Every Drake Album Ranked Worst To Best — Thank Us Later

Drake has been easily one of the most dependable artists ever since he gave up acting for rapping in the mid-2000s. He’s delivered songs that resonate with the masses through a combination of chart-topping records and deeply personal para-social tracks, which in turn make people feel like they know the Canadian hitmaker personally.

The tracks are brought to life through mixtapes, albums, EPs, packs of songs, loosies, collaborative projects, compilation albums and even playlists — all of which serve the same purpose but don’t necessarily hold the same value.

Take 2019’s Care Package for example. The ‘album’ is simply a compilation of loose songs Drake had released between the years 2010 and 2016 – before streaming really took off. These songs don’t necessarily have any tie to each other, other than being solid Drizzy songs that fans wanted to enjoy without having to scour the internet for hours. Despite them being a fun listen, Drake is too calculated and intentional of an artist for it to really fall within the parameters of a suitable “Drake album.”

By those standards, he’s released 12 proper Drake albums that can be safely considered his catalog. And although it’s almost an impossible task to give a finite ranking to one of the most consistent catalogs in not only Hip Hop but music, period, HipHopDX has had a go at ranking the 6 God’s albums from worst to best — check out below for our list of Drake albums ranked.

Editor’s Note: The selections below are listed in descending order from worst to best.

HONESTLY, NEVERMIND

Drake’s quote-unquote worst album might just need more time to marinate in the ears of the masses. Honestly, Nevermind was Drizzy’s most intentional attempt at a very genre-specific album. Normally he flexes his genre-mixing superpower on each of his albums but on this one he goes all in on dance and house music.

Sure, he’s still dishing out some rap verses across some of these pulsating dance beats, like on songs such as “Sticky” and “Jimmy Cooks” featuring 21 Savage, with the latter being the album’s only full on rap track. The truth is, the album is far from bad or poorly executed but in the grand scheme of Drake’s entire catalog it simply just doesn’t compare.

This might very well be a favorite Drake album to a Gen Z listener but given all that he has to offer as a rapper, songwriter and overall musician, this album only scratches one of the many surfaces he can cover as an artist.

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE (w/Future)

Drake had a big 2015. After dropping one his strongest projects to date, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, in the winter and then proceeding to go to war with Meek Mill in the summer, he polished off the year by dropping What a Time to Be Alive with frequent collaborator Future in the fall.

What started out as a quick trip to Atlanta for Drake turned into a full-on collaboration project with Pluto, who, along with DJ Esco and Metro Boomin, led the charge in terms of sound, bounce and subject matter while Drake almost got to ride shotgun delivering anthem energy and slick verses.

Although a perfect snapshot of Atlanta’s sound on the cusp of the SoundCloud era, some of the larger tracks on the album hasn’t aged well as it’s moved into the 2020s. Plus, Future does a lot of the heavy lifting on the album and at the end of the day, it can be best described as the crescendo during Future’s incredible 2010s mixtape run.

HER LOSS (w/ 21 Savage)

Drake’s collaboration albums are great at capturing moments in time but don’t always stand the test of time like the majority of his solo work. Her Loss with 21 Savage was another semi-surprise release that easily excited, or at least piqued the interest, of fans and critics alike.

There are a lot of hot songs on the album especially the opening few tracks. “Rich Flex,” “Major Distribution” and “On BS” rattle off just as anyone would expect a 21 Savage and Drake rap collaboration to.

There are other Drake solo tracks like “Middle of the Ocean” and “Jumbotron Shit Poppin” that can be enjoyed again and again but that’s where the album begins to fizzle. The 16-cut tracklist loses steam when the songs slow down to poem pace. There is no doubt the cutthroat rap tracks will live on in both artists’ legacies but as a whole it might not be at the front of people’s minds.

THANK ME LATER

Drake’s official major label debut album, Thank Me Later, isn’t as bad as everyone claims. Sure, it hasn’t aged as well as some of his other albums from the 2010s but it surely doesn’t deserve last place in his catalog.

