before-seen logo on it and that ended up being the official CLB logo. That could very well be part of the new album cover, but it’s unlikely to be solely that image. Why’s that, you ask?

While looking back at old Drake album covers, we've noticed that no matter how big or how small, his own face appears on every single one. Thank Me Later, Take Care, Nothing Was The Same, VIEWS, and Scorpion are all of the rapper’s official albums (If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late, and the others that came in between are technically considered mixtapes), and each and every one of them features the rapper’s famous mug on them. He’s been sporting the heart in his haircut for a while now, so we’re betting that that will be a centerpiece on the cover.

Of course, an album is nothing without the songs that make it up. What songs will be on Drake’s next effort?

Last summer, Drake put out ‘Laugh Now Cry Later’ which felt like an attempt at a big single when it dropped. It has a catchy chorus and it dropped alongside a massive video that boasted cameos from Druski, Kevin Durant, and OBJ. By the time the album drops, it’ll be around a year old, so perhaps it won’t actually make it to the final tracklist.

In the leadup to the album, Drake put out Scary Hours 2, a bundle of three songs – ‘What’s Next, ‘Lemon Pepper Freestyle,’ and ‘Wants And Needs. Only the first of that trio got a video, and so some fans treated it as though it was the second single. It’s not unusual for a Drake song to appear as part of an EP and then feature on an album. Way back with the first Scary Hours is how we originally heard ‘God’s Plan,’ which, of course, ended up making it to the B side of Scorpion.

That covers music that is already out that could appear on the LP, but what do we know about songs that haven’t officially been released that might be on it?

In the past couple of years, a lot of Drake songs have been leaking. If you’re unfamiliar with what a leak is in music, it’s essentially an unauthorized release. When a song comes out before it was meant to, it’s a leak. There have been so many Drake leaks that he was motivated to pair some of them with some new songs and put out Dark Lane Demo Tapes, a compilation project, last year.

One of the songs that leaked that didn’t make it to that project was ‘Not Around,’ or at least fans dubbed it. The song’s clearly a little unfinished, but that didn’t stop it from being added to people’s playlists when it came out. Last year when he was doing some DJing on Instagram Live, fans kept asking Drake to play the song, to which Drake said, “people keep asking me to play ‘Not Around’… new version on the album, proper version.” It should be acknowledged that that was back in April of 2020 and that the world has literally changed since then, but it’s worth noting that we could still hear a final version of it on the project.

Not long ago on Instagram, in the early hours of the morning, Drake posted a snippet of a song and captioned it ‘Fair Trade’, confirming its title. Snippets can often be just a few seconds and raise more questions than they answer questions, but Drake let the song play for a while before cutting the video off. We get to hear the full first verse, the chorus, and some of the second verse. Some notable lines are “I been losing friends and finding peace but honestly that sound like a fair trade to me” from the chorus and “don’t invite me over next time you throw a pity party” from the second verse. I can already see both of them on Instagram captions. Of course, it’s not certain that this one will be part of the tracklist for Certified Lover Boy, but it’s worth speculating about.

‘Fair Trade’ isn’t the only song that’s been teased through Instagram either. At the end of May, Drake posted a picture of his son Adonis holding up a whiteboard with some of his scribbles on it. The whiteboard is a key part of Drake’s album process because it’s how he figures out what the tracklist for the new album is going to be. The caption is “They keep asking for a tracklist…can’t seem to get one-off” with a laughing emoji. However, the picture does give us an idea of a one-track title. At the top left of the whiteboard, you can see what looks like ‘Champagne Poetry.’ It’s written right under the CLB logo, so if it does appear on the album, perhaps it’ll be the intro. We don’t know how just a song title has gotten us excited, but that’s what’s happened here.

Previous Drake albums have boasted names like Lil Wayne, JAY-Z, Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, and so many more, so the guestlist for Certified Lover Boy is exciting to speculate about. Right now, other than Lil Durk, who would appear on the already released ‘Laugh Now Cry Later,’ there are no confirmed guests. However, Drake has been spotted in the studio with Future and Ron Isley, so those are some people to look out for.

Drake was in the comments of his dad’s IG Live last year, and a fan mentioned him and complimented VIEWS. Drake responded, saying, “they hated on views just like they will CLB, but it’s music to evolve to.” Some of the criticism of VIEWS came because of the different genres that Drizzy pulled from, so perhaps we can expect some of the same on the new album.

When talking about the album’s length, Drake has also mentioned that this one will be a lot more concise than Scorpion, which came in at 25 tracks in total. This one will likely sit at around 16 tracks, with Drake acknowledging that it’s hard for him to do an incredibly short album when he needs to both sing and rap on it.