Consistently Great or Constantly Evolving?
Drake is one of my favorite artists to make fun of because he is constantly being trashed about something. That doesn’t mean I don’t love his music, because I do. But no matter what he does, there is some criticism to it. Last weekend he released his new album, For All the Dogs. The built-up anticipation for this project was high, to say the least. Rumors of guest features, when it would be released, cover art drawn by his son, dates getting pushed back, it seemed like it was the center of attention for a few months. The day had finally come for it to be released and instead of being released at midnight, it was announced it wouldn’t be available until 6am. Leaving everyone to speculate whether it was sloppily being thrown together at the last minute, or it was a marketing ploy. Finally, it is released into the world, ready to be consumed by the masses.
It's funny watching art being released into the world because everyone is quick to throw out their opinions, all looking at it through different lenses. Not to say that one way of viewing it is better than the other, but very rarely is anything as simple as “good or bad”. The reviews come flooding in from the album: “Drake Sounds Tired” “Keeping Creativity on A Leash” “Bitter & Deeply Mid” “Needs New Tricks”. Ha. Despite all of the negative feedback that the project received, it did 109 million streams within 24 hours on the global Spotify chart. Making it the seventh biggest album debut of all-time. So it can’t be all bad, right?
The problem I consistently run into with each new Drake project is that I am expecting/hoping for him to grow and evolve from his latest project. But each time I get what seems to be the same as before (except for Honestly, Nevermind. We won’t talk about that right now), and what I’m coming to realize is that he is consistently good at what he does. He knows his lane he’s in and he’s doubling down on it and getting better at it. Instead of trying to grow as an artist and shift the culture or even just evolve, he plays it safe and is successful at it. There’s no denying that this album is probably the best he’s sounded in a long time vocally, production-wise, rap flows. So in that sense, he’s grown in getting better at what he’s always done. But not growing in expanding his talents and trying new things. And I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.
Creatively, should we be working hard to be consistently great in one area that we are in or should we be striving to constantly grow? Can you grow while trying to be consistently great at one thing? If you’re growing in a variety of areas does that mean that you aren’t being consistently great in any of them?
Where is the balance?
For me, I get bored with one thing. I have to constantly be working on new things and challenging myself in the areas I’m in. I feel like if I’m ever to the point of doing something really well, I’m not being challenged enough in it. Therefore, I’m not growing. And that’s a weird place to be in.
As our agency continues to push for excellence in everything we do, we understand that with that comes missteps, things not going as planned, frustrations, failures. At the end of the day, we have to be okay with that and look at it through the lenses of “how can we grow from this?”
We can choose to be consistently great at the things we know we are great with, or we can choose to get uncomfortable and strive to evolve knowing that will result in growth in so many different aspects.
After Drake released this album he made an announcement that he’s taking a year off from music to “get healthy”. In whatever way he means by “healthy”, I’m curious if this desire is coming from a place of boredom of always doing the same thing. Can we be creatively healthy if we aren’t growing? I guess it depends on your definition of healthy.
How do you measure growth? Are you looking at one thing you do and seeing how great you are at it or are you looking at how much you’re evolving in different areas?