It only runs 14 tracks long and packs a punch throughout with hits like “Over,” “Find Your Love” and timeless classic “Miss Me” featuring Young Money boss Lil Wayne. There are also solid deep cuts in the form of the Kanye West-produced “Show Me a Good Time” and the emotionally charged “Karaoke.”

Out of the 14 tracks, over half have supporting voices that can sometimes overshadow a young Drizzy, such as JAY-Z on “Light Up” and Nicki Minaj on “Up All Night.” However, it’s not this that stops the album from being higher up on Drake’s best-ever list. This is more so due to the simple style and cadence of the Toronto superstar’s rapping.

Not only is he confined to the standard chorus-verse-chorus-verse formula for the majority of the songs, but he also raps that early 2010s truncated simile flow — something that aged like a banana.

FOR ALL THE DOGS

Drake’s most recent offering found itself falling victim to the streaming service stat-padding bloat. It’s a play that has becoming increasingly common throughout rap music and sure, it results in hoards of streams but the quality often suffers as a result.

For All the Dogs runs 23 songs long (not including the Scary Hours edition) and contains a lot of filler tracks. Of course, there are some high peaks on the album including fan favorite “First Person Shooter” with J. Cole and the rap master class “8am in Charlotte,” but the valleys of so-so songs are just too wide. Had the album been half the runtime, keeping some of the more high-energy songs, it would have played much better.

This isn’t to say that slower BPM Drake should be cut out altogether because some of the slower tracks on For All the Dogs, like “Members Only” and “Bahamas Promises” are crafted beautifully. The real skips on this album come from the mid-speed tracks that are more mono-tone reference track-type beats than anything wholehearted. “Drew A Picasso” and “Fear of Heights” are prime examples of the “should have been left on the cutting room floor” songs.

SCORPION

Scorpion, which spans 25 tracks across “two sides,” making it Drake’s longest album to date, might just be the Toronto star’s most polarizing album. The A Side contains mostly rap tracks while Side B contains most of his singing tracks. For starters, 25 songs no matter how they are broken down is a tall task for any artist to concisely present their best selves — even for a master songwriter like Drake.

The end of Side A and the beginning of Side B have plenty of filler tracks that aren’t very exciting or particularly memorable. That said, Scorpion also includes some of Drake’s biggest and most popular songs that have had a massive impact on the Hip Hop zeitgeist as well as his career. “Nonstop,” “Nice For What” and “Don’t Matter To Me” and, of course, one of his biggest singles ever, “God’s Plan,” are all on the album.

It truly is unfortunate that Scorpion ended up being an overall bloated album because it was also where and when Drake revealed he had a son on closing track “March 14” — after Pusha T had previously outed him on diss track “The Story of Adidon.”

CERTIFIED LOVER BOY

Certified Lover Boy is one of Drake’s only teased-and-delayed releases. For the entirety of his career, Drizzy has stuck to his album release dates like glue but COVID-19 and a knee injury kept him from dropping CLB on time — nine months late in fact (hence the pregnant emojis on the album’s cover).

The album totals 21 tracks but somehow lacks the usual hit-power Drake usually brings to his full-length projects. Since the album dropped on short notice after completion, there weren’t any preview singles to bolster excitement.

Filled with slower tracks, deep cuts and more lukewarm records than fans had ever come to expect from Drake, “Way 2 Sexy” and “Girls Want Girls” ended up being the selected singles but are currently some of his lowest performing hits. “Knife Talk” however caught tons of steam and has become the standout track from the album — likely sparking the wave of collaborations with 21 Savage.

MORE LIFE

2017’s More Life is easily Drake’s most slept on project. One major reason is because it’s labeled as a “playlist” despite having top quality mix of terrific Drizzy songs. The other reason could simply be because it’s sandwiched between 2016’s Views and 2018’s Scorpion, two of the 6 God’s biggest commercially performing albums.

However, there was a time where “Fake Love” was a dominant hit single making waves throughout pop culture. More Life does occasionally veer into UK rap territory, where Drake activates his drill flows and calls on guests like Skepta and Giggs. That said, he sticks to what he knows with introspective songs like “Do Not Disturb” and the palette cleansing tropical track “Passionfruit.”

