Bad news for everyone suffering through our (and, we guess, Canada’s) long, Drakeless national nightmare: Pitchfork reports that the Grammy-winning musician has just delayed the arrival of his next album, Certified Lover Boy. Drake released the news early today on Instagram Stories, inaugurating a period of us not getting to listen to a new Drake album.
Per said Story, Drake wrote that, “I was planning to release my album this month but between surgery and rehab my energy has been dedicated to recovery,” referencing a knee injury he suffered back in 2020. Drake originally announced the album back in October, at a time when knee pain presumably felt less powerful, and lover boys more easily certified.
For anyone keeping track, this is not, as of yet, the longest lacuna we’ve had to withstand in Drake’s discography. While the wait since 2018's Scorpion has now stretched to 30 months, it’s still currently being beaten out by the gap between 2013's Nothing Was The Same and 2016's Views. (This has been your brief primer for the day in the exciting and growing field of Drake Math, which also devotes regular energy to calculating the age difference between the rapper and the women he texts.)
Drake didn’t offer up a substitute date for the release of Certified Lover Boy, but did note that he expects it to arrive some time in 2021. Meanwhile, there appears to be very little laurel-resting in the rest of the Drake-a-verse; Variety reports today that he just became the first artist to ever surpass 50 billion (with a “Boy, howdy”) streams on Spotify.