Major album releases typically have long and involved promotional hype cycles–by the time an LP drops, there may be a long enough list of rumored songs and collaborators to make an entire other album. And the best way to keep up with these rumors and loose reporting is to look at Wikipedia.
Drake’s Nothing Was the Same fit the bill for this type of album. There was a long list of rumored producers (Zaytoven, Mike Will Made It, James Blake, and Jamie XX, to name a few) and featured guests (Drake’s own father?!), and various song titles were announced and seemingly forgotten about just as quickly. Below are the highlights from the last two months of the Nothing Was the Same Wikipedia page– “facts” that are already lost to time.
August 1, 2013
This opening shot was taken on the release date of the thought-to-be second single “All Me”, as reported by MTV. The page was pretty barebones at this point, with only three confirmed songs: “All Me”, first single “Started from the Bottom”, and “Tuscan Leather”, which was mentioned in the July issue of GQ.
August 6, 2013
Five days later, Drake revealed on his blog that “Hold On, We’re Going Home” was the official second single for Nothing Was the Same, pushing “All Me” to the increasingly long list of promotional songs. The Wikipedia page had not been updated to include the song’s featured guest, Majid Jordan, but did include a new song called “Momentous Occasions”, produced by Noah “40” Shebib and featuring Jhené Aiko, which Aiko slyly confirmed having worked on in an interview with Fuse.
August 24, 2013
Weeks later, Drake denied that the name of the Jhené Aiko song was “Momentous Occasions”—he called it “terrible”—so Wikipedia changed it to “Untitled.” In a separate tweet, he did confirm that the producers on the song were Chilly Gonzales and 40. And in a Rolling Stone magazine interview there is a mention of the song “Connect”, but no other info was given.
August 31, 2013
Only a few weeks away from the album release the page started to fill out with some more songs, which were revealed in his Billboard magazine cover interview: “Wu-Tang Forever”, produced by 40, “305 to My City”, produced by Detail, and “Trophies”, produced by Hit-Boy. On his cover story for XXL, he explained that “Heart of the Moment” was supposed to be a bonus track that featured his father, though that wasn’t mentioned on Wikipedia that day. And “Paris Mortin Music II” was revealed in Rolling Stone to continue from where Rick Ross collaboration “Aston Martin Music” left off.
September 5, 2013
On his own blog Drake officially revealed the track listing for Nothing Was the Same. The song with Jhené Aiko had not been properly identified and “Trophies” by Hit-Boy was either not here or potentially had been given a different title. Also there are only two bonus songs, “Come Through” and the previously thought to be a single “All Me”. “Heart of the Moment” doesn’t appear to have made the final cut.
September 9, 2013
All of the song titles had been released at this point, but the features and production credits are up in the air for more than half of the songs. At the top of his page is a long list of producers that are said to be involved in some way with the project over the last two years of interviews. A lot of those names are here, but so far: James Blake, Jamie XX, Just Blaze, Bink!, Mike Will Made It, Young Chop, Zaytoven and T-Minus are nowhere to be found.
September 12, 2013
The track listing now looks in line with most detailed album Wikipedia pages. “Connect” has been confirmed as a Hudson Mohawke production, and “The Motion” comes back as a Best Buy exclusive bonus track. Also, the amazingly titled “Wu-Tang Forever” has been released as a iTunes pre-order bonus, and samples the Wu-Tang song “It’s Yours” from Wu-Tang Forever.
September 15, 2013 (Leak Day)
Nine days before its official release, Nothing Was the Same finally leaked. There were no Stevie Wonder-like surprise guest appearances to document, or beats with mystery producers. The finer points were still unknown, but finally, Wikipedia had a semblance of accuracy.
