It was a busy week in the worlds of hip-hop and R&B. Billboard Unfiltered returns on Thursday (Aug. 8) with an episode attacking Drake’s 100 Gigs dump, Ye and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures 2 and Latto’s place in the pantheon of female rap.
Drake’s every chess move has been dissected by fans since the fallout from the Kendrick Lamar feud. Deputy Director, Editorial Damien Scott was complimentary of Drake’s shrewd decision making in leaking the three songs and archival footage, which he compared to something Ye would’ve done in the mold of G.O.O.D. Fridays.
“We know he’s a person who thinks about the totality of not only his career, but the whole market and the people he’s playing against,” Scott said. “I think this is extremely novel. It’s really creative. The highest compliment I can pay it is this feels like something Ye would’ve done when he was still killing it. Back when he was doing the G.O.O.D. Friday releases.”
But he still thinks the Lamar feud was weighing on his mind with this move. “I think it’s not crazy to believe, ‘Alright, let me reset for a second.’”
However, Staff Writer Kyle Denis thinks Drake is nervous about the reception of his next single and found a loophole to test the waters. “I do think it’s p—y,” he stated. “Because I would think these three songs are all you dropped versus three songs plus 10 hours of archival footage. If you believed in this new stuff, why are we walking up memory lane at the same time?”
Onto Vultures 2, the panel agrees that the project’s original version didn’t feel completed with fans rightly wanting more from Ye and Ty. “It feels like Ye doesn’t care. If Ye doesn’t care, why should we care?” Scott asked.
Senior Charts & Data Analyst Trevor Anderson is surprised none of the tracks have caught on a path to disrupt the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
“Wherever you want to start post 2015, Vultures 1 ‘Carnival’ are the outliers… I think that was more of a surprise to people,” he said. “This feels a little below — I’m surprised there’s no song jumping…Everything has gone No. 1 going back to College Dropout, you don’t want to make too much of it, but when you look in the record books it’s, ‘Oh, this is where the drop-off really happened.”
With Kanye’s decorated discography, Deputy Director of Hip-Hop/R&B Carl Lamarre is frustrated knowing what Ye’s capable when it comes to V2‘s final product.
“This is somebody I still believe to this day — maybe you could put Kendrick in the same conversation of releasing five consecutive classic albums. To know creatively what he’s been able to do and have such a drop-off and not give a f–k? One of my favorite songs if ‘530’ and I saw flashes, but that last part it went downhill from there,” Lamar said. “That’s why it’s tough for me to dismiss him and say, ‘It’s fully over.’”
After getting an early listen, Denis has high hopes for Latto’s Sugar Honey Iced Tea album and thinks it could vault her into the big three conversation with Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B and Nicki Minaj in female rap.
“One of those [big three] spots is kinda shaky right now, for obvious reasons. This album — I think it’s better than every other female rap album we’ve got this year. I’ll stand on it. I’m very happy with this album.”
Watch the full episode below.