One could make the case that when Drake doesn’t label a project as an “album” and dubs it a “mixtape” or “playlist” he tends to perform better. On More Life this is evident with songs like “Blem” and “KMT” that feature just the right amount of experimenting without deviating from the rap standards fans are used to.

VIEWS

Views will most likely go down as Drizzy’s most anticipated album — and to some, one of the best Drake albums. Coming off a vicious 2015 where he fended off ghostwriting allegations all while trying to record new music, this 2016 album offered a calm amongst the chaos.

Revolving around probably his most dominant single, “One Dance,” it contains some other strong singles in the form of “Hotline Bling” and “Pop Style” which both play their part but it’s the supporting cast of songs that steal the show. Channeling his best Caribbean-inspired Toronto ‘mans’ style, songs like “Controlla,” “Too Good” and “Feel No Ways” are certified ear worms that are too catchy to deny.

That said, Views is missing a track or two that resemble his iconic timestamp songs. “Hype” and “Grammys” keep ‘rap Drake’ fans mildly satisfied but not well enough to propel this album to the top of his catalog. Views also gets a bonus point for best album artwork of the decade.

IF YOU’RE READING THIS IT’S TOO LATE

If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late is what most people would describe as the inaugural album that ushered in ‘tough guy Drake’ and, frankly, it’s one of his strongest. All 17 tracks, apart from a tiny handful of slower jams, are bulletproof when it comes to the haters.

Everything from Drizzy’s aggressive energy to the surprise release, and even the name of the album acts as a warning shot for the bully behavior that would follow in the coming years. It is perhaps Drake’s most intentional album that clearly delivers one message and one message only: don’t fuck with me. Remember, some of this album’s hits (“Know Yourself” and “10 Bands”) album sparked the infamous Quentin Miller saga that gave us tracks like “Charged Up” and “Back 2 Back.”

If all that doesn’t solidify this album as one of Drake’s best, the intro track “Legend” remains his closing track on tour to this day. And for those who exclusively enjoy singing Drake, “Jungle” remains one of, if not the, best Drake ballad.

NOTHING WAS THE SAME

Nothing Was the Same is Drake’s shortest project to date only running 59 minutes across 13 tracks. Even if you added on the two bonus tracks (“Come Thru” and “All Me”) the entirely of the album is only 15 songs; unheard of by today’s standards. Despite having the shortest tracklist and run time, NWTS squeezes in every variation of Drake into one compact listen.

Kicking off with the earth-scorching intro track “Tuscan Leather,” the album plays like a nonstop rap-a-thon until the heavy-hitting ballad of the decade “Hold On, We’re Going Home” rolls around. Not to mention the album being led by “Started From the Bottom,” a generational hit that became a phrase heard all around world.

There isn’t one wasted verse, bar or ad-lib on this project with absolutely zero bloated melancholic sequencing. Plus, almost every song title (and many of the bars in fact) could and have been used as Instagram caption fodder for the masses.

TAKE CARE

Ask 100 people what their favorite Drake album is and a lot of them will likely name Take Care. Released in 2011, Drizzy’s sophomore album remains his most enjoyable with over a dozen classics that still get played as much today as they did over a decade ago.

Songs like “Headlines,” “The Motto,”“Crew Love” and, of course, the LP’s title track, all get regular rotation in DJ sets, radio mixes, or as part of “Drake Essentials” playlists on DSPs. Combined with another large handful of meaningful deep cuts that have stuck to the ribs of the masses, this 19-track project is damn-near perfect which is why it tops the list when it comes to the best Drake albums.

The only common criticism of Take Care, which is essentially a nitpick, is the slow song sequencing that runs towards the end of the album, from “Cameras/Good Ones Go Interlude” through to “Look What You’ve Done.” But that’s only if you’re listening to the album straight through — which barely happens these days. Not to mention, the next song in the queue is “HYFR” which happens to be the ultimate hype song.

It’s very clear that on Take Care Drake figured out exactly who he was as an artist, the type of music he wanted to make and the standard he would ultimately set for himself.

Did we get the list of Drake albums ranked correctly? Hit up the comments section to share your thoughts and let us know which other artists you’d like to see get the HipHopDX ranked treatment.