Drake and 21 Savage have released their joint album, “Her Loss,” following a week-long delay due to Drake’s longtime producer Noah “40” Shebib coming down with COVID while mixing and mastering the 16-track LP.
The album only has one feature, with Travis Scott guesting on “Pussy & Millions.” At first listen, album highlights include “Circo Loco,” which samples Daft Punk’s classic track “One More Time,” and “Spin Bout U,” which sees Drake in his feelings again.
“Her Loss” was officially revealed on Oct. 22 in the music video for Drake and 21 Savage’s song “Jimmy Cooks,” the final track from Drake’s summer LP, “Honestly, Nevermind.” The club-focused record received little to no promotion, having been announced just six hours before its release. His 2021 album, the record-breaking “Certified Lover Boy,” also arrived with little warning — its release date was announced through ESPN commercials the week of, which immediately followed rapper Kanye West’s “Donda” release.
With “Her Loss,” Drake and 21 took even more of an unconventional approach; postingcomedic fake press and interview clips that started with a faux Vogue cover and 21 doing his own GQ “What’s in My Bag” video, in which items varied from tea packets to a copy of children’s book “Charlotte’s Web.” While Drake initially shared that copies of the Vogue magazine with their cover would be on newsstands earlier in the week, a team of handlers throughout New York gave fans copies on Monday, which featured photoshopped images of the two rappers imposed over the Anna Wintour-led magazine’s most recent print issue.
More recently, clips of the duo on “The Howard Stern Show” and NPR’s “Tiny Desk” circulated online, only to turn out to be fake. The official NPR Music Twitter account confirmed the promo trailer to be an imitation by saying, “Let’s do it forreal tho,” and posted a news story on their official website making it clear they were open to the possibility. Fake “The Howard Stern Show” clips featured short conversations about various topics, such as Drake’s preferred pornography viewing habits and his thoughts on marriage, while other clips talk about 21’s British roots. The latter’s birth origin was surprisingly revealed to much of the world when he was taken into custody by ICE in February 2019 for overstaying his visa. A second glance at the clips makes it more obvious that the two rappers were imposed over a green screen for both fake appearances, with Stern’s lines being cut up from the decades of audio his show has aired.
Through the string of fake press appearances, Drake and 21 seem to be making a type of meta-statement about their level of celebrity in relation to common press stops that most artists tend to visit during traditional album rollouts. Drake has been typically press-averse in recent years, opting not to do interviews with outlets or appear on magazine covers, last appearing on a two-hour Rap Radar interview in late 2019. The satirical appearances from both artists indicate to audiences just how little they need to make these stops to release a successful record, first-week album sales pending.
The 16-track LP is entirely executive produced by Drake and 21 Savage and released through Drake’s OVO and Savage’s Slaughter Gang Entertainment labels. On late Wednesday night, the Toronto rapper shared the album’s cover art, which features a portrait of model Qui Yasuka, also known as Suki Baby, taken by Paris Aden.
The two artists have put out a consistent string of collaborations since 2017, starting with loose single “Sneakin’.” Drake appeared on Savage’s 2020 record with producer Metro Boomin on the song “Mr. Right Now” before the favor was repaid in 2021 on “Certified Lover Boy” with the track “Knife Talk.” Their most recent collaboration, “Jimmy Cooks,” is regarded as a standout off Drake’s “Honestly, Nevermind” due to its traditional rap structure on a predominantly club-influenced record.
“Her Loss” Tracklist:
- Rich Flex
- Major Distribution
- On BS
- Backoutsideboyz
- Privileged Rappers
- Spin Bout U
- Hours In Silence
- Treacherous Twins
- Circo Loco
- Pussy and Millions
- Broke Boys
- Middle Of The Ocean
- Jumbotron Shit Poppin
- More M’s
- 3AM On Glenwood
- I Guess It’s Fuck Me
